MindWanderer

Funny, I dislike the Vayron intensely. I have no idea who they are or what they do by looking at the site. That giant, ever-changing banner is distracting, uninformative, and horrible for mobile. The blog clips below similarly have big pictures and little text, conveying minimal information. The whole site is built around the assumption that the viewer is already a Vayron fan, and from that perspective it isn't bad. But this site will win no new attention. Fulgitini's site is the polar opposite. Bam, identity, branding, resume, reason to hire. Awesome. I agree that it's too resource-intensive and media-centric to be ideal for mobile, though. Wiberg's site is odd. The minimal thing comes up immediately, but then it loads a ton of background resources. I'd say that was bad for mobile, but he actually has a totally different mobile site. Which, I should mention, is even more minimal, and ugly to boot. Oddly enough, I think his main website would be improved by the blurb he put on the mobile one. Oram's site is OK. Most of her credentials are in her bio, which is very much a wall of text. Demo pages load slowly and the Twitter link covers some of the text. She's got this New York Festivals thing which she's so proud of, it's on her homepage twice, and some quotes from people I've never heard of, but it also looks like she just doesn't have as impressive a resume as the others, so this is probably about the best she can do.

One thing that Blum's site does much better than any of the others is get his branding right out there on the homepage. It's a hideous site that would have looked right in the late 90's, but for quickly getting that recognition out there, he does the best. Collins at least does get those logos out there, but the bland blue coloring makes the eye skip over them and the blurb that actually explains what he does is just a little tl;dr. Ziffer's and Hales's homepages only give me a vague idea of what they actually do, but Ziffer's "Voiceovers" page does a great job expressing his breadth and pedigree. His tone is juvenile, but this page gets it done like no other. Hales's needs to die in a fire; it's pretty but useless. At least it isn't Shockwave or Silverlight.

Well... there has to be some way of searching for and finding stuff you think you might be especially interested in. There are almost 3000 mixes posted on the site right now, and if people can upload things without them being vetted, the number of mixes on the site will explode in no time at all.Right now, we have a banner with the 20 most recent postings, a list of the next 15, and a completely random list of 6. That doesn't really help the "findability"/"discovery" of mixes someone might not manually search for unless they're obsessive and either check the site weekly or subscribe to the RSS feed. This is why I was thinking that a banner of "featured" remixes, in the sense most people use the term, might be cool. It would have to be curated, but listing the finals of a compo, a fun cover or joke mix that will never be posted, or an older mix that's relevant to current gaming news would be cool. And now that the topic of discovery has come up... DJP and team, I know this would be years down the line, but if you want to think about creating an automated recommendation system ("Based on your history, we thought you might like the following..." or "listeners who liked this remix also liked..."), I can totally help. I know a lot about the math and theory behind such systems, and while I've never actually had a reason to make one, it should be something I could cook up the algorithms for.

Yep, got all three with an hour to spare. Sorry for the delay, they'll be up in a few minutes.

For a short answer: 1-7, arguably 1-6 or 1-8. For the long answer (which even still I abbreviated considerably to get it under the 1000 character limit), check your message wall.

Remixes are due in 11 hours. I have none yet.

I agree with Timaeus: a "Like" is moderately useful without any context. It can be applied without a great deal of thought, without any negative impact. I like the idea of this being the primary way remixes can be sorted by popularity, because this is the easiest way of getting "scores" for as many mixes as possible. A numerical score is just not helpful without an accompanying review. I don't believe it's a good idea for people to be able to give a mix 1/5 stars without justification, for all the reasons Timaeus said. Something like the Amazon method might be a good idea: If you want to leave a numerical rating, you have to leave the review. And reviews can themselves be "liked." (BTW, if anyone wants to get into an elaborate discussion with me regarding the merits of a 1/5, 1-7, or 1-10 scale, we can take that to PM or a separate thread. It's a complex psychometric topic.)

Ah, yep, usually Save As is the right thing to do if you won't want to play a media file in your browser. I thought even Dropbox used to work that way. Got it now.

Apparently that WAV uses a compression codec I don't have installed, or something. I can't play it in any media player I own, or import it into REAPER. Edit: Still not fixed. I got both versions, neither works. Edit 2: Oh, that's so not a compression codec. The file is 28KB. Slightly impossible for a 3-minute WAV.

I'm not crazy about XP per se (it encourages thoughtless responses), but there are alternatives. Something like Karma, or even the ability to upvote reviews or other non-music content. It would be cool if you could get recognition as a helpful/entertaining reviewer.

Just had some thoughts on how compos could be integrated into this system. In general, there should be a system for tagging mixes with various attributes, but with compos, you could do it like this: Participants upload their entries but mark them as private, and PM the compo organizer with the link. The organizer would have the ability to un-hide the mixes and flag them with the compo name, round, bracket, season, etc. Another use of tags would be that producers of official albums could tag remixes as belonging to an album. Or this privilege could be reserved for the OCR team and applied only when an album is released. Speaking of albums and compos, another consideration is versioning. Sometimes the album version or compo version of a mix aren't the ones that get posted. Having multiple versions is handy to see the progress of WIPs, too. This could be as complex as a full VCS-like system, or as simple as a tag saying "Other versions of this remix: A B C"

Lots of great ideas here. Regarding "mix status," I'm thinking along the following lines: WIP: Unfinished, actively soliciting feedback. Cannot be rated. What we currently call "finished" in the WIP forum, probably needs a new name ("complete?"): Is a complete song, but feedback is still actively solicited. Can be rated, however, it can also be updated! If updated, you could use an algorithm that would weight post-update ratings more highly than pre-update ones, to the point where after a few new ratings have been made, the old ones don't contribute at all. Mod Review: Same as #2 but flagged for a workshop mod's attention. Maybe needs a new name b/c of #5 below. Workshop mods can knock this back to #2. Submitted: Timestamped and queued into the "inbox." Can be updated, but doing so resets the timestamp. Under Review: At least one judge has placed a vote, but the votes are hidden. Once judging is complete, it gets knocked back to #2 or promoted to #6. I don't like "Featured," personally. Other websites use "featured" to represent a small, rotating list of items, and that's what they'll assume we mean it to mean. (And we could "feature" mixes as well: recent mixposts, hot discussions, recent updates to hot WIPs, etc.) I agree that "Passed" and "Approved" are problematic as well, though. You could just use an "OCR Seal of Recognition" logo, I suppose--sometimes actual words aren't necessary. Or the more tongue-in-cheek "OCR OK" or "Blessings of the Judges." Special bonus: OCRemoved would become unnecessary. Mixes could get demoted from #6 and remain on the site at #2. Edit: Just thought of another bonus to using a "seal": Mixes can be updated any time until they get the "seal." So the forums would be able to use the word "sealed" as an apt double entendre.

Submission format and quality? .wav, .flac, .mp3 w/ VBR, etc? Or just literally name the file "Artist Name - Track Name" with no file extension, and make you guess?

Hm... anyone know of a technique to pitch-shift yourself upwards without chipmunkification? Note: I reserve the right to submit chipmunk singing if it would be tasteful. Somehow.

I'm in. For better or worse, most likely worse. One more question: Can we add vocal accompaniment? I.e. can we harmonize, scat, beatbox, etc. with ourselves? Technically speaking, "vocal processing" could mean autotuning yourself on a 50% wet signal.

I'm interested in taking a stab at this. I can sing live decently well, but singing into a recording is something else entirely. And vocal production isn't a skill I've picked up at all. Also I'll be using the USB mic that came with Rock Band (although if someone can suggest a mic <= $10 that would be way better, I'm all ears). So, my apologies in advance. Some technical questions: Do these come with lyrics or do we have to write our own? If they come with them, will there be a full version with vocals that we can use to learn the part? Do we submit just the vocals, or the whole thing put together?

Yeah, there's that evil black marble you can try to destroy, but there's nothing to suggest that the marbles are supposed to be sentient.Puyo Puyo is cutting it a little close--you are making little blobs with eyeballs vanish, but it's unclear what's happening to them, and you're doing it by adding more little blobs. I'd say no to Dr. Mario, though: the viruses are clearly depicted as little creatures, and you're basically poisoning them.

Does the remixer have any say in it? I have a few mixes in my to-attempt list that would be based partially on games not represented in OCR at all, and my preference would be for them to be listed under such a game instead (especially if it has a soundtrack I love overall).

History Repeating: Red comes out in 5 minutes! It should cover the rest of the Mega Man 3 soundtrack. Very excited. Edit: Poo, it's just a pre-order. They aren't even done recording yet. What have they even been doing for the last two years?

I haven't played very much F-Zero. I know you can blow yourself up; is it a viable strategy to run other racers off the course to try to make them blow up? If so, it's not a legal choice. For examples I do know, Excitebike would be off-limits, but Rad Racer would be fine.

Theme This month's episode is dedicated to Lux, the 22-pound Himalayan cat who held his owners hostage until they could be rescued by the police. Cat we all just get along? To prove that we can, all of this month's remixes should either: Be based on a video game wherein none of your problems are solved with violence: no killing, squashing, punching, shooting, blowing up, etc. of any creatures (or robots, in settings with sentient robots), OR Be based on any source, and be peaceful and calming. Pairings The Eluryahn with wildfire. Cash with Esperado. Hollow with timaeus222. BrothaDom with Jean of mArc.

Yeah, sorry about the delay, life happened. I'll get the pairings and themes up in the next couple of hours, and deadlines will be extended by a day to compensate.

I got a stealth volunteer by PM from Jean Of mArc, so ATM only Hollow would have to sit out. Another Star would be much appreciated! This is not the time to feel insecure about your skills!

You're right, I must have updated that and then used an old template. The intention was the same in either case. I've updated the post.