SoulinEther

Wait, what? Are you referring to earlier or my post up there?

I just started college, and my math class has placed my genitalia in a pot of boiling oil. You'll get it when you get it, oil splashes and all (if it makes you feel any better, you won't be hearing much negative from me at all)

I could swear that Larry's post read like a judge's review of a submitted remix, lol. I probably should PM this or something because I'm not sure if you'll read this here. But here goes. How exactly do you suggest we go about making specific recommendations? I think there are obvious issues behind opening a new thread in Community asking a very broad question, such as, "How do we make the site better?", and even "How can we improve the WIP/Feedback forums?" might result in ideas that are too unwieldy, unclear or underdeveloped for real progress to be made. Besides, if every interested user posted in it, and if every forum troll posted in it frequently, it would become difficult to sort through the ideas, let alone consider the advantages of one over another. I'm not exactly sure if this community can handle it, but... as in some open source software projects (KOffice is coming to mind), when some software/group of software reach(es) a point of maturity and stability, but need new features or a slight overhaul, the maintainers of the project might hold a competition of sorts where people submit a complete, detailed description of the changes they would like to see implemented, perhaps even including mockups of how the software would look with the changes. And best of all, because of all the work involved, it prevents every single user from writing up such a suggestion, and it helps ensure that there is some coherence to the ideas being suggested. I propose OC ReMix hold a similar event, where people submit basically a paper/essay/proposal (vocabulary is failing me, I'm sure there's a better word for this) that outlines, details, and helps envision what changes should be made to the site. The main problem though is that only you really know the in's and out's of the code that makes this site tick, and I guess I doubt you're willing to give too much information away, although information may not be necessary, since you're going to be the one who is implementing it anyway. If an idea is just impossible to implement with the current infrastructure, then it just can't be implemented. And, once everyone submits their fully-elaborated ideas, you could (or ... the judges? or someone? this will probably be the most time consuming aspect) figure out which idea(s) are the easiest to understand and visualize, the easiest to implement, the easiest to maintain, the most useful, the fastest, the least compromisable, etc., and perhaps even fuze aspects of different ideas to create the actual site. AND even if the main goal of this method is to limit the ideas that pour in, I still believe it is possible to include any user that wishes to make suggestions: through devolution. Obviously it would be difficult for one person to read every user's ideas, but if a subforum could be devoted to the discussion of ideas of how to improve the site, where users interested in making a proposal can take the ideas discussed within it and present, as a thread, a draft of their proposal to the community, and then (here's the devolution) each individual proposer can deal with the feedback they receive on their own ideas and finally create a substantive proposal to be submitted for evaluation. Which, ironically, would make this sort of like the WIP forum, where users are instead critiquing other users' ideas and synthesizing them to make their own massive... proposals. And of course this would need a serious (and not-too-distant) deadline. You can't just leave it open-ended: procrastinators with good ideas will not be able to sit themselves down to write their ideas (I don't know about you but I get some of my best ideas and thinking done under pressure), and because the proposal(s) (themselves) will take time to implement. Plus the average user is none-too-patient: a deadline would do much good for people to see that steps are being taken towards change, to know that, "Alright, by x date, we'll have seen all the ideas and given input on them, and we'll know that the ball is now in the admin(s) court." Now the ball is in your court Mr. Pretzel. (this is making me hungry) I've given you my idea. What do you think?

+ get some communication skills. What good are you on a team if you can't listen or guide others? (...oh crap, my life is screwed)

Well we already have that with anal suppositories right? Someone else already mentioned it but... c'mon, Tesla anyone?

Have you given it further contemplation since then? Perhaps even a short foray - a couple minutes of groundbreakery are all it takes to significantly turn my day around, but your mileage may vary.

OMG TERRA IN BLACK CUSTOM GUITAR HERO SONG PLZ!!!!11one!1 oh wait that's already been done. As far as I know, Score Hero, the website that is dedicated to guitar hero and stuff has already a pretty large collection of OC Remix works that have been adapted to GH. Wait, or are you asking about...there are a lot of things I'm personally wondering about. Will OCR accept submissions that were made on GH? Will OC remixers gain greater noteriety through their works on GH and such? Or ...what?

Wow, the discussion of this thread ... don't surprise me one bit actually. I'm not saying this here is the exact same case, but I've been in private server gaming communities on both sides of the power, both as a regular player and as a game master, and yeah, there's always seems to be some distrust amongst the commoners towards the ones that hold any power... Meh. C'est la vie, c'est partout, et je m'en fous. http://www.ocremix.org/remix/OCR01401/ No, I don't swallow. But, as far as epic goes... I'm sure you've found them, but, for anyone else needing a specific pointer: http://www.ocremix.org/remix/OCR01582/ http://www.ocremix.org/remix/OCR01645/ For me, leaning more on the epic side.

What I'm curious about are the custom made levels - are there any decent ones?

That is awesome! I think my favorite part about this kind of puzzle game is there is no one solution, and that it is always fascinating to see how someone else approached a problem. k, thanks for the heads up there buddy, i owe ya!

Well, might as well join the rest of the masses. Here's my solution to Handling: http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=830782 ooh, I'm not sure if double posting, even if the two posts are of different topics and from different days, is allowed. :/

Never thought of it that way, and it makes the piece all the more... profound. I'm still listening to it "all nekkid n stuff", btw. Nice work.

there went half of my night, and now i need to figure out how to launch the thing in Big Ball... lol Really fun shiz.

First point: generally I agree with you. Second point: I didn't recommend that one take out the battery while a laptop is ON, rather while it is off... lol. And, if the voltage is tested while the computer is on and doing stuff with Prime95, as suggested here (first google result for "multimeter testing psu"), wouldn't that catch voltage issues - too low/too high?

I take it Larry discussed what Rozovian brought up to him with you?

+1. This is better. Even if it doesn't accurately get the source, it IS a remix, and not a cover... Though, yeah, Disco Dan's analogy to a movie is pretty accurate, though I don't see it as that big of a deal for me.. I just wish I could find more of his work :/

Well, that could always be an option, as long as the code is well-documented. Otherwise, it would be the same deal - if it gets borked, you'd have to call up the coders to fix it again.

OMG THIS MAN KNOWS ABOUT AD HOMINEM ARGUMENTS! I miss debate. But we weren't really allowed to use them, they're sort of.. uhm, transparent, unless you're an idiot. And those judges weren't idiots And I wouldn't say anyone is using an ad hominem argument against you. And if they are, I'm not seeing that its their sole argument, so... it's not as though it is out of desperation. Has this thread really gone on for 3 pages about whether or not it makes sense to put up the old, holed, but rosy-retrospectively gold code for a website? Fascinating... I don't have much to say on this matter, but if the third remake of my website's code is taking too long to release, and no other version available is better, I would spend some time on making a safe/decent backup website, perhaps that is of high security minimal elegance but decent minimal functionality, so as to prevent complaints such as the ones in this thread, and to really disasterproof the site.... but that's such a bummer, not being able to complete one task before starting another - stuff like passion and motivation, will to act, etc can all be squandered doing such busywork. In summary: patience, especially when the goods and services expected to be delivered are free... If the issue is just about locating a particular song, or in finding a new song, then a simple approach would be to just implement a couple really simple lists of all the songs available on the site, one sorted by remixer, another by date of posting, and song title, whatever - on the current site. It isn't that hard to do... I could probably do it, even.

You sound angry even though i know you're referring to Grr I find it very interesting how at 1:40 it almost sounds as if the song is going to break out in Tetris/Russian folklore groove. (hey...that's an idea!...for a different remix) Those hi-hats somewhere in the mix feel weak (at least I think those are what they are, I don't know the names of stuff and things)... but overall I think the drum kit and stuff sound a lot better than, say, your Ice Cap mix's. I'm thinking of Darangen's Deadly Promises - does he play his own drums and stuff, because they sound awesome. And what's with goat's drum kit, while I'm on the subject? Seriously enjoyable music there but the drums could sound meatier MOAR MEAT! Right, back to the piece. I really enjoyed the return of the piano at ~3:10. (And at ~3:40, is that synth or whatever the same that you used in your Reincarnated Soul? just stream of consciousnessing this). And what I love most about this song is it doesn't feel repetitive at all, which is neat considering this song is 4:30 minutes. That's 'bout all I can give you, I know nothing technical, as I think you know. Sounds cool, gave it a couple listens on the older versions a while ago and I think it is coming along well, but I'm not sure I'm listening for the right stuff. (Hey that's a song's name!) Edit: wow Amarok really messed up the track length for me, lol. So.. fixed all the timings above

At this point I'm doubtful but have you explored the possibility that your graphics card is having troubles? I have to imagine your motherboard is a rather expensive one and I don't know if it has an on-board video card that you can try out to see if the graphics card is the issue... If you have an old graphics card lying around somewhere, you could give it a try. Oh, and is your current graphics card a PCI-E one? Don't they need a separate power source? I have no idea about PCI-E cards (never had a desktop with a mobo that included it), but ... well, your PSU was tested by a volt/multimeter. But my point is, if it's a PCI-E card, maybe you should try like an AGP or PCI card too, but I don't know. And I'm sure with a professional installation and with diagnostics this wouldn't be an issue, but... your PSU has enough wattage for everything you got going on, right? I concur with whomever suggested to run your computer in a bare-minimum fashion - especially if you want to save money by staying home and not buying additional compnents. Take out PCI cards, disk drives, whatever and see how your computer works like that. Or it could be some motherboard issue. Hell, there's so much going on in a computer IMO which makes pinpointing a problem difficult. ...and a laptop can be ran on AC power almost exactly like a desktop... if you take out the battery (not while on of course)

That's the story of my life lol but in all seriousness, I appreciate your feedback, though I wish I could have simply written more to receive more/more appropriate criticism - it's like giving someone 30 seconds of a larger song, you know... you can't really critique the song holistically, which is often pretty critical, because you just don't have everything to judge. And I will write* more feedback. When I get this college crap taken care of.

I too think something feels off about it, and I don't have your old version to compare it to.. Feels like I'm playing it on cheap speakers (not so much tinny, but like it's lost depth, maybe i should know what "muddy" means lol). Could be my speakers. But if you still have it, can you post the old version as well for comparison?

Alright, this is going to be a little thin (meaning I won't be too specific) and this is pretty much one of my first fiction critiques, but here goes. I thought the plot was interesting and great, and there were only a few issues with communicating your ideas through your words (meaning only a few of your phrasings were unclear, see below) The main issue for me was the grammar: diction and syntax mainly (word choice and word order/sentence structure). I'm sorry that i'm not feeling overly helpful right now to actually point out a specific case in point (i have a headache and i'm.. also.. very hungry.. maybe that's why I have my headache?), but I think more proofreading and copyediting would have served well for your work. Some words were misused (the first sentence: sometime should have been "some time"; second paragraph, first sentence: there should be "their") and while they may not be outstanding issues on their own they can add up. And my sense that some of your grammar needs tweaking may come from the fact that you used some wrong words or something, i don't know.. Oh, and on structure: maybe you could divide up your paragraphs a bit, and add more punctuation. However that may be due to the medium I'm reading this in (a forum with small text and a pretty wide screen resolution). It just felt really cramped. I know, that's not really grounds to disqualify you, but in all fairness, I only voted for three stories, and it wasn't that huge of a deal. Hey, I could be wrong, because Conrad was quite the fan of unending sentences and paragraphs from what I recall, and he is considered to be one of the great English authors (and English was his third language). And back to diction, you should try not to repeat words, unless there's a meaning for using a certain word over and over. (of course, this is in the context of a short story) This is probably a ramification of the way you've constructed some sentences: "Now" was really overused, and in the same way almost every time (to start off a sentence). I think in a story's dialogue, or if a person is really speaking a story, it's not so bad to repeat a word or construction like that, but it gets kind of repetitive even still. You only used "now" for the first few paragraphs, but the unvarying sentence structure made them seem more obvious. So my main issues were the repetitiveness of certain words, misuse of words, and some issues of vagueness or unclarity. ---------------- Now for an interesting thing to see: a critique on my own work. Alright Soul, so you submitted a work to this Freeform writing context, you say? That's interesting, because if you hadn't first told me it was such a submission, I would have immediately assumed you had been asked to pee in a cup, proceeded to do so, and, in an act of unforeseeable and incomprehensible idiocy, thrusted the contents of the cup onto a (short) piece of paper and declared some triumphant victory, this being said urine-soaked paper. It's short. I know why it's short: one, you thought the measurement for the limit on length was characters, not words, but two: you were hasty and it was a story you had going through your mind for a few days - you really needed to devote more time to it to flesh all of it out and further develop it. As a really short story, it's fine, but it isn't enough to be considered Shakespeare. Keep trying, though - you're close. Your diction was varied, which I appreciated. You wrote in a semi-alright stream of conscoiusness narration, which I think worked for the plot: a man is reliving the last images of his life on Earth, the death of his girlfriend in falling down the stairs after the handrail collapsed from underneath her, and how it gave him some sick thrill or pleasure, though whether or not said pleasure is in the present (while burning in hell) or in the past (in the scene) is unclear, but I believe one can safely assume the pleasure lies in both instances. What needed improvement? You should have written more. Especially about the tortures of hellfire, juxtaposed with the reminiscence of one's past, even though the narrator probably wouldn't have time to enjoy the passion of the death while his flesh mars and crackles. Hm. "It incites thought," as Imagery suggests. Moar writing in ur stories plz Soul! It did good for me eye(s) but nothing really substantial for me brain.

I see (er, heard) what you did there. lol.

Drat, next up is short story.... ...or, "drat" at all? Right, but first, i gotta critique... This sounds soo tedious. When I do critique, i won't critique every piece, or do I have to?