Kenogu Labz

Indeed, finally watched it. Most excellent, and hope they get a chance to see it.

Did it judo-slam you into the ground like it did to me? ...and did anyone else spot the Nirnroot at ~1:40? Now I have that itch that I forgot to do something. Maaaaan, now I'll have to go on a Nirnroot hunt.

Weee've been over this before. Competing for profit can force companies to make decisions that benefit the consumers; but, while competition isn't inherently bad, corporate greed destroys what good could have come out of it. Looking forward to watching when I'm back from class. EDIT: Aaaand I missed your point entirely. Yeah, on the creative/innovative side of things, profit doesn't really help. It's inherently a risk to innovate: one most companies aren't willing to take.

I was looking at it from a pop point of view, which probably isn't even closely related to the dance field. I think I'll go back to the corner and shut up now.

Sorry, that was poorly worded. What I meant was that England seems to enjoy genres of music that America found and left ~20 years ago, at least the last I heard. Tastes may have easily changed since then.

Any bets that Notch has not made the system all that extensible with regard to monsters, though? I have this sneaking suspicion that each monster's behavior is hard-coded.

Indeed, but good luck getting it to happen. I'm just playing devil's advocate, looking at other alternatives to satisfy both sides.

I can just see the fights now. "Justin, go to bed! No, I'm serious, they're after me! Justin? JUSTIN! GET IN BED RIGHT NOW THEY'RE GONNA EAT ME OH GRAAAAAAAAAAA~" But yeah. Schwaltzvald definitely has a better alternative. The only time you really want to skip night-time is early on, during the tedious startup. After that, you just keep a sword and a boatload of torches with you. Perhaps it would work better if the night-skip happens only in peaceful mode, when everyone prefers working in the daytime. Once the monsters are out, though, the bed should be able to operate differently. Perhaps he could treat it like the grail in La Mulana, where you can keep several bed-checkpoints, and teleport between them...

But on multiplayer, that would break the 'skip night-time' feature, since you'd be skipping in very small chunks as monsters keep waking up everyone else.

Yeah, I'm hoping that you wake up a bit before dawn, just so there's still monsters out. In case you _are_ stupid enough to sleep outside.

The real irony is that it came from England, who tends to be two decades behind us in the first place.

I can totally see people abusing beds. Bring one along while exploring; night-time hits, run to the top of the nearest mountain... and crawl in bed?!? Talk about brave! And then you wake up to find a creeper in the bed with you.

I'm digging the arrangement aspect of this, and your synths are sounding pretty sweet too, but boy is it clipping near the end. You've gotta lower the volume and master this quite a bit; as it is, it's harder to hear all the parts when the song is so blown out. Definitely looking forward to further progress on this, though.

Doskpop on OCR? Why haven't I seen this before! I can definitely hear Elwood and Lizardking in there, beating on the walls to get out. Slick, smooth, everything we've come to know and love about your tracking. This really blends with the original's style, too. Only complaint? There's just not enough time in the song.

You got Fossil Roo?!? This is gonna be epic.

Rebuild, perchance? And yeah... zombie games, especially, have to offer quite a bit more in order to differentiate themselves from each other, just because the genre... well, it isn't really a genre. You can't make a game whose premise is simply 'it has zombies'. Doooesn't quite work.

True, but this is a little over the edge. Since the whole piece is composed of solely that set of samples, it really can't stand on its own. Bad strings can work if mixed with other, better samples. And yes, pretty much everything orchestral sounds better live.

So many goodies to choose from! I've loved Mass Effect 2 so far, and its soundtrack, which is by far better than the first's; however, LeChuck's Revenge and its new-and-improved OST hold special places in my heart. Rootin' for y'all though!

Those samples are reaaally stiff. I can hear where the dynamics would be, but it simply doesn't come through with the samples you used. The arrangement itself actually sounds pretty good, especially near the end, but you really need to find different sounds before you can do anything else with it.

Sooo, I take back my previous statement that this wasn't necessarily for me. This stuff is addicting. I've had to pull several near all-nighters the last couple of weeks, and I keep coming back to this album to keep me coding. Amazing ear-candy, and I'm probably gonna shell out some for it, because it's staying in my playlist, and you deserve the bucks.

I don't see how any song having any religious content would be ineligible or undeserving of an award. If you weren't told this was the Lord's Prayer in Swahili, you would be none the wiser; the song holds merit with or without knowledge of the lyrics. Taking offense at Christianity does not equate to taking offense at anything remotely connected to Christianity, or leveraging well-known material related to it. As it is, I personally don't quite see what makes the song so special; then again, having not played Civ IV myself, I'm probably not seeing it in full context. Certainly a bit catchy, but not as deserving as some others, I think. Hoping to see this trend continue for other game-based compositions as well!

Good suggestions. Can't forget the Romantic period composers; a lot of those are a more experimental, and stretch beyond the bounds of basic theory more, without stepping into the stranger grounds of the Modern period. The Romantic period tends to push more into the emotional aspects of music than the earlier periods did, I think (although I'm not very familiar with musical history by a long shot).

A big problem is that most people come to orchestral music expecting bland, boring, baroque and stiff and strict. But orchestras provide much more than that: they have the ability, more than any other form of music, to convey an enormous range of emotions and relations. Once people can get past the initial block, an entire world is opened up. Okay, enough with the silly banter. Some examples? Two Steps From Hell, run by Nick Phoenix and Thomas Bergersen, take this concept to its formulaic extension: they create shorter pieces for the sole purpose of advertising and spots for media. They use techniques and combinations that are known to evoke specific emotional responses of awe, wonder, and tension. Hans Zimmer, a well-known film composer. Now, before the hatahs come in and tell me he's not good, I'd like to point to the fact that, while he does use a pretty narrow bag of tricks, he is incredibly flexible, versatile, and his themes really work. They're catchy ear-worms that enhance whatever they're used with. Sherlock Holmes: Discombobulate Josh Whelchel, up-and-coming indie composer, and local OCR artist, has made some wonderful soundtracks. His works are often founded on orchestra, with other elements intermingled. The purely orchestral pieces, however, are incredibly strong, conveying much more than the most complex techno can simply never do. All of these are just a taste of what's out there, if you're willing to look for it. , , and James Newton are just a few of the many incredibly talented composers out there, and there's even more that go beyond simply composing 'big', and are able to also compose deep; not every epic song needs to be grandiose or loud. All it takes is the right melody, the perfect movement, sweeping from a narrow point to soaring wings to touch your soul. This is the power of orchestral music.And wow, I sound so pretentious now. xD

True. Once a fairly good team sets up on your cart, it's a real pain knocking them off, especially since by definition, there's a pretty clear line-of-sight toward either end of the tracks. And if a good team is attacking, it's like they're piloting a steam roller.

Meleeing stickies is easy (albeit careless), if you can get to them without the demoman blowing your face off. Thunder Mountain stage three is a blast, but the whole map seems fairly easy to roll either way. Doesn't take much to imbalance it.