AngelCityOutlaw

Been playing some of the Retrovanias. That pornographic slot machine or whatever is definitely the death of series, so this reminds me of better days. On the movie front, I did a marathon on the Scream movies and got around to finally watching "I still know what you did last summer" since I somehow never did see the sequel over the past 17 years. I still like the first one better but there is at least one very good reason to watch the sequel.

Just got Undying off GOG for 2 bucks. Wooooooo

Hey! The best holiday of the year is fast approaching and so a friend and I have been, for a fun project, working on a rock/metal track with some gothic influence. It'd be great if we can have it done in time for Halloween. Basically, we want the lyrics to be inspired by the 2000 Canadian horror-film "Ginger Snaps" which was about a teenage girl who is becoming a werewolf. The whole thing was a not-so-subtle metaphor for female puberty. ANYWAY, we want it to be a song about becoming a werewolf. We need a singer who is willing to help us write some lyrics and of course, sing a vocal melody. We can do it via Skype if you have it. The other guy does growls, so we were thinking of layering those beneath the normal vocals. Bonus points if you can do screams/shouts as well! Here's a short sample of the track https://app.box.com/s/d1xv03s2xc3jc6afle6uvneuxghspnn4 The mix and timing need some minor adjustments, but other than that and vocals - it's ready to go! Hit me up with a PM and some vocal samples if you're interested. Bonus points if you're a girl, because female vocals would be a good contrast to the lower growls and also stay true to the inspiration!

Currently doin' some BloodRanye: Betrayal. Good game.

Yeah! Just send the track my way whenever you're ready. Relevant to the topic at hand, great remix as always.

Is Kirby moving or am I having a stroke?

Clive Barker's Undying is easily one of the most under-rated horror games ever made. If you've never played it...you just need to. I'd crowdfund the hell out of a remake of that game.

My only problem with Amnesia is that, whenever you encounter an enemy, you just have to run away, crouch down in the darkness and wait until the music stops. Then, the monster is gone and never to be seen again. I seriously never encountered a monster twice in my play-throug...It really ruined the atmosphere.

Until Dawn is the only game I've played. Been watching a ton of horror movies though.

Not necessarily by any meaningful amount though. I worked in video game retail and honestly, when the Canadian dollar started to plunge last year and prices rose to the average of $70 instead of the decades-long standard of $60, all most people did was complain about it - they still paid for it, though. Used sales didn't increase much either since there was at best only a five to eight dollar difference. It's up to $75 average here now for just a ps3 controller, but EBGames is still makin' dough hand over fist. Gamers will pay just about whatever price you throw at them and the industry knows it. When people are willing to pay over $100 for some stupid collector's edition that comes with a cheap plastic figure and some DLC codes, it's not a stretch for them to pay $75 for the regular game - Other people only buy one or two brand new games a year and don't care. There is a third demographic that I've noticed, specifically for Sony. Since the PS3 isn't region locked, a lot of foreign workers or tourists are more than happy to pay "just $75!" for a video game because the countries they come from (I knew a lot of Israelis) have huge import taxes on video games.

Disappointing to hear, but not the least bit surprising.

Yeah, no doubt! This is basically the ultimate guitar. You never have to tune it, re-string it, set the intonation and you'd swear on Yngwie's grave it was a live performance.

MOAR

It's the most wonderful time of the year! Halloween season is upon us, which gives me an excuse to do spooky music! This one is inspired by Slasher films like Scream or...other Wes Craven (RIP) films. It's also Neve Campbell's birthday today, apparently. So good timing! https://soundcloud.com/angelcityoutlaw/a-sinister-lullaby

Pretty slick! You guys have been killing it lately. It's not something I'd invest in, on account of having irl guitars of course (though I did get the previous Shreddage because I was super curious to try sequencing guitars), but this is easily the best recommendation for any composer looking for an electric guitar VST. Power chords as an articulation and single-patch double-tracking are great ideas as well.

Dude, this thread isn't even two pages... Anyway, while it's true that a positive outcome could be some fresh voices, it would also likely mean just more people being subject to crap working conditions and wouldn't exactly help future unionization of other people in game development.

According to this, CEOs and executives often get backend bonuses - not the creative personnel, who instead do serious crunch time. Shawn Elliott, formerly of Irrational Games puts it into words perfectly "...using CEO compensation as comparison point won't win sympathy from devs." To quote Kotaku user Garlador's comment in the article I share in this post

Well yes, that part is. I'm talking about like, if you show up thirty minutes late and don't really have a good reason for it. Even still, 2,500 seems a bit excessive.

Really surprised no one is talking about this on here. Here is a link to just one article that tells you the general idea of what's happening. Curious to know what everyone's thoughts are on this. In a nutshell, they want more transparency as to what the role(s) will require, 2 hours max for things that require a lot of vocal stress, motion capture clearly stated as a requirement, etc. Where it gets a bit crazy, in my opinion, is with the idea of not being fined for being late and residuals/performance bonuses. Most people on the interwebs have a problem with the latter, especially. Renting a high-end facility isn't cheap and I fail to see why your late ass shouldn't be fined for wasting the publisher's money and the studio's time. Not to mention, some of the big names like Ali Hillis and Jennifer Hale have their own booths at home. As for the bonuses, they want to receive bonus payments around the 2 million copies mark. Which is, as described by one article, "When most major titles become profitable." I'm sorry, but that seems greedy as hell when I'm sure the roughly 10 people we hear in every damn game are already being paid quite well by the page, per minute, per line or whatever. I think the developer's and publisher's collective fears that other people involved with the games would demand similar, post-release compensation is justified. Just about every composer, programmer and artist I know of, i.e., the people who create arguably the most memorable elements of the actual freakin' game, never see any sort of bonus payment or royalties unless some or all of their work was licensed. The devs and publishers would much rather, and logically, re-invest the profits into making future products and paying employees both in and out of house. TL;DR - It all seems fair to me except for the fines and performance bonuses, though I can see lower fines being fair. Either way, I don't see them winning on the bonuses. Voting among the union closes on Oct. 5th. A strike may be imminent. What do you think will happen?

Cool beans. I just wound up getting another paying gig with a deadline as tight as noose, plus this gives me an opportunity to do more with my track.

Playing around with Sylenth and some retro drums and it came out sounding something like this. https://soundcloud.com/angelcityoutlaw/one-way-trip I was aiming to emulate the style of The Crystal Method's first album, "Vegas".

It is cool that you're still around - doin' things n stuff.

I'm going to offer a much different perspective - Honestly, I find it weird that you consider abandoning orchestral music to be musically "growing up" when command of an orchestra in both the real deal and sequenced is a coveted skill. Not to mention, the orchestra is the most versatile ensemble there is. With just the strings alone, you can write a piece evoking any kind of texture or emotion you can think of without actually having to change or rebuild the timbre of the instruments completely like you'd probably have to with a synth - depending on what you're going for. My thoughts are that instead, you should stick to classical for the moment, but start making hybrid scores. Start integrating synths in your work - maybe take an older piece of yours and try arranging it to incorporate a synth bass or something. This way, the process of learning how to use them will feel much more "organic", if I might dust off the hipster music terms, to you than just throwing yourself completely into uncharted territory and saying "Okay, I used to write symphonies, but now I'm gonna do an acid-breakbeat track that will put the Crystal Method to shame." Eventually, you'll go from "classical with synth elements" to "electronic with some classical elements" and then inevitably "full on electronica". I started by using synths in rock music and that made learning how to do other, completely electronic genres much easier - Worked for me, anyway. EDIT: Though to be fair, when you do get to the stage of purely electronic, you'll realize that the composition of many electronic tunes of the EDM variety are a lot more "bare-bones" than orchestral. Usually, there's not much in the way of melody and the structure often follows this "build-up and breakdown" idea, adding more layers of synths and effects until it breaks down and starts again, rather than a verse-chorus kind of thing (unless there are vocals). An example, is if you listen to something like "Now Is The Time", it's pretty much the same shit over and over, but each time it repeats, it re-introduces the elements in a different order and a lot of the "leads" are more like synth-sound effects. This isn't to say you can't do more melodic stuff like what Zircon and a lot of VGM composers do, but I know I ran into the problem of my songs just sounding "wrong" compared to what I was going for and this was the most obvious thing I was over-looking.

Thanks! I seem to have channeled my inner Blue Stahli here.

Some of the best guitar plug-ins I've found are actually free amp-sims based on Engl Power/Fireballs and Peavy 5150 II's.