Kanthos

I've only died once so far, and that was by taking on an FOE on the third floor that I wasn't ready for and I didn't try to escape the battle. As for money, if you make a team of survivalists to farm item points, you make money really quickly. There's a chop point that's easily accessible on the first floor once you've explored the floor (there's a door from the starting room to the chop point room that you can only use once you go through it from the chop point room). Make a team of 5 level 1 survivalists, give them all 3 points each in chop (you start at 3 skill points and then get 1 more per level), and run them into the room, farm, sleep at the in, repeat. They'll rarely, if ever, get in a fight doing that; it's about 16 steps round trip from the door to the item point, and you'll make about 600 en per trip. There are similar strategies on other floors, although you'll need to level your farmers a bit to make it to them safely. Another example is on floor 6; you can get right to floor 6 and hit two or three item points pretty easily and come out with a ton of stuff to sell. As for saving, it's not really a big deal. Firstly, you get an item called warp wire after you finish the first mission (explore and map the first floor). Each costs 100 en, but you can use it to return to town from wherever you are. Think you're going to die? Escape the battle and use a warp wire. Secondly, there are a few places in the dungeon where you get full healing for free; so far, there's a hexer on level 3 who appears there until you defeat the boss on level 5, and there's a spring on level 8. Lastly, every 5 levels you move to a new stratum, and with each new stratum you gain the ability to warp from town to the beginning of that stratum and alternately to warp back out again for free from the warp point. So to get down to level 8, for example, you just have to go through level 6 and 7, not all 8. The game is unforgiving if you don't bring along a warp wire (have one with you always), but as long as you do, you'll rarely be in the dungeon long enough that not being able to save is a huge problem.

They are presented in-game, although not really as a tree format. But you can go into Custom on the menu (which is where you spend skill points to learn skills) and select a skill for which you don't have the prereqs yet and it tells you what the prereqs are.

I currently have 11 characters and will add another two once I unlock the Ronin and Hexer classes. My main is a Landsknecht (warrior type; their best skill is a passive one that lets them hit twice about 30% of the time when you get it to level 10), Protector (screw taunt, it's useless so far; they hit just about as well as my Landsknecht except when he double-hits; their big strength is Defender which significantly buffs defense for everyone in the party), Alchemist (mage type), Medic (healer, obviously needed; I suggest you pick skills to get revive level 1 as fast as possible), and Survivalist (archer-type; Appollon is my biggest damage-dealer; a boosted appollon does about 350-400 damage right now). These characters are between level 28 and 30 and are currently on level 9 of the dungeon. I also have 4 other survivalists all around level 14. They can learn all three of the gathering skills (mine, chop, and take) so I'm maxing those out by running them two at a time through the labyrinth with my protector, landsknecht, and medic; when they're higher level I'll start taking skills to avoid combat so I can do quick harvesting runs with a group of 4 plus a protector in case things go wrong. I also have a troubadour (bard, they do party buffs and enemy debuffs) and dark hunter (screw whips with them, get swords and learn drain, also get boost up), and will make a ronin and hexer when I unlock them. I haven't started either the troubadour or dark hunter yet; all I did was make the characters, but they're still at level 1. However, levelling someone with a high-level party is a snap; buy them the best gear you can and take them to a fairly deep floor in the dungeon. If you can keep them alive (you did learn revive on your medic, right?) they'll level really fast. The ronin and hexer classes aren't really necessary, I'd think; as long as you have a medic and have levelled enough, you should be fine with a balanced party. I'll be glad to talk strategy and exact builds; I've already worked out my builds for the 7 main classes after looking at discussion on the Gamespot forums, and I know what to take and why, and why avoiding certain things is a good idea. Perhaps that belongs in a separate thread though.

I'll consider getting it, it looks fun. It's not out yet here in Canada though; we're generally a day or two behind you American folks for game releases. Also, is the built-in voice chat worth doing with the built-in mic and headphones/built-in speakers, or is it worth getting a headset?

You might want to look at the Edirol UA-25. I haven't tried it on Vista yet, but Edirol released Vista drivers for it a couple months ago. It has two combo jacks for guitar/XLR connections and MIDI in/out. I've been quite happy with it since I got it.

Final Fantasy Adventure was the first Gameboy game I played as well as the first Final Fantasy title I played, so I have a lot of nostalgia for the game and its soundtrack. I like the concept, but there are a few notes that sound off that bugged me a lot. At 0:23, you have a melody that is D E F# G F# A G, which is fine, but when you hit the second F#, your bass is playing a G (in other words, your chord progression is D7 G G instead of D7 D7 G, or perhaps even D D7 G), and the F# and G are clashing. You have the same thing around 0:50. Also, around 1:17, the melody you have is E F E D C E G E. The bolded E should be a D, assuming you want to stick with the original melody. I'd suggest you do; my thought on melody is that you should either do it right or reinterpret it; changing a note here or there just makes it look like you don't know the original melody. The arrangement before you guys get to the melody at 1:11 or so sounds a bit empty, especially from 0:55-1:11. Some kind of melodic focus would help grab the listener a bit more. If you guys are at all interested in an alto sax solo or melody line or something, let me know. I'm thinking something that's not really jazzy and also isn't too smooth, perhaps with a touch of effects like delay.

Round 15 Puzzle Quest: No. I bought the game and originally liked it a lot. Bejewelled was a fun game, and while the premise of winning fights through flipping gems is a bit wacky, it was fun. Until you start to lose. A lot. Now I'm not a bad player at puzzle games; if nothing else, you can take your time to find the perfect move. I just found that many of the monsters were stacked heavily and had powers I had no good counter for, plus they always seemed to pull off ridiculous combos that depended on the right gems dropping onto the board from above. Sure, I got those occasionally as a player, but with nowhere near the frequency that the CPU did. I found it tedious to have the same fights over and over again, and lose every time despite doing the right thing. And when you get to the points where opponents manage to do 40+ damage in a single hit and you have about 120 HP plus they have more than you, losing is pretty much guaranteed. Also, the puzzles to learn the spells are frustrating, since the longer ones were near impossible to complete. It was really easy to get into a position where all the moves were in one of the top quarters of the board and the pieces on the rest of the board were effectively unmoveable unless you managed to get your requirement for a color and clear all gems of that color off the board automatically. In short: this game is a great concept but amounts to an exercise in frustration.

Totally missed posting here on the weekend, and I knew your birthday was coming up too. I suck Anyway, happy birthday fellow mathie

I'm not sure I agree. Even if they get this technology for the same price as a normal PC or even a bit lower, it's still not worth paying for what will really be more of a novelty (at least until they come up with more uses than photos and maps, both of which can be done on a normal PC already). The only thing I've heard that might be a better use than a PC (as opposed to different; I can get to photos and maps I want pretty quickly with a keyboard and mouse; I don't think I'd gain anything by doing all that touch-based) is the possibility of piano-roll sequencing being a lot faster than keyboard and mouse. Even then, it'll still be a long time before that kind of thing was affordable for people like us, not to mention that no one would be upgrading from their current setup unless the thing performed well. I suppose it could always be used as an interface to a PC; that might work. Anyway, with the current set of things this can be used for, it's clearly not much more than a novelty. Unless they come up with a lot of good applications for it that can't be done as effectively on a PC, it will remain a novelty and I doubt it'll sell well, which is why I was suggesting how it would compare to a normal PC, because I don't think it has enough potential at the moment to make it as a PC replacement or as a novelty device. Of course some people will buy it just because it's cool, but most will want it because of what they can do with it, and as long as it remains a "toy", they'll stick to their PC. It could also have a lot of potential with 3D modelling too, I think. It'll probably end up being most suited for artists/musicians, the kind of people who would be likely to work on a Mac.

That one's titled "Chase Of Highway" or something like that on the OST. It's the track that plays when Cloud is on the motorcycle.

Mario Kart DS: Yes I'm by no means a good player of racing games, but didn't find it to be that difficult. Some of the missions are, for sure, but I didn't have much problem unlocking all karts and drivers in the game, and I'm easily on the low end of skill. Yes, online play has its problems, but so do most other online games. Compared to the other Mario Kart games, the only one that perhaps rivals this is Double Dash, assuming you're playing with friends. The dual screen was used effectively, and I found the game to be pretty balanced. At any rate, I don't want a game where I can win all the cups on my first try.

I think the idea of touch-based computing will be a big success in the future, but definitely not with this product, and not only because this product is the first. Touch-based computing will need several things in order to really work. 1) Alternative input methods that are as fast or faster as a standard keyboard or mouse. This could involve displaying a keyboard on the device itself for someone to type on (albeit at a cost of reduced screen space), but unless such a device was as fast or faster for *all tasks* that I'd want to use it for, I wouldn't regard it as more than a novelty. As an alternative, I guess hooking up a standard keyboard and mouse for when touch-based methods weren't appropriate would be good too. 2) Appropriate precision. If the screen is relatively small, say the size of my 17" monitor, precision becomes a huge issue (each pixel would be quite large, or else touching my finger down would cover a significant number of pixels). Reduced resolution for the sake of dragging is stupid. 3) Ergonomics. Again relating to screen size, I suspect that the current design (as a table top) wouldn't be sustainable for a long period of usage, since the user would be leaning forward too much, especially for doing actions on the farther end of the table.

I agree with Dhsu on all counts. Your playing, style, dynamics and so on are all fantastic, but while it sounds to me like you're more-or-less using the chords from the original, there's no melodic connection to the original. In terms of chords, my personal feeling is that it's alright to use your own melodies over the tune's chord progression (or even an altered version, say taking a song and using jazz chord voicings) as long as you've first established how the progression relates to the original by playing the original melody over the chords. From experience with a WIP I have, this view might even be a bit too liberal for OCRemix; it really depends how far you intend to stray from the source melodically. I admittedly don't know the source that well; despite playing through FF 7 numerous times, I never liked that track and have only a vague memory of it, but if you work the original melody in somewhere, that will probably strengthen the connection between what you have now and the original (if it doesn't, of course, that indicates that your piece is too far away from the original; I doubt that's the case, but it's hard to tell). Either way though, whether it's too original or not, it's still a great-sounding piece of music, and while that may not result in a yes, making quality music, video game or not, should be the point of anything any of us try to do.

I recommend this. It's the theory book my school uses. I'm guessing you probably want to learn about more chords and voicings mainly, as well as get an idea of what sounds good and what doesn't for melody. In addition to what you already know, this book will also cover the various 7th chords, modulation, basic 4-part voice writing (even if you don't need 4 voices, you can extrapolate a lot about fitting a melody over chords as well) and a bit about forms (binary, ternary, rounded binary, sonata allegro form, I think). It's still useful for a non-classical musician. There's also a volume 2 that covers a lot more stuff, including an introduction to counterpoint (2-part voice writing), a lot more advanced chords which are most useful in classical or jazz but can be used elsewhere if you know what you're doing, and a lot of history of classical music (i.e. what theory and harmony styles and techniques were used in each era).

Indeed, I was more thinking that if the first Zelda song had been an OCRemix, it would likely have been removed in one of the two previous lockdowns. Sorry I couldn't actually identify any of the mixes though.

I'll see what I can do about advertising. There's probably a way to put something up at work for people to see it without being obtrusive and e-mailing everyone (our incompetent admin staff complains about social-related e-mails being sent to everyone). Maybe leave iTunes up all day with a copy Antigravity up for people to listen to over the network (you can share iTunes libraries over a network without actually transferring the MP3 files) and a note to check out your site or something. As for the sax, ever heard of the Flecktones? They're a jazz band led by Bela Fleck, an electric/acoustic banjo player, and their reed player, Jeff Coffin, does all kinds of things. He has a set of pedals larger than some guitarists. Anyway, check out track 7, Subterfuge, at this link for an idea of the kind of thing I think would work. Most of the song is just acoustic sax without much/any effects on it, but near the end of the track, they kind of spontaneously start playing Come Together by the Beetles; the banjo does melody first, followed by the sax; you can hardly tell it's a sax. When I saw it live, Jeff used an auto-harmonizer on the Come Together part; it sounded awesome. I should mess around with sax effects over Throwdown this week; it'd be fun to see what kind of stuff I can do with guitar rig. EDIT: I should also say that the sax is a bit whinier than I'd think would work well for Throwdown, and also that there wouldn't *have* to be effects; I just think it'd be neat to use them. Thanks for the list of influences; I've spent my budget for music and stuff for the next couple months between Antigravity and a couple jazz albums and Battery 3, but I'll keep them in mind for when I have expendable cash again

Took a listen to all of these. A few, particularly the first one, probably wouldn't pass the submission standards here. I don't recognize any of the mixes, although the Final Fantasy one is a remix of Final Fantasy IV's world map theme. I'm not familiar with everything on OCRemix, so they could possibly be songs I don't know, but I suspect they're from another site.

Nice! Congrats Zircon! I'm undecided as to which track is my favourite, but it's probably a tossup between Breathing You In, Throwdown (is it sacrilege that I was playing an air sax solo over part of the tune on my way to work today, complete with a few non-typical sax effects like chorus and a wah pedal?), Art of Zen, and Antigravity. This album is definitely my gateway drug into electronica.

Make a google account and use googlepages.

Post the mixes somewhere and I'll take a look at them. I'm sure others will as well.

I'm not that much of a console person, but I'll post my votes for the games I've played. Haven't played anything on lists 8-10, so I'm just going off what's on the front page, in order (for easy counting of votes) Morrowind (XBox): Fantastic landscape and ambiance (way better than Oblivion). The controls on XBox are better than on PC; the game was designed for a gamepad. Some parts of the game are out of balance (much easier to be a figher than a mage or thief), but still playable on all counts. The replay factor is high since by the time you've done all the quests you can find, you'll forget details about the ones at the start. Definite YES. Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (DS): I wouldn't call this a must-have. Portrait of Ruin was much better, more difficult, and had more things to find and do (getting all the souls in DoS wasn't nearly as fun as finishing all the quests in PoR, plus the nest of evil added a lot to the game). Not a bad game, but PoR is better in just about every way. NO. New Super Mario Bros (DS): A bit on the easy side, but the gameplay is great. Nice combination of the original with moves from Mario 64 (wall jumping and ground pounding). Very tough to find all the secret exits on your own, which makes up for the gameplay being a bit easy. Good replay factor, as it feels like the original mario games that I've played so many times. YES SSX 3 (XBox): While this isn't a bad game, it certainly isn't a must have. I was working for EA when they released this game. Even within the company (on my team and a few others, although I didn't know anyone on SSX directly), there was an overwhelming concensus that SSX Tricky was better. Get that instead. NO

I second that.

As a "mixer-in-training", I'm going to remix something I have inspiration for. If that happens to be newer or older, I don't particularly care.

Well, depends on you as a performer and how fast you react. I just tried it out by opening the ASIO panel for my interface and decreasing the latency to see what the threshhold for me was between playable and non-playable. I'm at 4ms right now and not complaining.

1) Will I be dissapointed? As long as you're well aware of what you want the keyboard for and the Axiom 61 fits those goals, no, you won't be. 2)Any features I might want that this doesn't have? Weighted keys is the only thing that comes to mind. 3)It works with the USB port right? I don't need to have anything to do with the midi-in midi-out right? The only reason you'd use the midi-out is if you're controlling another MIDI device using the Axiom. I don't know why you'd use the midi-in since the Axiom doesn't produce audio output, so using something else to control it seems pointless. Use the USB connection. 4)I'm up here in Canada, and from what I saw at Zzounds they don't ship up here (plus I don't want to go through the hassle of getting it across the border, any good deals from canadian dealers? I think M-audio has canadian outlets here) I got mine at a small store in Kitchener; due to a pricing error, I ended up paying about 2/3 what it was worth even after I pointed it out to them. I was only looking at places I could get locally. You might not want to ship it unless you get a really good deal because it'll be big and shipping costs will probably be high. I suggest www.kellysmusic.ca for gear in general; if they have what you want, their prices are usually quite good and as long as you don't order an academic version of software (which has to be shipped from the manufacturer as a special order; they don't stock academic software by default), they ship quickly as well. Here's the link for the Axiom 61. 5)Anything else to say? Don't know if you've thought about what kind of sound card you're using, but I suggest getting a decent audio interface. If your audio playback latency isn't really low (I need it at 10 ms or less; I wouldn't even consider any interface that doesn't have native ASIO drivers), then when you play along with audio you've already recorded, you'll be out of sync and it'll be hard to play. Note that this isn't the keyboard's fault either, so if you don't have a good sound card, don't blame the keyboard