StandingInMotion

Hmm... that's interesting... This isn't the first file that's ever had an incorrect time length displayed in windows media player for me. There have been several others, although, they just end "early" instead of dropping out. I wonder what causes this...

The piece is 56:33... also, I'm using my computer at work, so I know it's not trying to sleep. Oddly enough, I tried to open it in Adobe Audition, and it simply interpreted the file as pure static. I opened it in Audacity, and it only showed 35 minutes of the piece...

Naw... this is Windows Media Player... I've had it on my computer for well over a year now, and it plays every other song just fine (even ones ranging into 20-minute length). EDIT: And it's on a legit copy of Windows, and the player itself was downloaded through Microsoft's website, and validated using their validation software.

This may not be the place for this, but this is driving me crazy... So, I downloaded the new album released here: Echoes of Betrayal, Light of Redemption, and there's a piece that's bugging me. Spiraling Decay, by Children of the Monkey Machine... pretty much an hour of whispers, crackles, feedback... just sound. Since I'm at work, I figured I would try to listen to the whole thing as just background sound, but... during random intervals, it will fade out and go totally silent. I will take note of the time it started fading out, jump ahead a few minutes to hear everything's back up, then go a few seconds before the time it dropped out (following?) to hear no fadeout, and the piece continues to play normally. This happens countless times during the piece. I've not tried it through other media players yet, but I don't see why that would matter... unless windows media player gets tired of playing the same file for upwards of ten minutes... I bet my computer's possessed or something. Ho noes!

As far as I know (which isn't incredibly far) there hasn't been a thread dedicated to Sonic games... I know people have talked about them in passing as far as failures are concerned, but I really enjoy talking about the different aspects of the games I enjoyed, and no other thread has really had that purpose for Sonic. This topic has so many ways it can go: some people do enjoy the newer games, other hate them, some like certain aspects... I mean, there's legitimate discussion we can have here. If you don't think so, you don't have to post... Meanwhile, we'll enjoy our discussion Back on topic, though, I started replaying Sonic 1 the other day again. The thing I think I really liked about the Sonic games is how everything is so interactive... The levels aren't just landscapes, you can actually do things to the landscapes. Even though the levels are linear, there's so much to do... maybe I'm too easily amused, but whatever

I kinda grew up on sonic. My neighbors got rid of their Sega Genesis system when I was like 6 or 7 years old, and handed it over to us. I played Sonic 2 to death, and got Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles after that. I did everything you could possibly do on the carts. Later I got Sonic 3D Blast, which was okay. My parents wouldn't buy me any other systems, but lately, I've noticed a horrible decline in what Sonic's doing. I tried to play Knuckle's Chaotix, but the required 32-bit add-on device stopped me. I read up on it to see what I was missing, and... well... I didn't see that I was missing much. Then they started pulling characters from all of the TV series, and things just got progressively worse. I was thinking about something like this the other day, and that's story in video games: Sonic used to have a very nice and linear story, but now there's all this back-story and such and things get horribly muddled. Now I'm all for a good story in a video game, but it feels forced when you try to do it with classics. Take Pac-Man for example: it's a simple game with little to no backstory (that I know of. I think I heard something about a 3D Pac-Man, but never looked into it) and it's FUN. I can't imagine what it would be like if the developers decided to make a whole huge backstory to it, but that's just me:

For me, Golden Sun seems to move really slowly. At the time, I was so interested in the story that it didn't bother me, I guess. Now, I can't even sit through it.

Like I said, it's really hard to explain. That video looks to me to be too much of a Blair Witch ripoff, though I didn't actually watch all of it (I'm at work... it's kind of difficult to have videos like that up). The unknown doesn't scare me... Ghosts/demons don't scare me... freaky images don't scare me... aliens don't scare me... whatever... it's just too hard to explain over the internet I guess :/ ... but anyway, back to the topic at hand...

I guess I should explain a little bit... Giygas plays off of my biggest personal fear... and it's kind of hard to explain... Let me try to put it this way: I hate masks. Not like halloween masks, but blank, featureless masks. The idea of knowing that something is there, but not knowing its intent, its purpose, its reason... and being unable to figure out why, really scares me. Giygas, for me, is a featureless (he IS formless) entity, whose motives come off as odd if non-existant. People say he was acting in self-defense in the final battle, and that his dialogue is based off of a rape (coming from the victim's point of view... this is confirmed by the creator). However, everything happens so randomly, and none of it truly makes any sense to me and only compounds the obscurity of its existence... The music doesn't help any, as it's simply a flurry of dissonance and random sound effects. I really have a hard time conveying this to people face-to-face, simply because I don't truly understand my own fear. A lot of people say that this kind of stuff scares me because I like to feel in control, but I know for a fact that's not it... it's not merely the fact that I can't figure something out... I just really don't know what it is. Anyway, sorry for the off-topic long post

Haha nice... you've ruined Kefka for me. EDIT: Also, has anyone here played Earthbound? I just went through it this week... I have to say Giygas is the first boss to really terrify me... for hard-to-explain psychological reasons, but all the same it made the boss battle that much more difficult... the battle is hard enough as it is without all the horror anyway...

It's small, but as soon as I heard it in dotHack, I had to rewind it: Fidchell - Chain of Fate http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApLwKkDbcjM at 1:03 vs Kefka's Theme http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmmZyTwVVqY

That is really cool-sounding!

This is a horrific lie that I wish would just die already (ranting at Apple, not you, Toad). Macs are JUST as vulnerable to viruses as any other operating system. They've not been as popular as PCs, which is why there isn't as much malware out for it. Think of it this way: you're a cyberterrorist, and you want to cause as much trouble as you possibly can. Are you going to attack the small, niche-y Mac users, or the huge, evil corporation that is Microsoft? Well, you'll do more damage fighting Microsoft... Here's a resource for you: http://www.smallblue-greenworld.co.uk/pages/macintosh.html Here's a short, but sweet article on the matter: http://www.techdigest.tv/2008/12/shock_macs_can.html Really, just go to Google and type "Apple advises antivirus" and you'll get a ton of stuff. With Macs being on the rise, I would not for one second hesitate to say that they will, one day, be put through the same fire that Windows has been put through.

Kudos to you for learning something different! I have an Ubuntu partition on every computer I own, and I love it. I'm not too big on the remixing scene right now, so I can't actually point you to a good music production distro. I guess I'm just answering the question, "Does anyone here use Linux?" I don't think it would hurt for everyone to try a distro at some point. There are so many different ones that it's hard to argue that there isn't one "for me." Heck, they even have distributions that totally emulate the look and feel of Windows/Mac, but have the linux background.

That's a little close for me... I'd say it's different ENOUGH to be original, but... eeeehhhhh....

First off, congrats for making it this far! Secondly, your experiences will definitely differ from everyone else's. I was a big music performer in high school, and took part in different ensembles my freshman year, but since then, things have tapered off. You will have time for what you want to do, you'll just have to make time for it. I operate on the mindset that school comes first, and then everything behind that, so I don't have a lot of time for other things. They say you can choose two of the following three things: Social life Good grades Sleep Social life can be collective of time spent with friends, or personal time (in your case, remixing and such), so yeah. That's not really the way it is... I'm sure there's a perfect, harmonious balance of all three, but the common majority, apparently, hasn't found it. Good luck!

You don't even need Ultima. The lowest level I think I've fought Kefka was 52, and the most powerful spell I knew was flare. He's STILL a piece of cake. I've not tried this, but I've heard a low-level Celes/Edgar/Setzer team is pretty challenging (they are the ONLY characters you actually need in order to get to Kefka's dungeon).

Yes and no... it's common to have dreams where you're conversing with people, and you are in real life. I've bruised my arms and legs before after punching/hitting things in my dream, because my physical body jerked and hit things. It's not really that uncommon. Now I wouldn't go so far as to say he ran a marathon in his sleep.

I've had some pretty crazy dreams, though not like Meteo. I've been doing the Lucid Dreaming for quite some time... have only achieved it once, but still try it. I would recommend it, simply because you sleep deeper, and it's just an amazing experience anyway... However, it comes with it's bad parts: if you aren't lucid dreaming (which is more often than I'd like) you're having an incredibly vivid dream that you can't control or manipulate... you're basically at the mercy of whatever is in your mind at the time... Unfortunately for me, I'm very certain I've had demonic encounters through my dreams. There was one specific time that I was sitting in a class room, all alone at first. I suddenly heard a girl's voice asking something very vague and incoherent, like "Basically, I purple taxi squirrel? Not far from here." I grew confused and looked at her, and her face was Cthulu-esque. I backed away, and my eyes were frozen to her. I remember screaming at myself to wake up, but was too petrified to move (I have to perform some action in my dream in order to wake up, most of the time). It was at this point I remember my body waking up, but my mind still sleeping... like, I felt my covers, could hear my fan, even grabbed my cell phone to see what time it was, but I couldn't open my eyes, and my mind was still dreaming. I stopped flailing around to try to will myself awake, and in the midst of my stillness, felt something much like a hand physically rub my shoulder, and I felt and heard a whisper in my right ear: "It's all gonna be okay..." That's when I shot awake... that was the first night I woke up at 3AM The next three nights, I woke up at 3AM from increasingly demonic dreams (each getting weirder and more terrifying), and then they just stopped. Don't know what happened. Side note: keep a dream journal... As soon as you wake up in the morning, write down what you remember from your dream... just key words like people, places, events, and anything that stands out. Later, before you go to bed, read these notes and flesh out what happened in the dream. It greatly helps with Lucid Dreaming.

I had a friend in high school who tried to get me and a couple of other people into it... We would sit down at lunch time in the cafeteria, and he would DM for us. He sat there with a bag of odd-shaped dice, and nothing else. It just got very boring very quickly, and we would rather make fun of and fight each other (out of pure fun) than anything else. A common scenario went like this: DM: "You are in a room, blah blah descriptions." Player 1: "I hit the elf with my axe for taking my french fry, jerk." DM: "There are no french fries in the vicinity." Player 1: "Well I hit him anyway because he's annoying" Player 2: "I hit the dwarf back for hitting me." Player 3: "I cast a Happiness spell so you guys will stop fighting." DM: "Uhh... that doesn't work... it just makes them happy for fighting each other." Player 4: "Do I know any spells? Can I cast something?" DM: "Fine. You cast Magic Missle and it does... *rolls die* 1 damage to Player 3, since she's closest, and because of her happiness spell, she hugs you." Player 3: "Wasn't there a dragon in the room? And I wouldn't hug him anyway!" Player 4: "I cast Magic Missle again and it does *grabs random die and rolls it* ...56 damage to Player 3" DM: "You can't just use any die, and there is a dragon in the room. You should be fighting it" Things just never really took off for us.

I have seriously considered this, as my friend has expressed a few concerns on doing this. There are a couple of things that happen in my arrangement that he's not dealt with, so we'll see. He's also going to be extremely busy once summer school session starts, so I don't have a lot of time to finish the MIDI anyway... Where would I post to see if anyone would like to collab?

Some of us have a problem getting there in the first place. I'm still stumbling through the different softwares that have been told to me in this thread... I'm used to seeing a staff and inputting chords and singular notes into it with MIDI. So far all I've seen is a blank screen with a bunch of tools I can't use until I have some sort of sound. I'm getting things figured out though... little by little

Yep. As soon as she pops on-screen, you know EXACTLY why she's there... and it has nothing to do with the story. Also, what problem did they have with SIGN? I didn't watch all of them, but also never caught onto any "problems" perse...

See... DS did a good job explaining, but I'd just like to re-iterate he's right. Now, I have a LOT of respect for the remixers here. I guess that's what I meant when I said I didn't want to offend anyone... I don't want to be the guy that just freeloads and makes remixes saying, "See, it's not that hard! Any hack can do it!" I don't believe that at all. I've just got some pretty awesome ideas (well, I think so) and i want to see them come to life. Whether or not OCR accepts them, or even if anyone else likes them is far beyond my purpose. I may forgo this, though. I have a friend who was reading over my shoulder, and he said as long as I give him my MIDI, and then whatever other notes I have, he'll be able to do the mixing himself. He's got far more advanced equipment than I can hope to afford right now, so yeah. If that doesn't work out, I'm still going to try to do it myself. If THAT doesn't work, I may ask around here to see if anyone would want to team up on this. I'd REALLY like to see this come through somehow. Thanks for all of your support, people!

I don't think this has TOO many spoilers, but I accept no responsibilities!: http://dothack.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_the_.hack_series As far as amount of games, there is only Infection/Mutation/Outbreak/Quarantine, and GU Rebirth/Reminisce/Redemption... Seven in all, but two stories. This is how it goes, I think: AI Buster SIGN Wotan's Spear Games (IMOQ) Another Birth (Blackrose's vantage point of IMOQ) Legend of the Twilight (Manga, NOT the Anime) End of the World* Roots Games (GU) There are a whole bunch of other stories, but they are either side-stories about minor characters, or non-canon * = End of the World is more a time period. The Terminal Discs go over this time period, and I don't think any other media covers what happens here. I may be wrong, though. Really, you have to start with Infection or GU - Rebirth and play the sequence from there (Infection --> Mutation --> Outbreak --> Quarantine, Rebirth --> Reminisce --> Redemption), but you can play either series independently (you don't have to watch the anime or manga to understand what's going on). With the games I played from start to finish, transferring my data from one game to another, so I don't know if you started, say, with Outbreak, if they explain anything that happened in the earlier games or not. You're partially right here. It is a sequence of dungeons and fields that would seem to get old... but for some reason never did for me. The storyline is excellent, in my opinion, which may have been the driving factor behind my continuation through the series. Due to the nature of .hack, there really is no specific "world" to explore, Areas are randomly generated, and only the key words given to you through the game are really unique. dothack.wikia.com has a different category for Novels and Manga. I honestly have never picked one up of either, so I don't know... I would assume, though, that the novels are, in fact novels.