zircon

Gario actually with this contest, you have to record everything in one take with no editing. You use their web interface. This makes it pretty fair and a real test of vocal performance as opposed to editing/post-production.

Voted - also remember that # of votes doesn't matter once you're in the top 20, as that bracket is evaluated by judges.

Pretty sure it's male or female. Go for it and then post your link!

http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/3383/vijistats.jpg Wow, if this is real then this is a giant step in the right direction for LoL champ design. Very cool.

IMO if you're on a Mac and already have Express, just get Logic 9 Academic. It's like $150 (cheaper than FL Producer) and comes with an insane amount of samples, synths, effects, etc. People like OA and Fishy do amazing work with only Logic 9 and pretty much nothing else.

Well, my own personal trash list, even though I enjoy some of these heroes: * War Beast * Night Hound * Sand Wraith * Madman * Succubus * Maliken * Nymphora * The Dark Lady * Chronos * Empath * Swiftblade * Moon Queen * Blood Hunter And then heroes that are decent, but way outshined by others (IMO): * Magebane * Engineer * Scout * Blacksmith * Thunderbringer * Martyr * Parasite * Armadon * Legionnaire * Jeraziah * Electrician * Forsaken Archer etc.

Haha, that article is pretty biased in favor of DotA. It's obviously coming from a DotA player and not someone who plays LoL seriously. For example, the author says LoL basically has no competitive scene, or rather that it hasn't been to many tournaments. However, just recently Riot announced that LoL's Season Two has the largest prize pool in e-sports history. Not to mention there have been quite a few tournaments and tournament qualifiers in the last few months alone: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/news/tournaments He also characterizes LoL as the least balanced which I think is simply false. I can't speak to DotA, but the champ scaling in LoL means that almost all champions are viable. Some are generally better than others (Brand > Veigar) but overall, the difference in tiers is pretty small. Compare this to garbage heroes in HoN which comprise at least 50% of the cast and are basically only played as a joke. The other thing is his insistence on pay-for-power being very present in LoL and HoN. That's not really true. Having access to more heroes doesn't mean more power, assuming the heroes are at least somewhat balanced to begin with. If I only had Orianna, Ashe and Alistar and NOBODY else I could still play at a top-tier level. Some of LoL's best heroes are also extremely cheap and can be purchased within a week of playing the game. There is no issue of money "buying power" in LoL, and certainly not at a competitive level. The only way this argument even remotely works is with runes, but you can't outright buy those. Yeah, you can buy IP boosts but how big of a difference is that really going to make? Unless you're building 10 rune pages, it doesn't take very long to build two solid, all-purpose pages of tier 3 runes (and about 1/5 as long to build tier 1 pages, which are at least 1/2 as good.) Not to mention the issue of rune disparity is really a problem for matchmaking, so you don't have 30s against 10s. I mainly agree with his characterization of the ganking/gold/death systems and hero design. Riot's champ design is just not good in comparison and there is no defending it.

Well also, it's like how else are you going to filter hundreds of submissions? There is literally no fair way of doing it. If you had private judging, as many contests do, then it (a) takes forever and ( people complain about bias anyway. You might as well have it just be community/popularity voting. The nice thing about this contest is that it does have private judging for the top 20, which means nobody can win purely on popularity. It's just been used as a filter, an approach which is IMO quite fair.

UJAM (http://www.ujam.com/) is currently hosting a contest in partnership with Ubisoft Montreal to find a vocalist for the next Assassin's Creed game, AC: Revelations. Over 250 singers have entered, performing and recording their rendition of the main theme. Through September 19th, users can vote by Liking their favorite vocalists, after which the top 20 will be judged by a panel that includes Hans Zimmer! You can vote in just FIVE seconds: 1. Go to http://www.ujam.com/songs/mKWVzgdQN9dn 2. Click "Like" to vote through Facebook. 3. Enjoy the good karma (and the song!) That's it! She's currently in the 60s (out of 250+), so doing pretty well, but it will be an uphill battle to get in the top 20. If you've enjoyed any of her ReMixes or original works, you can say 'thanks' by making this happen! 9/16 10:55 AM Edit: Up to #59 now, 102 votes! Awesome! 9/16 11:26 AM Edit: WOW. #50 / 122 votes, you guys are amazing. 9/16 12:29 AM Edit: #20 / 283?! For real?! 9/16 2:40 PM Edit: #5 / 523. No words to describe how awesome this community is. Thank you!

I don't have time, unfortunately. I'm leaving in two days!

Nobody would say LoL is ripping off DotA or HoN for using mechanics that existed on heroes in those games. I mean, basically 99% of the LoL cast already does that. But more importantly I think anyone could come up with at least 5 new, interesting Champion abilities or mechanics. HoN is doing that every two weeks. Here are some things I came up with just off the top of my head: * A skillshot "Reflect" ability that, if timed properly, would repel projectile attacks in a random direction. * A Champion that is constantly followed by a small train or group of creatures. These would have some very basic uncontrollable attacks and low HP, but are immune to AOE. The champ's abilities would depend on sacrificing the creatures for various effects (throwing them, planting them on to objects, batting them at the enemy, etc.) New creatures would be regrown periodically or perhaps faster if you pick up old ones. * A champ themed something like Heimerdinger, but focusing on generally defensive rather than offensive structures, and with more control. For example, dropping a TF2 Engineer-style supply 'orb' that allies can stand around to regenerate, planting a ward that does not itself give vision but creates an orbiting object that spirals out and gives vision over that area (and can collide with enemy champs.) * A champion with high-risk, high-reward feint-type abilities. For example, one ability might be used on a target enemy hero and will stun them after 3 seconds IF you are able to fulfill a condition (for example, depleting 15% of their health bar.) Perhaps the ability to feign death or manipulate your own health bar to make it harder for the opponents to gauge your status. * A new kind of "resource" (like Energy, Fury) that increases based on distance traveled, or something to that effect. Maybe a champ themed around speed, running or even dancing, encouraging them to weave in and out of battles, gank more, and so forth. Call it Rhythm, Adrenaline, I don't know. Would create some interesting gameplay though.

99% of these aren't available at my local Gamestops, unfortunately. I did also pick up Phantom Hourglass today (as I was looking for a Zelda game!)

Yep, agree 100%. Overall their champion design is pretty weak. Skarner, Leona, Wukong, Talon... all very forgettable. Riven seems marginally more interesting but not by much. Less champs like that, more like Blitzcrank, Orianna, Twisted Fate, etc.

I wouldn't exactly call it a remake... more like a port with some bonuses. When people say FF7 remake they mean literally remaking the game from the ground up. But this is cool, I guess.

Heh, I haven't played Pokemon since Gold (and even then, only briefly - I invested a lot of time in Blue and didn't really want to do it all again.) My local Gamestop unfortunately didn't have a lot of this stuff. I did end up picking up Dragon Quest VI and Phantom Brave for PSP for starters.

Could make it burn Energy or Fury as well. It would be less effective, but hey, it's something. Alternatively, it could just be a single target nuke/silence where they take immediate damage and are only silenced if they move (silence kicks in shortly after moving, based on how far you go.) The idea is to force them to choose between moving and using spells. It's soft CC which IMO is less "anti-fun" than a hard stun or knockup. I don't think the passive is really more powerful than, say, Twisted Fate's passive. +2 gold per minion kill for your entire team? Assuming people get about 50cs per 10 minutes (pretty conservative) then by 30 minutes in, you have 5*3*50*2 = 1,500 team gold. On the other hand, there are comparatively few champ kills in a game, and it takes time to reach that max bonus. To be clear, you would only get the bonus gold if you got an actual kill or assist. If you weren't in the fight, you don't get anything. It's just a way of encouraging more aggressive gameplay. W is definitely an early game skill in every respect, but I think that's OK. There are a lot of champions with skills that become fairly useless later. But having extra vision is never a bad thing... how many times have you been in a situation where you get ganked while farming near the base after an inhib is down?

OK, here's a champion idea. Let me know what you think. Numbers obviously can be tweaked, think more about concepts etc. 1. Roamer/Ganker Concept: A champion who is designed to move between lanes and disrupt the enemy, creating opportunities for your team. A weaker laner/jungler, so definitely designed for constant action. Shines early and to an extent mid, less so in lategame (but hopefully will have created enough advantage by then to win.) Stats: Uses Energy. Low-average health, average movespeed, high-average attack speed/damage, low-average armor. Ranged (500 range.) Squishy. Passive: (Global) Gives all members of your team +5 gold per champion kill and +2 per champion assist. This increases by +1 gold per kill/assist to a maximum of +50 bonus kill gold and +20 bonus assist gold. Q Skill: Instantly destroys 5/8/11/14/17% (+1% per 50 AP) of the target's max mana. The target can lose up to 20/23/26/29/32% (+1% per 30 AP) of their CURRENT mana over the course of 2/2.5/3/3.5/4 seconds based on distance moved. Uses 100 energy. 14/13.5/13/12.5/12 second cooldown. Purpose: Heavily disrupts casters by forcing them to choose between staying still (possibly endangering themselves) or losing lots of mana. Particularly good against non-casters early on without a means of regenerating much mana. W Skill: Passive - +5/7/9/11/13% true damage from ALL attacks, items and abilities to isolated champions (no other champions within 800 range.) Active - Sends out a pulse of vision at the point where it was used. Provides vision for 2 seconds 200/300/400/500 range beyond normal. Uses 75 energy. 16/14/12/10/8 second CD. Purpose: Encourages ganking and creates map awareness. E Skill: Instantly strikes an area 700 range in front of the user in the direction you are facing (non-targetable.) Deals 100/160/220/280/340 damage (+0.5 AD) to all targets hit by it (-50% to minions.) 40 Energy, 3 second CD. Energy use and cooldown increase by 25 and 1 each time it is used within 8 seconds of the previous use. Purpose: Primary source of damage. Basically a powerful semi-skillshot AOE that hits instantly and can be spammed, but only for a short period before its energy cost becomes too great. Heavily position-dependent. R Skill: Passive: Converts 5/8/11% of total movement speed (after bonuses) to bonus AD and 3/6/9% of total movement speed to AP. Eg. 400 movement speed = +44 AD, +36 AP. Active: Creates a self-buff lasting 5/6/7 seconds. Grants +10/20/30% extra energy regeneration and 10/20/30% attack speed. Landing any basic attack or skill on a champion increases movement speed by 4/7/10 and reduces non-ult cooldowns by 0.5 seconds. 50 Energy activation cost, 100 CD. Purpose: Encourages aggressive gameplay. With the ult active, both Q and E become more spammable and the champion becomes faster, enabling him to chase down running opponents and dive more safely. -- Strengths: Potent roaming capability. Ganks start off with Q which limits the target's ability to counter-attack, leading into E spam. Can gank and control the map more safely with W and gains mobility with R. Mid/late game can disrupt casters while providing constant DPS through E. Weaknesses: Squishy. No defensive abilities, hard CC or escapes. Limited carrying capability.

It's not often that an original album does some genuinely unique stuff and has a coherent feel, especially with so many guest artists. But Jimmy did it. ZIRCON STAMP OF APPROVAL.

After watching a two-part on roaming Evelynn and trying it in two games myself, I've changed my opinion on her. I think she's actually quite effective this way IF your other laners are skilled enough to take advantage of farm. If you play carefully you can force people to burn summoner spells constantly, if not outright kill them, and thus make them play far more defensively. Your teammates (particularly the solo lanes) can then get lots of farm as the other team will generally be afraid to step up. As the game progresses beyond laning, you'll have created a big advantage and the other team will be constantly wasting gold to try to counter you.As the game progresses she can actually carry pretty well, mainly due to her ult. She should be darting in and out of fights, spamming all her abilities and picking up assists to refresh her ult (which heals her passively, among other things.) You would still want a strong AD carry on your team, but it's surprising how powerful she can be later.

Yep, it's a recorder. Best part is that was performed by Will Roget (aka bustatunez), an OC ReMixer and forum member He also worked extensively on the music and audio system, and was an arranger on Monkey Island 2: SE as well (along with myself, Jeffball and dannthr.)

Is... is she using 4 Hexdrinkers...? D:

There's also Will Roget, II (aka bustatunez) http://www.rogetmusic.com/ http://ocremix.org/artist/4749/bustatunez Composed for a number of games, not the least of which is The Old Republic!

Jeremy Soule: http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR01130/ David Wise, Grant Kirkhope, Robin Beanland: http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02000/ Alexander Brandon: http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR01914/ Jake Kaufman (virt): http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02005/ The Fat Man (George Sanger): http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR01296/ These are the ones I know offhand.

Well, for variety's sake I like having multiple games so I'm not doing the same exact thing for lots of time straight. So, "The World Ends With You" seems to be a common recommendation. Gario, I've actually played a lot of the other games on that list, but thanks! Any other shared suggestions?

It's not that I mind traditional, I just mind random battles being mindless repetitions of the "Attack" command while also taking like 10 seconds per animation.