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djpretzel

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Posts posted by djpretzel

    Latest Site Changes (Issue Reporting & Feedback Appreciated)

    in Announcements

    Posted

    Hey, it's awesome to see such a strong change but here's a few problem areas I think could be improved on...

    Favicon -- why? :cry: The old one was good and definitive

    I've never felt that our primary logo was discernible at 16x16 pixels - too much detail is lost to make out the gamepad/phone at that resolution.

    Workshop -- with a zoom of 110%, this still overlaps the page.

    I don't really test for different zoom levels atm. It's the type of thing that should be fixed in V6 w/ a responsive design.

    Ad spot -- for people with Ad block, consider putting a normal image when no ad available that links to donate or ocr shoppe.

    Yep, already planning on this. Potentially also an image ad for OC Records.

    Artist text -- practically unreadable light-gray on white. A couple of these issues affect people with less than ideal eyesight and I really hope to see them addressed, as having bad eyesight is a fairly common issue :cry:

    Disagree, but noted. We're conveying four pieces of information in a relatively small space, at the moment - I think the ultimate/eventual fix will be repositioning the remix list in the center column on most pages, including the homepage. At the same contrast level, it becomes too busy and hurts readability for EVERYONE. The contrast level is pretty decent but we might be able to tweak a bit more, however I feel like I've seen similar levels as common place on many sites.

    Also I'm not convinced having "quotation marks" around song titles is necessary... But if kept perhaps they could not be part of the hyperlink, since they're not part of the titles.

    Quotes help clearly indicate that the mix title is a proper noun that's not part of the game name. If they're not part of the link, the coloring/highlighting looks a little weird, imo.

    Appreciate the feedback - some of this stuff is aesthetic opinion, some of it is potentially usability related, and some of it (ad block) we completely agree with & are working towards.

    Bastion Soundtrack using Logic Pro

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    You can't put heart or passion into someone else's work before claiming it as your own. It just doesn't make sense. I realize it's not a matter of plagiarism, but it's not much better than that. The legal use of someone else's music.

    Not to mention I know people from OCR who could make music from scratch, be inspired, and do a better job. It's not fair at all.

    Brandon, this might be one of those times we talked about where you're articulating an opinion just to evoke a response, rather than because you legitimately feel that way. At least I hope it is - Darren Korb is awesome, and if you give most people 89,456 loops, they're still not gonna end up with the Bastion OST...

    What does it mean to "cheat" in the context of making music?

    Milli Vanilli

    Don't see a problem here. Anybody can play a 4 second harp loop. A good musician can make something out of that loop. Kind of like those artists who take stuff from garbage cans and makes really cool stuff with it.

    I'd modify that to "a good composer" instead of "a good musician"...

    I feel that people like Brandon, and many other talented multi-instrumentalists, might be more opposed to loops simply because it goes against their instincts, but the thing is... music is a broad enough medium to incorporate genres & works that absolutely hinge on live instrumentation, and others that absolutely do not, and everything in between.

    Latest Site Changes (Issue Reporting & Feedback Appreciated)

    in Announcements

    Posted · Edited by djpretzel

    We just uploaded a collection of tweaks to the site; you can think of this as OC ReMix 5.1 or 5.2 from a certain perspective. Many of these tweaks were back-ported from V6, which is still going to happen, but we're making the changes more incremental and thus more manageable...

    Additional Content & Features

    1. Album pages now have track lists, in addition to modified layout w/ larger cover art & green download links for torrent AND http download (if free)
    2. "Latest ReMixes" and "Latest Albums" AJAX blocks added to ReMix pages, game pages, wiki...
    3. Artists list now includes convenient social media links - get to Uematsu's twiiter in a jiff, or check out zircon's soundcloud... having these in list view is really useful, in my opinion, and hopefully it will bring more traffic to artists and encourage visitors to explore!

    Aesthetic & UI

    1. Background & general coloring is a bit grayer
    2. Subtle top gradient added to rounded white panels
    3. Fonts are spaced out a bit more
    4. Fonts are larger on ReMix listing sidebars
    5. ReMix listing sidebars now truncate text and are of uniform height
    6. ReMix listing sidebars are now clickable ANYWHERE - if you don't click an explicit link, it'll go to the mix, but if you click game or artist, those links still function
    7. For all table listings, spacing has been increased and a flatter look has been implemented
    8. For all table listings, as with ReMix sidebars, you can click the row anywhere and it'll take you to the main data item, but you can still click the secondary metadata links
    9. On ReMix pages, an actual sidebar is now used to contain the green download & preview buttons, ads, and new "Latest ReMixes" and "Latest Albums" blocks. One nice thing about this is that you can download a mix or view the lyrics while still watching the preview video.
    10. New favicon
    11. Minor footer revisions (still working on this)
    12. Homepage columns rearranged (makes more sense this way)
    13. Number of mixes displayed in various areas of the site has been increased
    14. "Latest Albums" block modified to do art only, hover for title & release date, display 4 instead of 2
    15. Formatting of "Previously on OverClocked ReMix" on homepage has been modified for readability (way too many orange links previously)
    16. We're now using asynchronous AdSense ads from Google, which in theory should speed things up a bit!
    17. Some general clean-up of various things!

    That's about it; may have missed a couple things here and there, but those are the major changes. Feedback & reporting of any issues are appreciated as replies to this thread.

    We've been working hard on posting more mixes, as well, and I'd like to emphasize that this set of changes is only another milestone, and that there will be many more changes this year.

    Thanks,

    - djp

    I'M BACK! (with a BOOK!)

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Welcome back!

    I bought your book! (kindle edition) - might want to start a separate thread in PPR for it, outline some of the ideas, see what peeps think...

    As far as what's gone down, in a nutshell.... more great albums (BA2, Sonic CD, MM25, TMNT, Audio Engineering, etc.), we launched a sister site for selling VGM & community originals at http://overclockedrecords.com, and there've been a ton of great mixes of course.

    "Active Members" Statistic

    in Site Issues & Feedback

    Posted

    I imagine Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are all the OCR interaction a lot of people need. Still, if there's more to it than that, it seems like a discussion worth having.

    Pretty sure that's all there is to it. Probably also a factor of our core audience growing older, having more responsibilities that pull them away, etc.

    It's based on recent logins, yes.

    There's little doubt in my mind that many are also becoming more passive consumers of media, where clicking a like button is the most one can expect re:interaction.

    With our planned forum migration, hopefully we can track/incentivize engagement without a negative effect on quality, and also our plans to greatly expand the workshop area - which revolves around forum accounts - should help increase activity.

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