eilios

Are you going to put anything on your youtube channel or is that for decoration at the moment?

not really both groups love 3

that's quite the setup ._.

Story design, world building, what you can do, etc. If you're playing a game and you're thinking "okay, what's the point of all of this" there's a problem. The game could be perfectly fun, but if it doesn't hold your interest...

Good game mechanics, bad concepts or level design. Think of it like Xen from HL1(if you've played it). Nothing is essentially wrong with it, it's just not that interesting. For example, look at this game. While not the most inventive game, it has a nice soundtrack, and pretty fun mechanics. The problem with this game, though, is that the lack of numerous mechanics makes the levels(while individually designed) after a long period of time to feel repetitious. I'm not insulting this game. It's a good game, it's just missing that "oomph" a game needs to really be special. This is a common problem with games all over the place. While the games aren't badly made, they're just not outstanding enough to get a ton of appeal and fans.

8-bit or cartoony would work best, IMO. The nethack-esque tiles would work too, but you might deter people who might think it's just a nethack ripoff without ever having played it.

I'd advise against it unless you're really passionate about it. Game design is not the easiest field to get in, it's highly competitive, and a lot of good game designers end up getting shafted to cult status because they're not able to get a large enough audience. There's a ton of work that goes into it, too. As a person who plays tons of indie flash games, I can drop a huge list of fantastic games ruined by mediocre ideas and vice versa.

Getting a good loop that can stay interesting is a lot harder, but I've on numerous occasions manually looped parts of rather short VGM songs I liked for personal use. I use FL Studio and knife/pattern tool for it, but you can also use audacity for that.

http://soundcloud.com/eilios/amusing Bit of an intro on this, so stick through. I made this to get out of a creative RUT caused by WRITER'S BLOCK. Comments greatly appreciated. =D

I love modifying presets and playing with presets in improv. That said, though, just using presets as-is feels wrong to me. Tweaking presets is a great way to learn, though.

It's not really a throwback at all. It's in a roguelike graphical style, sure, but it's not a throwback to anything. This isn't a nethack clone, from what I've read on IRC and the thread is that this is far more open ended and interaction based then just combat and inventory management like many are. Just look at the "Whodunnit" quest in TES4 Oblivion. It's one quest that can take all of 5 minutes to do if you know what you're doing, but it's also by far one of the most popular in the game(perhaps in the series) because people like to have the choice on how they do things. There are numerous options on how to turn people into your favour, and it struck a chord with lots of gamers. A game built around that idea should be rather popular, if that one quest is any indication.

This is really nice sounding. I like it!

This is really great. I love it.

Yo fam, I got some bad news. Somehow, a fire started in the spawn town. I dunno when it happened, I just heard that the "spawn looks different" and all of a sudden 2-3 buildings were broken down. Nobody knows exactly what happened, but if you have a building that you made that has gone kerplunk, I'll help supply resources and wood where I can to help get your building back up.

I can't really help much if I don't know what it sounds like, but if you're using synth brass, please be selective with what trombone synths you use. There are many presets/plugins that try to emulate them and maybe 2 that actually work. And the ones that don't are painful to trombonists(speaking from experience here).

Basically what Rozovian said. I went from a heavy, atmospheric, almost overbearing powerful lead to a vox lead to an autotuned cat purr in about 3 songs. Choosing a lead is a mix-match thing, trying to figure out what works and what doesn't.

From here: BGC, Zircon, Willrock, Heath Morris/Siamey, Flexstyle Other places: Simon Paradis, Deadmau5, Noisia, John Philip Sousa, Pendulum, Arty, Trentemoller, Arcade Fire, Ferry Corsten

Make two circles, one inside the outer one. Call the outer one "1" and the inner one "2". The circles are: 1: Video game songs I like 2: Video games songs I can work with Pick from the second category.

Thanks for the tips, L99! Also, remember when I said version 8 was final? I LIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED. http://tindeck.com/listen/imlx Version 16 CHANGELIST GO! Put type9 compression on urrythang(as L99 suggested). Tons of EQ work. A bit of mixing to bring out the main instruments. Added more transitions. Put variations in the beat at various locations to make it a bit less mechanical. Version 32 will have more original stuff in it, and may or may not be the last version.

I can give infinity +s to Rozovian's "dynamics come from the arrangement". You'd be surprised at how much of a difference you can make by editing the velocity of notes in various sections. It can turn an average mix into a great one if you know what you're doing. EQ's are very important, otherwise, in this respect. And as for your latter comment, instruments are made more dynamic by making them more dynamic. You can have the best samples in the world, but if you don't arrange/sequence/mix them properly, it won't make that much of a difference.

Atmospheric ambient/chillout, I think. The thing about genres, though, is they're not the most precise things ever.

This times INFINITY. Whenever I listen to synthesized trombone it's just... ugh. Anyhow - this thread is totally getting off track. GLL's post about piano dynamics, though, was actually pretty informative. More stuff like that would be good.

I love how the OP has been split into two posts.

I think it can change for the better. ...why yes, I am an idealist, how did you know?