Dafydd

Thanks, Coop.

I still think Lara's quote sounds weird, but if that's the way she says it, then that's what we'll put up here. It is a "quote", after all. Good job with Ryu! I look forward to seeing more SF bios. I've heard somewhere than "Ryu" means "dragon", I don't know if it's true, but if it is, maybe there could be some quick mention of that in the bio (as well as what Hadouken and the other attack name mean), or maybe I'm just being a nerd here.

Sorry about that. What I meant was - I want you to read it over again and see for yourself if you can find any more grammatical/fluential issues, and mainly, if my alterations resulted in additional grammatical/fluential issues rather than solving them, or if you think I've screwed up your bio by editing it. I hope that's clear enough.

Well done, both of you. Coop, I agree on everything that Polo said about your bio, and your sig image. For some reason, the water movement in it makes it feel like a perspective change, though (as if the camera jumps every time a new wave hits the shore). Now - whine time! Coop, I've edited some things in the last bio for fluency and/or grammatical reasons. Read it over again, I might have been in the wrong. This bio really explains why she fights before you start talking about how she fights - good! To anyone unknowing of what a darkstalker is, it might need to be explained, but like I said before, maybe there could be a separate bio that lists the 7 characters and briefly (in maybe 5 sentences) explains what a darkstalker is, and something about the game series as such. Maybe you could write that brief explanation and post it here. When we wrap things up, we'll put it all together. What do you think? Polo, it feels like there's a word missing in Lara's quote, between "entombment" and "your". Is there, or it is just me? I also added the word "to" between the colon and the word "excavate" in the last sentence in the middle paragraph. I was gonna do Lara myself but I ended up not doing it because I realized I knew too little about her (wow, that sentence could be read the wrong way. ) Naturally. And you did the right thing

Good work, Coop. I'll be gone for a few days again. I'll check in on tuesday and see if there's been any updates.

Doh. Thanks Fixed

Bump

Spunodi - welcome! Your bio suffers from tense changes and odd sentences. Try to look it over and make it more fluent - it feels like it's chopped up somehow, like a movie that takes quick and confusing turns. Other than that, the overall structure is fine. Polo - nice job. Maybe there should be some mentioning that Dracula extends his legacy in other forms and in other games than just the Castlevania series - even though that might seem like common knowledge. Maybe I'm just picky.

I noticed there are no drummers listed in the first post. So, which is the case here; drummers are a. useless because drums are so easy to fake? b. too shy to present themselves in this thread? c. too scarce in game music communities? Some songs on OCR could have used drummers, I tell you. Especially this one.

Some way to "dib" a character.

Your first time is going to feel like the section of the song that plays in 2:31 -> 2:38. Now you know. (the timer on my mp3 app is a little screwed up, so that section could actually be somewhere else in the song.) Everything in the song is nice, except for the sci-fi sitars that come in at 1:16. The melody instrument used later, taking over at 3:15, is much better.

I agree with watkinzez here. Yes. That's what I had in mind, anyway. I think some research could be done as to what games the car has been in, though. There's more than just NSF and Gran turismo, I'm sure. If the car has played a significant part in a movie, you could mention that as well. This is the only one of the mascots that exists in real life, and it's the only one that's not "alive". How ironic.

The first page is now once again up to date. My long absence has apparently left me an impressive number of bios to comment on. Where to begin... hell, I'll comment on each post in order instead. Mascot 107 - Naked Snake/Big Boss While DeathbySpoon's bio was a little too short, hobo's version was the epitome of spoiler, and a rather factual, confusing and unengaging one at that. I'm not familiar with the series, so I really have little else to say about it. The second of hobo's versions is much better, but it's still full of spoilers. Limit the storyline's timespan to a point early in the first MGS and leave out stuff that the player isn't supposed to have found out until then. Lol! Pun or not? A play on Squall's awkward dance steps with Rinoa at the SeeD graduation ceremony. At one point Squall turns on his heel, acting all fed up, and Rinoa drags him back. He even bumps into other dancers, much to their annoyance and his chagrin. Classic. Ah. I was thinking of "Dances with wolves". Heh. Watkinzez - excellent work with Luigi and Peach. I love the sarcasm that both of these characters deserve to be described with. I think you should mention Peach's role in Super Mario Bros 2, however. In the actual bio, I mean, not only in the appearance list. Also, excellent solution in the ending of Chrono's bio. QFE, as they say around here. What's that in your sig image, btw, watkinzez? Coop - good work! I've made very minor changes to the last ones you've posted. About the Morrigan bio - I still want the question that pops into my head ("why does she fight?") to be answered before it pops up, so I've changed the sentence order again. Thanks to the changes you've made, it now has much more fluency than last time. I think it's good enough now. Bring it on and post your next bio. On a final note, I feel honored to have been given so much of your time. The project is now well beyond two thirds complete, not counting any formatting that I hope we will be able to do in August, provided all of the bios are finished by then. At this rate, I dare say they will be. My summer isn't going to be as frivolous as I would have hoped - I've signed up for a summer course that I thought would be a piece of cake - but not so. I have to learn to recognize 350 species of animals - 125 of which are birds and 100 are fish - and the exam is before the end of this month. I'll try to avoid being away for as extended periods of time as I have recently, though.

I'm sorry about my long absence. I'll get back to you very soon, and update the first post, comment on bios etc. etc.

Lol! Pun or not? About time someone got started on the KI characters, btw. Coop, that's much more like it. Write a new bio for ONE of the other characters and let me look at it before you post the others. Just to make sure you won't have to do it all over again.

Sorry for the wait. Now: Like I said, the new version of the bio is much closer to what we want, Coop. What I'd like to see more of now is things like... well, you write "in his fights"... who does he fight, and why? Does he think fighting is the answer to his troubles? How does he know WHO to fight? The darkstalkers series obviously has a much deeper storyline than the street fighter series, where everyone was just fighting to become the grand champion, for one reason or another. You could also mention something, briefly, about the darkstalkers series and something about his place in the grander scheme of things. Don't rewrite any of the other bios until I've ok:ed this one. Once I have, I'm sure you'll have a good idea about how to write the kind of bios we're looking for. I'm sorry I have to point and micromanage things like this, and I hope you don't feel like we're downplaying you or anything. I really appreciate your efforts.

Exactly. I can only mod that one thread, though.

I'll comment fully on this one tomorrow. It's definitely closer to the ideal mascot bio.

What are you implying? Anyway, I think the hard part is the same part you think is hard. You described one part as "the way you normally would" and the other as "obnoxious". I wanted help with the "obnoxious" part. I'll figure it out eventually.

Thanks, Polo. Coop, I too enjoyed your novellish and engaging style. It's all very well written, but it stands out a little too much from the general style of the other bios. Funny characters can be described in a humorous style, characters from a dark and horrorful world should be described in their respective way, but the bios need to maintain some level of objectiveness and a rather encyclopediatic style of language. I might need to clarify this in the first post as well. psychotic ninja's first submission, a bio on Hiryu, comes to mind... I'm in no way suggesting that your bios are not well written, Coop, but the opinions I had about his bio are of some relevance here as well. Again, your bios are well written, and do not contain stuff that "feels like something that was written to impress a 12-year old" - but the overkill info is probably true. Please keep your bios as is for now, and we should be able to include them (in their current form) in the project, accessible as "long versions" with spoiler warnings attached. vBulletin should provide us with the tools needed for such a thing. Something else I might need to point out more clearly is that future readers of these bios might be interested in learning something about a character's attacks. Polo did a pretty good job in Sagat's bio, even though it assumes that the reader already knows who Ryu is (no problem though, we can always link the reader away to Ryu's bio, which, btw, should cover both the shoryuken and the hadouken, since they're what makes him so special). On the contrary, watkinzez, I found your bio on Penelo to be suffering from issues opposite of Coop's bios'. It's short (but not too short), which is natural with a character no one really knows much about, but it's a little unengaging, the sentences are a little too short and near-scientific in nature. You've written more than 20 bios so far, and I've read them all - I know you can do better. No hurries. Wow. I do nothing but complain, do I?

You... nevermind. Thanks for explaining the obvious and leaving out the hard parts. Which part did you think I wanted help with - the one that's the same as always or the one that's obnoxious and takes forever? Expect an update when I've figured it all out. I'll probably be a few weeks, in worst case, exams and all... :-/

WOW. Ok... I don't even know where to begin. First of all, I must thank you for honoring us with the amount of time that it must have taken you to write these bios. Unfortunately... hm. Where to begin. ... Wow. Ok. I don't know how to say this. I don't know what you think, watkinzez, Linearity, the old veterans, but these bios are not entirely... coherent with the others. the Coop, It hurts (irl) to say this. It's like I've asked you to bake me a cake, and you spend several full days in the middle of finals week baking me the brownest, best and biggest brownies most people will ever taste, upon which I say I have near-lethal allergies to cocoa. The bios "violate" a number of guidelines, and will need some... editing. I don't know if you want me to tell you exactly what's wrong so you can do it yourself or if you'd prefer me to edit them. There's no hurry, mind you, but it'll need to be done - and keep them as is until I've clarified what I mean. It hurts so much not to be able to just cheer and hurrah at these very well-written and ambitious bios of yours. The reason I have such difficulties to explain things is the fact that they are so... ambitious, and I don't want to seem ungrateful. The "violations" are the result of misunderstandings that I wish we could have avoided - but there's only so much I can do when you post all seven bios in 48 hours. If you had posted one at a time, I could have said "do it like this instead" but as it is now, it would break my heart to do it (yeah, I'm a pussy). Someone needs to either give me intestinal-purpose duct tape, explain, or tell me everything's fine.

Hunh. I need specific instructions on how to make fruityloops control the tempo in reason. I got myself a demo of flstudio6 and reason3 on the other end. Now what?

You're right - I don't know how to use any of those programs. I've used various versions of cakewalk all my life (ok, since I was 9) - making midis, using soundfonts and the built-in effects of the sound blaster live as they came. Mastering has never been among my skills. I used to sit on a 300MHz computer with an sblive. It allowed me to make distortion effects that I was kinda happy with. 300MHz means the computer is pretty slow, though, so I bought a new computer and a sound blaster x-fi. Bad idea. I still haven't managed to make that one do anything nice. It's great for audio, but when it comes to midi, the x-fi is teh suckage. I know there are millions of people who hate sound blasters unconditionally, but I liked them all until the x-fi. All of a sudden, midi functionality just disappeared without a warning. I was expecting their newest card to be better, not worse, than its predecessors. Anyway. Midi screwed up on the x-fi, so I decided to give reason a shot, since so many people seemed to be using it and talked about it. "Sköldpaddsklippan" is the first song I've ever made using reason, and this along with my nonexisting experience of mastering and equalizing obviously means that my song is currently suffering in these aspects. I absolutely hate the distortion that the "scream" creates. I can turn the wheels and change the settings, but it never gets to where I want it. I suck at reason, and that's what's taking so long, I guess. If I knew how to make things sound like I wanted them to, I would probably be done by now. The problem I have right now is that not only do I not know anything about mixing, but my ideas about what sounds good and what doesn't are far less demanding than yours. I might think that "this sounds ok" whily you think "ergh! more 3kHz ffs!" or the likes. I appreciate having some telling me "lower the bass on that one" etc. because it usually turns out it sounds better. Bottom line - I'm not as picky as you are about sound quality and I have no experience in the world of equalizing/mastering. In fact, I don't think I'm sure I know the difference between those two words... Conclusion - even with the right equipment, I don't know where I'm supposed to be going eq-wise, and I don't know how to get there. All I know is I kinda liked the dark feel in my 5th WiP, and I want my song to stay dark. Your suggestions have been a great help so far.

I PM:d the Coop and informed him that Lilith and Morrigan are already done but that he can post those bios anyway. I hope you don't mind, Lin... I don't know if you wanted your bios replaced or not, but I'm sure we can combine the two bios somehow when we start wrapping things up.