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Guys, I love you all! Thanks for the reviews and encouragement. I still lurk here frequently, but I'm really happy to submit music again. Actually a little nervous about whether my production quality is up to the site's standards nowadays -- there are too many pro-level musicians here to count anymore, it's insane. Hahaha, BUSTED, that's something I beat myself up over the entire time; hearing other dudes do that makes me cry tears of blood, since it disregards 2000+ years of classical theory, and basically amounts to a mocking racist caricature. My priority with music in general is to progress from pastiche to authenticity, which only comes with tons of study and immersion. Been listening to a metric assload of Carnatic music over the past few years, but it's not a field where you'll make much progress in a small amount of time (or, say, 10 lifetimes). At the very least, my semitic heritage grants me a +5 bonus to harmonic minor scales, so maqams are less of a stretch for me than ragas. In hindsight I think I may actually have ended up closer to Lollywood / Lahore here --it's crazy how different the styles are in different areas of the subcontinent. WORD. I like Bhangra even a little more than I like Bollywood soundtracks, because it's such a perfect fusion of folk music and hip hop and dance music all wrapped up in a crispy pakora of delight. Scratches several itches at once.

Guys. (this is virt) TL;DR, seriously. Naw, Dave just linked me here. I'm going to reply to email when I can sit down at home, but I just wanted to quickly check in. I'm touched that so many of you miss the site enough to want to make your own revival. I replied to one dude recently with a 10-paragraph email about why I've held off so long, but the short version is that it was on hold while I learned how to manage own my time properly, let alone anyone else's. tumult made me a deal last year: He is now a professional web developer with bleeding edge skills, who has already seen several commercial projects through to completion. He was concerned that I was pretty much going to die in the next 5 years, and then VGMix would NEVER happen. So, if I could lose 5 pounds a month by next Magfest, development was on like a tauntaun. Here I am, 65 pounds lighter. So, I've spent the past couple of weeks working on a vastly simplified feature list and specs for each system. It's a weird coincidence that this was brought to my attention today, because I'm hyped up already. It's not that volunteer coders are flaky, and it's not really because we got too busy. It's really because the goddamn thing was just over-scoped, I didn't know the first blinking thing about project management, and I wasn't able to effectively set milestones to work toward. Before long, everyone's like "DUH-HEYYYYY" wandering around aimlessly, facing a super-imposing feature list with ridiculous webs of interdependency and prerequisites, until they lose interest and their AI returns to "Roam" state. So it goes with genius coders. VGMix 2? Week or so of work. 3 wasn't even reasonable without a damn good plan. I'm going to be in contact with people who already have perfectly functional sites, such as Dave, and figure out ways to hook together in a way that benefits everyone, rather than trying to go it alone as an "alternative". Many of the features we had planned are now totally unnecessary and add needless complexity. So... PLEASE don't replicate VGMix 2 feature-for-feature. Not "because it's my baby", but because it's so outdated, and many of the core concepts are vastly, deeply flawed (RPG system? Levels? Reviews AND buzz AND metas? ARGGHGFKZJXBV) and incapable of scaling to handle the amount of content we ended up with. The whole thing gets unmanageable once you have a couple thousand songs. The real focus now is providing a place for WIP feedback, and tools to help organize competitions and projects. My ultimate goal is to have DoD be its own site running on a common framework, customized to run pretty much how it runs now, and handling all the voting, file organization, and display stuff automatically. If we can reach that benchmark, I think we have a fighting chance of doing something helpful. Yeah. I'm going to read each page in more detail tonight, but I think you shouldn't be too quick to assume I've forgotten all about VGMix. I just needed a good training montage. OH YEAH! Also, last weekend, I backed up the entire VGMix2 /songs/ directory (21 gigabytes) to a flash drive and two external hard drives for good measure. As soon as I have time to organize the collection into reasonable chunks, I'm going to release it as a torrent, unless anyone objects.

I'm still bound by my NDA.. The only stuff I can tell you is what they've made public knowledge. I hate saying that, because I'm SO EXCITED I just want to talk about everything. I agree an official soundtrack would be awesome, though. I've never had one released yet!

After I got off the phone with the dude I couldn't stop pacing back and forth for like 10 hours. I was afraid I would suddenly grow tentacles and then question reality and then wake up in my bed and it was all a dream. Alas, my tentacles are REAL.

Thanks guys And at the risk of sounding like a weenie: Thanks Dave, for helping fuel my interest in arranging from the start. No matter what happened along the way, we both owe a lot (most, I'd venture) of our musicianship to this awesome hobby. Wayforward was totally supportive and open to ideas, just like with Shantae - so I hope you guys aren't disappointed with my work. Lots of fan service. (you can hear my panties in one song) I'm totally excited just as a Contra fanboy.

Hey Dave, everyone. Yep! I did music and sound design. I couldn't confirm it until Mr. Bozon outed me himself, and I'm REALLY glad he did. I was worried that they'd think I violated my NDA if word got to them that people knew I was involved, even though I didn't spill it. (and yeah, it's a big reason VGMix 3 isn't done yet - my freelancing is sucking up TONS of time.. Gonna have to start snorting meth and/or build a flux capacitor. But this is a big chunk of time freed up, anyway.)

I want you to do a skin/theme for us fairly badly The logo is all me - All I know is metal band logos, which explains a lot - but I'm not at all opposed to replacing it if you have a better proposal! So far, no one has To follow up, my overriding goal is to complement the features OCR/R:TS already have, and provide multiple sources of feedback instead of an "alternative community". Frankly, OCR has fixed most of the flaws that made me start my own site in the first place, so we're at the point where we can actually benefit from coexistence instead of there being a rift. I guess most communities go through this sort of stuff. I agree about cliquishness, but it's hard to avoid. What we CAN avoid, however, is disrespect. Sounds insane coming from me of all people, but I'm gonna be a hard-ass about people treating each other with courtesy. It's one thing to have a circle of friends, it's another to put people down just because your opinions on video game remixes differ. I hope to never see (or do!) that again. For what it's worth, thanks to every one of you for your support.

virt here. Beat me to the post! Thanks for the feedback so far, and most of all, for being so constructive about it. I can't take credit for all these ideas; we went through over 1,000 posts in our suggestion forum and made a list of damn near 300 of them, then balanced it out as much as possible. We'll still need tons of tweaking, though. I honestly can't wait to see the first OCR/R:TS/OLR project organizer use our functions to help organize their files/votes/whatever - It's exactly why we're doing it, and it'd be so cool to see sites finally working as one solid community. I'm misty-eyed just thinking about it, we all put so much time into this hobby. Anyway, about the launch date, yeah. NutS is right, I feel like a dork, but my estimate was way off. We're mindblowingly busy in our daily lives, or else we would've been done a year ago (before we were even shut down).. But we're rocking ass so far, and as soon as we're at beta I'll post here so anyone who wants to can come tweak/break stuff. For what it's worth, you're all welcome to join our forums too, and/or visit our irc channel on irc.vgmix.com #vgmix. If we had conflicts in the past (I see you hiding in the corner, Smoke) give us another shot - times change and dudes develop Drama Allergies. Let's make and enjoy great freaking music. Starting with Stan Bush - YOU GOT THE TOUCH!

Yo, I was nervous as all hell, really didn't know what to expect at all. Sure enough, it was a great moment. Kicked off my Magfest High something fierce. Panels were awesome, seeing you guys rock the hell out at the shows was awesome, and it was awesome to see just how down to earth everyone is, no matter how much water is under the bridge. I'll save the ambitious community spiel for another time; I just want to say ROCK ON, and let's keep on in this good spirit. Our shared love of great music (and Killian's) is what matters. As soon as I can get a moment, I'll put up all the details I showed in our panel. Feedback was supergreat, I'd love some more.

DUDES. I registered just to say: Thanks so much for making me feel welcome, really enjoyed seeing you all. Except Taucer, I was so looking forward to running my fingers through his flaxen hair, but NOPE, BUZZED. I needed to unwind badly, and this hit the spot. Just conquered the terrifying mountain of work I had to do, and I'm gonna sleep for like 18 hours. See some (most?) of you mofos at Magfest!@!@*! OH GOD SIX DAYS???? -OMGVIRT p.s. TOUUUCAN SAYUM!!