TheChargingRhino   Members

You're the most disappointing poster on this thread.
Just kidding.  
I thought Skyward Sword was the most disappointing Zelda game, personally. Music was weird and whimsical, world felt really empty (I get it was pre-Hyrule history, but like... come on, there's gotta be stuff in there still). I was not very taken with the personalized goal of the game being between Link and Zelda... kind of made saving the world feel like an afterthought. It was different, sure, but it's hard to get captivated by something that's a hybrid between old save world from Ganon formula and new love story with Zelda, especially with a silent protagonist.

Bokoblin Arm best weapon confirmed

Nintendo's finally announced details and has shown off a lot of information and footage related to the new Zelda game, Breath of the Wild.
I'm very excited about the open-exploration approach to the series. Looks gorgeous, sounds amazing, and looks incredibly fun.

Well that was just lovely, wasn't it? Like a mashup of traditional Zelda, Monster Hunter, a smattering of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus and a bit of sandboxing thrown in. All washed in a lovely hi-res semi-cell shaded art approach. I was ready to bail on the big N after all these long patient and forgiving years, but now I'm absolutely hyped.
 
 

Was about to say exactly what Odai said.  While it does seem to be influenced by Monster Hunter and Shadow of the Colossus (or perhaps Assassin's Creed), and perhaps Okami, I wouldn't call those "modern trends."  These are ideas 10 years old at the least.  What is interesting is that they're not trying to go out of the box to do things that hadn't really been done before, like most Zelda games have done.  Nothing novel here, but it does look like a fun combination of things that hadn't been combined.  I've always wanted to get into Monster Hunter but was turned off by its seeming lack of directed progression, and Zelda could be an ideal solution for that.
What I didn't see a lot of was... well, Zelda.  Other than the doodad that creates objects, the art style, and the name Link, this could have been a trailer for a new Monster Hunter game.  And the doodad is only semi-Zelda-ish; it seems to be equal parts Zelda, Okami, and Minecraft.  The hands-on reports do say that it has dungeons of some sort, though there's disagreement as to how those work.  Edit: I'm watching the Treehouse now, and the gameplay is much more Zelda-ish once you get into the shrines (mini-dungeons).  But the items (runes) you get from them are much more useful than the typical Zelda items.  You can be a lot more creative with them.
Also interesting is that the game can be played with the Pro Controller.  Not surprising that there are no Wii U gimmicks, since it'll be on NX as well, but I would have expected there to be some elements implemented differently in both.  For instance, object creation and placement with the touchpad or whatever analog controls the NX has.

It's basically Wind Waker on land with survival elements and more environmental puzzles, so consider me hyped. Wind Waker's my favorite 3D Zelda!

I love how free it looks. You can climb mountains, put things on fire, ride animals, steal weapons from enemies... Seems like there's so much to do. Graphics are beautiful too, it'll look insane on NX.

Minecraft: they just announced cross-platform multiplayer during the conference. They had someone with an iPad and someone with a Windows tablet playing on the same map. So it's unlikely they will announce a sequel any time soon.
Besides, the game is constantly getting updates and mods, and it has no story, so a sequel wouldn't really even offer anything.

Here's a little bit about how this instrument came to be. Way back in ~2007-2008, Dave had the idea to do a sample library based on arcade sounds. "Samplecade" was the original title. I expressed some interest in helping, since at the time I had just worked on my first sample library project w/ Impact Soundworks. He recorded some source material but we didn't get much further at that point. We talked about it from time to time.
A few years ago, after spending some time composing for a game that called for an SNES-style score, I had the idea of creating some ORIGINAL sounds and then making these into a virtual instrument for ISW. We started doing some early tests in 2014. Dave & I began talking again and he shared with me his grander vision; what this instrument COULD be... a definitive collection of not just SNES sounds, but other essential 8 & 16-bit systems as well. I thought it was a great idea and set to work slowly but surely assembling elements of the library. 
PROTODOME recorded the C64, NES & Gameboy sounds and designed some early artwork. Seeing some gaps, Shaggy (theshaggygreak) contributed more C64 material. Neblix has been the lead engineer on the project doing a monumental amount of engine programming. 
By my count that is 10 people from this community that have contributed to Super Audio Cart in some form... Not counting people who have, and will, write demo songs too. 

Of course, the entire community of OCR did not contribute - but we don't have hundreds of ReMixers on any ONE album project either. They're still OCR albums, made by the community. And it really bears repeating that, as djp said, a portion of the sales will be going directly to support OCR. Just like the proceeds from Patreon, site funds support things like printing physical copies of albums, putting on awesome panels at conventions, hosting/bandwidth, working with freelance developers for various projects related to the site, etc. 

In the literal and direct sense, the entire community benefits from this!

Cost: Yep, as mentioned in a YouTube comment reply it's going to be in the $100-150 range. I think it's going to be a pretty fantastic value for the money purely for the MODERN sounds alone. That's the big difference between this and other retro/chiptune type plugins; this has hundreds upon hundreds of presets made by layering the systems, adding effects, modulators, envelopes, and filters. A pad made from SNES strings mixed with Genesis sweeps and NES arpeggios? Sure! The factory library features contributions from OCR's own community: bLiNd, Timaeus222, Flexstyle, Sir_NutS, and Big Giant Circles, along with myself and djpretzel to name a few!
Kontakt: ... Is not the most elegantly designed plugin in the world, but that's OK because we created our own interface and engine from scratch. So you're not really using Kontakt's UI, but our own thing that just uses Kontakt as the backend. All the graphics, wallpapers, knobs and other stuff are totally original. I'll be making a multi-part tutorial series on how to use Super Audio Cart, too. Starting with the basics of navigating the factory library, then moving on to basic sound layering and mixing, envelopes/filters and portamento, arpeggiator & sequencer, FX, and the mod matrix.
SNES: For the SNES, for copyright reasons we couldn't sample the actual games themselves. Instead, we created our own custom bank of 400+ sounds to the same specification used by actual SNES games, right down to the same bit rate reduction (BRR) encoding. These samples could be dropped into a ROM file and loaded on a real SNES - and in fact we did that just to make sure they sounded correct! You'll find a huge range of sounds including strings, pianos, guitars, basses, ethnic instruments, FX, ensembles, and drums, with lots of variations for each. There's also an FX module with the classic "SNESVERB" sound that you can tweak and toggle at will.
MegaDrive: Another tricky one, since FM synthesis has infinite possible patch combinations. However, most of them suck! So we ripped the TFI (FM synth patch) data from actual soundtracks and, using a Model 1 Genesis and GenMDM hardware, multisampled about 120 of the best patches from my favorite games. Classic instruments from titles like Streets of Rage, Phantasy Star, Shinobi, Toejam & Earl, etc. Oh yeah, and several hundred FX taken from sound tests too (non-PCM fx, so again, no copyright issue!) On the PCM end, we did use the Genesis' lo-fi DAC to record some custom drums + percussion for lovely Genesis-style 707, 808, 909, rock, metal, and hybrid kits, plus about a dozen others.

Battletoads (the NES version at least) was a pretty damn good looking and good sounding game for its time. Of course we have David Wise, and incredible composer in his own right, to thank for the sound. I wanted to share this because this video has David Wise talking about the process of how the Battletoads music had to be recorded, and the limitations he faced when composing music for the NES (such as how many notes David was limited to). And you also get to see him playing some Battletoads music on the piano at the end

Pitch bending in FL using the standard pitch knob might be fairly unnatural-sounding depending on the plugin (sometimes it feels "stepladder"), but if you want to do it that way, there should be a "2" by default next to the pitch knob (it says "RANGE" right under the "2"). Then just increase that "2" to a "12" to allow a larger pitch bend range and thus one that is more noticeable.
If you mean in the piano roll, it's portamento, and it only works for native plugins like 3xOsc and plugins made for FL's piano roll. You can go into the VST wrapper, click the wrench icon, and enable "Mono". That should allow you to "bend" from one pitch to the next (portamento) in the piano roll for native plugins.
Or, you could double click one of two overlapping notes in the piano roll for a native plugin and enable "Slide" (the right triangle) to slide from one note to another.