zircon

Sorry, I should have been more clear. I meant none of the ReMixers involved with the project are getting paid (or any site staff). However, it is possible that we might need to hire someone outside of the community for $$ (eg. session musicians, mastering engineers). Of course we'll be doing our absolute best to keep everything inhouse and free, of course. Things are definitely going much faster than we dreamed possible. We just had a Skype meeting to discuss stretch goals and will likely be making an announcement about that in the next 24 hours.

Depends on how happy you are with your current synths + drums, really. FM8, Massive, Absynth and Reaktor are all really nice, particularly FM8 + Massive. They're very different than synths like Ultra Analog or Minimoog V, since they use different synthesis methods (FM, wavetable) and both can process audio in. I use them all very frequently. I wouldn't say any of those synths are at all redundant with what you have. Guitar Rig 5 is actually pretty cool not just for guitar sounds but general FX as well. It's like a self-contained FX rack. I've created some neat synth stuff for dubstep using the wah filters, for example. Seems like you don't have a great range of drum samples necessarily; Studio Drummer, West Africa and Battery 3 will give you significantly more. Studio Drummer for pop/rock/funk/metal, West Africa for ethnic and Battery 3 for, well, everything! The electronic sounds in Battery 3 are surprisingly good. There are also some neat SFX-style folders. I don't even really use the plugin, I just drag and drop individual samples into FL. You could do the same with Reason's NNXT or Redrum. The pianos/organs that come with Komplete are solid, though not mind-blowing, so those wouldn't be a major consideration. If it were me, I'd say go for it. The timbres available with FM8, Massive, Reaktor and Absynth are really unique. Just considering those alone, I'd say it's a good deal.

Thanks for the support! There's actually a breakdown of the budget on the Kickstarter page (at the bottom, FAQ section). That said, I'm not sure where you got the 'promotion' bit from; none of the budget is going toward promotion, marketing or advertising, nor is any of it going toward musical work on the project. In other words, none of us are getting paid anything Here is the budget breakdown: Printing costs: $5,600 for 1,500 copies in nice full-color DVD cases with 4 CDs each Delivery costs: $400 to get the printed CDs to OCR HQ in Fairfax, VA Shipping costs: $6,500 to ship up to 1,500 copies to donors and project ReMixers Kickstarter/Amazon fees: $1,500 Studio/mastering budget: $1,000 (remainder) to be used as-needed That's $15k.

Yes! Thank you in advance to everyone that checks this out and donates. I think my feelings are pretty clear in the video but this game and its music are very special to me. Having heard, well, everything on the project so far, I can guarantee you will LOVE the final result.

Heh, yeah, one rule of the film/tv/game industry that I live by is "always say yes". Even if you don't know how to do something, say yes. You will figure it out. Learning how to do things is easy, getting gigs is hard. Also, that's why you have a network. Gario was only half-joking. If you get offered a nice gig and it's too much for you, find someone who can help.

Yep! Absolutely.

x-post from KVR. I know a lot of y'all loved the sound of these sample libraries but couldn't afford Kontakt... well now, they're not only cheaper, but don't require Kontakt either!

Err, why wouldn't it? Or rather, why COULDN'T it? Though we can't know for sure since fair use is decided on a case-by-case basis, it could in theory protect OCR.

Thanks for all the comments guys! Yes, Jill (L) does speak fluent French. I, on the other hand, do not speak fluent Russian. Hard to tell, I know.

A single manly tear at the end of Crisis Core.

I'm not participating because I don't believe Child's Play deserves the top spot. While getting video games for sick kids is nice, I would rather see charity money go toward things like curing disease, providing food, helping impoverished people start businesses, etc. It's a matter of priority for me.

Good rant. I'm glad someone finally said it. I hate how live electronic acts get all this worship when it's really the people who design the lights + speaker system that should get the credit... the "DJs" aren't doing anything. The exception would be bands like Pendulum that actually play everything live - they sing, play synths, guitars, bass, drums, etc.

No plans yet, but it's a possibility if the game does well BTW, the soundtrack is now up on YouTube for your listening pleasure: Also, if anyone knows any game or game music bloggers/journalists that might be interested in reviewing the game or OST, let me know!

Hi all, just wanted to let you know that McVaffe and I have finalized and sent out our invitations via email/PM. In total, we invited nine ReMixers from the contest, so I'm really happy with how this turned out. If you didn't receive an invite, don't feel too down on yourself. There are plenty of other projects to participate in, and there is a LOT of talent in the community with only so many FF6 source tunes to remix.

How to make money? Farm, of course. I don't have that many hours logged (relatively speaking) but I've found numerous items that sell anywhere from 10-50k each to millions. Generally, look for stuff with high values of any one particular stat, socketed items, items with 40-50+ all resistances, critical hit %/damage, shields with high block % and block damage, 1h weapons of ~700+ dps and 2h weapons of ~900dps. Given current crafting prices, you should always salvage items with character level requirement of 60 (or 59 if they are follower special, or jewelry). This is assuming you would get nothing on the AH. One blue essence from a salvaged item sells for about 1700 gold right now.

Thank you everyone for the kind words and well-wishes! And of course, a special thanks to Dave for posting our Tetris mix. I did have a great day - spent it with family, ate cupcakes and ziti, watched the Princess Bride, played Diablo 3, the works. Happy birthday to Anorax and BP as well!

Thanks for the kind words! Yeah, the game can be a little tricky if you haven't played Tetrisphere, but it's definitely addicting once you get the hang of it. I haven't even come close to beating it yet... gets pretty hard later. I do have a recording of my livestream where I was working on the track "Cocoon Altitude": Really proud of this one :D

If I were more easily offended, I would find it insulting that you've continued to question the results after I've repeatedly said that I reviewed them and found no evidence of irregular voting patterns. I have no motivation to lie or be deceptive about the work I've put into this contest, especially considering the amount of time and money I spent to run it. Why would I go through all that trouble and not verify the validity of the votes? I'm not going to go through the trouble of uploading and anonymizing the spreadsheet because you should take my word for it. I did just take the last 20 minutes to review the results - again, despite the fact that I'm on vacation - and once again found no evidence that anyone voted irregularly. A typical voting pattern for someone with a very low average vote score (1.3-1.7) was majority 1s and then a lower % of 2s, 3s and 4s (decreasing in frequency). Also, I have access to the email addresses of the people who had low voting scores, and being a longstanding member of the community I have a decent sense of who is friends with (or on good terms with) who. The people who voted low did not give special scores to their friends. Once again, it doesn't really matter that there is only a 0.945 difference in score between 5th and 24th. It seems like a small number, but keep in mind there was only a maximum POSSIBLE vote spread of 4 points (5 to 1) under this voting system, and the actual low/high spread was about 1.7 points. When you look at it that way, a difference of almost 1 full point is pretty huge.

Thanks! Yes, that's the track I was working on during that livestream.

I do apologize that I wasn't able to get total randomization, eg. each user would get tracks in a different order. I couldn't find any way to do it without spending hundreds of dollars.

I don't know why absolute scores are relevant here. We've already established that people have different views on what a "1" is, what a "3" is, etc. Even if I went out of my way to try and tell people how to vote, they would ignore it and vote the way they want. However, because each individual applies the same bias to every vote they do, it all evens out when you look at 91 total responses. One person might have an average low score, another person an average high, but they will still have remixes that they rate lower and higher than their average. In other words, it doesn't matter that the top mix had a 3.4 (or what have you). It wouldn't matter if it had a 2.0. As long as there is enough of a spread to differentiate the rankings (and there was), it's good enough to say with confidence what entries people liked the most. There are many other systems we could have used. For example, we could have asked people to name their top 3, 5 or 7 remixes. However, in such a system, there would be an enormous disparity between the mixes considered to be 'better' and those considered to be 'worse'. It would be basically impossible for mixes in, say, the 25th percentile to beat those in the 5th percentile. It's not a good system. This one is definitely the most fair that I (or anyone else) could think of. Finally, again, I didn't see any evidence of irregular voting patterns.

I'm happy to announce that Canada-based indie game developer Firestarter Games has released their first title, Globulous, for iPhone and iPad! This is a puzzle game in the style of the classic N64 game Tetrisphere. Drag and drop blocks on a 3D multilayered sphere to get combos and create a hole to the center. With over 40 levels, achievements and timed challenges, it's an awesome 99 cent brain teaser whether you have 2 minutes or 20. Also, did I mention it has a 45+ minute original soundtrack with music and SFX by myself and Jeff Ball? We were inspired by both retro NES/SNES classics like Secret of Mana and Final Fantasy VI as well as modern soundtracks like Bastion and Machinarium. I'm extremely proud of our work here and I think it will blow you away, especially for a mobile game soundtrack. http://zirconstudios.bandcamp.com/album/globulous-original-soundtrack Let me know what you think of the game and its music!

I did review all of the votes myself and checked to see if any of the patterns were iffy, for example people voting 1-1-1-1-5-1-1-1 or similar. Everything was above board, though (perhaps because I told people in advance that I would be checking for such shenanigans).

Happy birthday!!

Yeah, I did think for awhile on what the most fair voting system would be. That's why I asked people what they thought about the system we ended up using before we even started the voting process. My thought is that while there will be inconsistencies among individual voters, if you have enough votes it will 'smooth out' and a general consensus on the top tracks will emerge. By the way, I'm on vacation right now but prizes will go out pretty soon.