zircon

How does FL have too many windows? I think it's much cleaner than any other DAW I've used, certainly WAY easier to view than Logic. I "only" have a two monitor setup and I only use the right screen for the piano roll, which is probably a waste. As for audio editing, FL's automation is beyond awesome and Edison is really powerful. However, the weakness is that it doesn't stream audio from the disk. Also, FL will last into the 64bit era thanks to jBridge, as BGC said, but Delphi might eventually be able to compile as 64bit as well.

QFT Nah, but seriously, I feel exactly the same way. Besides the rain I'd say the day was as perfect as could be. Some mushy stuff; my heart was beating out of my chest as I saw Jill in her gown for the first time, slowly walking down the aisle toward me. I mean that in a good way of course! I couldn't help but stare into her eyes with a big, goofy grin for most of the ceremony. It really reminded me of how I felt when we first started dating. As for the reception, I'm really glad it all turned out well, and I want to extend a BIG thanks to the people that helped me set up before the ceremony. The sound guys put the PA in the wrong place and we had to scramble to basically fix things at the last minute, but Larry, Jeremy, Brandon, Doug Will and Michael (not an OCReMixer, but a good friend and awesome musician nonetheless) saved the day. Nice Teamwork! Anyway, I hope everyone that attended had as much FUN as we did, both before, during and after the main ceremony and festivities, and to those that weren't there, we'll see you at the next meetup! -- To pixytracks: pics please a/s/l?? (I love you too!)

Bump w/ a move to Community.

Happy birthday djp! Did you think 10 years ago you'd still be doing this (and engaged, with your own condo)?

Pollicer, aka David Amber. He's a fellow Drexel graduate and electronic dance music artist in the Philadelphia area. His first album ("Songs for Those Who Yearn") is very, very cool. Check it out: http://www.myspace.com/pollicer http://protagonistrecords.net/node/150

Video games aren't really doing BADLY though as an industry. Growth has just slowed.

Exactly. Everyone here that complains about how budgets are too big don't understand how hard it is to make something that even most people here would scoff at. Also, want a Smash Brothers ripoff? Play Small Arms for XBLA.

Cool - feel free to ask me any questions

All I can say right now is that it's a multiplayer, turn-based cyberpunk strategy RPG. And let me tell you, finding a way to fund it is next to impossible.

The VAs demanding $75,000 an episode are just greedy.

I agree with you that the industry may be in trouble. I'm not sure what the solution is, aside from a larger focus on smaller, casual titles to keep the income stream up (XBLA titles sell quite well.) But still, these are just market forces are work. More demand for games = more companies releasing games.

But the majority of game buyers WANT big budget games. No one wants to play games that look like they're from the PS1 era. Reviewers tear into them. They sell poorly. It takes money to license something like Havok so you have the type of physics in Team Fortress 2. Why would we revert back to, say, the Unreal 1 engine? It doesn't make any sense. You want more game content? Bigger environments? You need an assload of environmental artists for that. Even doing one skyscraper in a sandbox game takes a lot of work. You can't just say "we're going to stop having budgets." The games would get worse, generally speaking, across the board. First-person shooters, for example, would suffer immensely, as would sports games and RPGs (no more flashy graphics, crappier voice acting, less music, less quality assurance) etc.

The reason why big developers are less likely to take risks is because production budgets are absolutely enormous now. Do you guys have any idea how hard it is to even create a model, texture, rig and set of animations that most people here would dump on for looking unreleastic? It's really, REALLY hard. Even for an independent studio. I'm actually starting one myself (more on that in a few months) and it just reinforces the notion that it's really very difficult to make games.

We've had a good 4-5 instances of stuff getting posted and taken down within a few hours... usually subs of commercial stuff that we didn't catch (happens 1 in 5,000 times.)

No. But normally, in 32bit, FL starts crapping out at 1600-1700mb used. So, even with only 3.5gb in 32bit, when you use Jbridge and samplers with DFD, you can basically use more like ~2800-3000mb RAM. Which is awesome.

I don't use Vista; in fact, I hate Vista. Right now I'm using XP32, though I have an XP64 partition installed. I haven't tried Jbridge on x64 but I know it's programmed for that also. It works fine with XP32, and no, there's no limit to how many you can run - it's just based on your max memory and RAM available.

I've thus far used Jbridge in FL Studio to host Trilogy and SampleTank.. haven't tried Kontakt but I'd imagine it works fine. Will give that a shot soon.

That would be a MIDI guitar or a MIDI pickup They exist.

Google is not nearly as dominant in search as MS is with operating systems, so that's not a good comparison. Google's browser hasn't taken off either.

That's why you use Jbridge which creates new instances of itself, thus bypassing the limitation. Of course you can't go above 3.5gb in 32bit but in 64 it's unlimited. Furthermore in 64 you can definitely have one app accessing more than 3gb.. way more.

*flexes his Music Industry degree* 1. It depends on what kind of music you do. Major labels are on the decline, but they still have the most resources to promote music. Nobody can do the kind of massive radio, video and media promotion and distribution that major labels can. However, is that really important? Unless you're doing more mainstream styles of music, this probably isn't much of an advantage. Major label contracts are very, very harsh on the artist - you will most likely only get a royalty of 10-15% per album sold, AFTER they take a bunch of cuts, so potentially only $1 from a $16 album. Major label deals are also extremely hard to get. They're basically not worth thinking about unless you are really doing a pop genre. The term "indie" label can mean a lot of things. There are indie labels which have sold millions of albums, and there are others that just release free albums online. The deals vary wildly in terms, and the labels themselves can either be a college student in his dorm or a fully-funded operation with office space. Still, an independent deal is far more likely to be better for you, and far easier to get. The key is finding a label that is right for you, as corny as that may sound. Do they have a small enough artist roster that they can give you attention? Can they promote your music properly? 2. There are several revenue streams in the music industry. The record label is primarily responsible for revenue from the sale of recorded music. In your deal with the label, you would get a predefined cut of album sales, usually a percentage but possibly a specific dollar amount. The cut may be different for physical and digital sales. Very small labels may sell your album directly, but more likely will give it to distributors, who give it to retailers, who then sell it. Thus, a bunch of people are taking a cut. The second stream that the label is at least somewhat responsible for is touring/live performance. These days, labels are interested in "360" deals where they get involved with more aspects of your career, and expect a cut of those aspects. Touring was something that previously labels didn't siphon money from, but now, they might. Revenue from touring is further divided into money you get from ticket sales (a percentage, of course) and merchandise sales at the venue (t-shirts, CDs.) Lastly, you have publishing income. The record label probably won't have anything to do with this, but depending on how they're set up, it's still possible. Publishing refers to money gained through your songs, not your recordings. So, if sheet music of your songs was to be sold and published, you would get a royalty from that. When your music gets played on the radio or on TV, you would get money from that too. Same goes for 'licensing' music for use in film, video games etc. The big question is WILL you make any money? It depends. A label like Protagonist, which is run by OCR's very own sgx, basically just deals with physical and digital distribution, taking a small cut for the owner and giving the rest to the artist. But they won't be doing anything related to touring or publishing, nor can you expect massive PR/promo efforts, video production, radio promotion, retail marketing, etc. In order for a label to do that stuff they need more of an infrastructure, which means you'll probably be earning less money PER ALBUM. 3. I have released music through two small labels, Protagonist and Progressive Grooves. Progressive Grooves did more promotion and got me on dance music sites that no one else was able to (including myself) but I didn't earn very much money from them in the end. I earned more through Protagonist thanks to a more favorable deal. Almost all labels these days want to sign people who are already successful. Bands that are willing to work hard for their money by touring, actively managing and building their own website and fanbase, releasing albums, and so on. It is increasingly rare that anyone will take a demo tape and sign someone based on that, though it's worth a shot. I would recommend seeking out regional record labels that specialize in metal music and giving them a shot first, but looking at the big picture, you will be better off if you try to do more on your own before approaching them.

I think it's silly to say Japanese-style animation somehow doesn't count, but again, just WATCH an episode of TMNT. There is this great clip of Mike talking for 30 seconds while April, in the background, has literally two frames of animation. I mean, it's ridiculous. You would never see that in a modern cartoon. They have way better production values, and there is seriously no debating that. Just compare two side by side on YouTube.

I dunno, even stuff like X-Men and Spider-Man had pretty poor production values and writing compared to modern stuff. Samurai Jack is in another league BTW, I don't even really consider that a kid's cartoon.

Yeah, but I think that's because that's what we were watching when we were younger. And you know what? Late 80s/early 90s cartoons really don't hold up. I was the biggest TMNT fan when I was a kid. Absolutely loved it. Had the action figures, the toys, the whole nine yards. But watching it now is downright painful... the voice acting, the writing, the animation quality, everything is just worse than virtually any modern 'action' cartoon. Same goes for a lot of other series.

Well, a piano can sound very unrealistic if you use all the same velocity, if the timing is very mechanical, etc. The number of notes really doesn't matter as much, it's more how the notes are 'played'. Yeah, flutes could be unrealistic pretty easily as well. As I said, it applies entirely to acoustic instruments. A synthesizer can't really be unrealistic.