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DarkeSword   Administrators 🎮

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    Robots vs. Knights

    in Competitions

    Posted

    Folks, I've put together some sigs for everyone using the new logo. The sigs are for your squad, they don't have your name on them, but that's okay because your name is on your posts. xD

    They're available here; just grab the file for your squad and host it somewhere and you should be good to go!

    Robots vs. Knights

    in Competitions

    Posted

    Folks, I've adjusted the schedule for the competition a little bit. I've added two Breaks to the competition, each occurring after a Boss Battle round. In the last compo I ran, the SFRG, some competitors expressed some fatigue at going full bore for the 9 weeks of the competition. Also, certain mechanics of the competition depend on the outcome of the boss battles, so we can't actually push forward with the competition until voting is complete. During the week-long breaks, I think it would be good for people to revisit tracks from the previous four rounds and do some reviews and give constructive feedback, especially for tracks on from opposing teams.

    Robots vs. Knights

    in Competitions

    Posted

    Folks, here's some advice related to combining two sources together that I wrote in a different thread.

    Quote

     

    One thing I notice people getting overthinking in the compos is figuring out the keys of the tracks they have to arrange together. In my opinion (as the guy that conceived the source-versus-source style compo), figuring out the actual key is far less important than figuring out the mode, regardless of what the tonic is. It doesn't matter if one of the sources is in Bb Minor and the other is in F Minor. The Bb and the F don't matter. What matters is that the two tracks are in the Aeolian mode (aka natural minor). When the mode is common, it's incredibly easy to make the sources work together with each other, you just transpose the material from the sources (melody, chord progression, etc.) into a common key, like C minor or something.

    It gets tougher when you have something like Ionian (aka major scale, e.g. C major) and Aeolian (e.g. D minor) sources being combined. Now you have to think about how you want to push them together. Do you flat the third, sixth, and sevenths of the Ionian source's melody so that it's Aeolian now (i.e. play a C major song in C minor) and then transpose to a common key? Do you keep the Ionian source Ionian (e.g. C major) and shift the tonic of the Aeolian source down to the relative minor (i.e. A minor)? These are options and techniques you can use to push two different sources together and keep them from clashing.

    Remember, you can write an arrangement in any key you want. A song can be played with any note as the tonic. Think about the classic Star Wars melody:

    G, D, C B A G, D
    Except you shouldn't think of it that way. You should think of it as:

    1, 5, 4 3 2 8, 5

    Where 1 is any of the twelve notes.

    C, G, F E D C, G

    Bb, F, Eb D C, Bb, F

    You see what I'm getting at? Worry less about the tonic and more about the intervals and relationships between the notes and where they fall in the scale. When you start thinking about melodies and chords that way, one of the barriers to doing multi-source arrangements disappears.

     

     

    Mega Man: The Wily Castle Remix Gauntlet 2013

    in Competitions

    Posted

    On 2/4/2017 at 6:33 AM, MysticHarley said:

    My apologies for basically replying to a 4 year old thread but the download links for the 2013 Remix gauntlet don't appear to be working, I was wondering if it was possible to have another link for them? 

    Looks like the links got all donked up in the forum conversion. I need to put together a proper "release" of WCRG2013. I'll try to get this done this week.

    Anyway the links in the first post should be fixed,  but they'll be replaced later with one link.

    Robots vs. Knights

    in Competitions

    Posted

    Folks: a lot of the team discussion for this competition is going to happen in the Discord channels. Make sure you're idling and/or making yourself available to your teammates via that service. Discord has very good smartphone clients and custom alert settings. I would suggest using this thread here on the forums to coordinate team meetings on Discord.

    Robots vs. Knights

    in Competitions

    Posted

    @MegaDrive has checked in on Discord. If I don't hear from @Kapden today, @Jorito has offered to fill  his spot.

    Once the teams are finalized here's what you need to do:

    • Teams must assign one source from the source list for their team to each team member. There are 11 sources available to assign to 9 people (the 2 extra are to give people more of a choice). The source you're assigned will be your source throughout the duration of the competition.
    • Teams must divide into three 3-man squads.
    • Teams must provide me with a schedule of remixers for the next three rounds. Each squad will have one person remixing each round.

    Here's an example: 

            | Squad A | Squad B | Squad C |
Round 1 | Rock    | Kalinka | Blues   |
Round 2 | X       | Roll    | Zero    |
Round 3 | Volnutt | Alia    | Chaud   |

     

    Video Game Poetry

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    23 minutes ago, MegaSonic said:

    I actually used to post poetry on a site for sharing literary works. At one time my more popular ones were read over a few thousand times without any publicity and seemed well received, including a couple of my game inspired poems. However, it's been a few years now since I've really been active there. I probably should have stayed active because then the number of reads would be much higher by now. Apparently, a few people who got started on the site have been moderately successful in selling, but those were mostly novels. I should probably pop over there and see what their thoughts are too. 

    I think there's a hug gap to cross from poetry that people enjoy reading to poetry that people are willing to buy. Even if a lot of people read it, that doesn't mean anyone would buy it.

    Sure, but what I'm saying is that if you build your identity as a "Video Game Poet" and start producing and providing that content for gamers, you'll have a brand that you'll be able to leverage. If you cultivate a following in gamer circles (as opposed to poetry circles), then you can use that to your advantage. Gamers can be very passionate and ardent supporters of this kind of thing.

    Also, don't think of it as selling poetry, think of it as selling stuff for gamers. Gamers love spending money on physical goods. If you're gonna sell a book of video game poetry, it's the quality of the book that's going to really sell it.

    Video Game Poetry

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I think that instead of publishing in book form, publish on a blog, maybe one every couple of days. Start a tumblr and promote the hell out of it. Build up a following and a fanbase for this kind of thing. When you think you have a good base of readers, maybe go Kickstarter or talk to a small press publisher. The idea is good but the market's pretty niche; you ought to cultivate an audience before trying to sell anything.

    Also I would recommend not posting the poems on your blog as text, but as an image with your pen name included. That way when it gets reblogged or shared the accreditation isn't lost.

    Robots vs. Knights

    in Competitions

    Posted

    There's more meat to the MM10 versions, which is why I picked them. Wandering Travelers is included because it's essentially a "character" theme for the group and helps bring the Knights' source options count up to 11.

    Robots vs. Knights

    in Competitions

    Posted

    I've set up text and voice channels for each team on the official OCR Discord server. The text and voice channel collectively form your team's clubhouse. Once you join the server, go to the #compos channel and let me know what team you're on and I'll give you the appropriate permissions to access your clubhouse. The clubhouse is where your team will discuss strategies, share WIPs and feedback, and generally just hang out/talk. These clubhouses are closed to the general public, but they will be opened and made read-only at the end of the competition.

    Nintendo Switch

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    On 1/22/2017 at 10:52 AM, zircon said:

    Sony's PSN service has been extraordinarily successful. But Nintendo's back catalog is even better, IMO. Throw a dart at a "Top 50 Games of All Time" list and you're likely to hit a classic Nintendo game (NES, SNES, GB, N64). They can and should still offer individual titles for purchase on the VC. However a streaming subscription service is something consumers will eat up and makes for the best value proposition.

     

    On 1/22/2017 at 0:25 PM, AngelCityOutlaw said:

    I was referring to Playstation Now, I think is called.

    I think we're talking about different things.

     

    On 1/22/2017 at 3:03 PM, Bleck said:

    you're not talking about different things, you're just wrong

    No he's not, they are different things, actually. PSN refers to "PlayStation Network" which is Sony's online ecosystem/service for PlayStation products. The premium version of this is PS+ (PlayStation Plus) which offers "free" games to download every month for subscribers (that you only own while you are a paying "Plus" subscriber). This service is "extraordinarily successful," and Sony's offering of "free" games every month is something that MS also decided to do with Games for Gold on XBox Live. It's also something that Nintendo should do with their online service.

    PlayStation Now, which is never referred to as "PSN," is Sony's game streaming service, similar to the old OnLive service. You pay a monthly fee and get streaming access to a library of games. These aren't downloaded or locally stored in anyway; you get an audio and video feed of the game and your controls are sent to the server that's running the game. The service has been live for a little while but there's nothing to suggest that it's "extraordinarily successful."

    Now I do think Andy is right; Nintendo's first-party library is first-rate and is well suited towards a subscription based game streaming service. People love Nintendo games. But ACO is also not too far off the mark: game-streaming as a business isn't really proven yet. OnLive, the pioneer of this kind of service, isn't in business anymore, and Gaikai, one of OnLive's competitors, essentially turned into PlayStation Now; and we don't really know how well PlayStation Now is doing as a service.

    There are a lot of things Nintendo could/should be doing with their back catalog; goodness knows their online "infrastructure" has been a total joke for over a decade. But Nintendo is a stubborn company that doesn't like being a follower; this leads to good things, like controller innovations and portable systems, but it also leads to bad things, like friend codes and game purchases locked to hardware rather than user accounts. We're finally seeing Nintendo make some concessions with their mobile games; Fire Emblem Heroes is a bog standard F2P gacha game, which is actually a great business decision on their part, because those kinds of games are moneymakers, but slightly disappointing artistically, because gacha games are fairly shallow experiences.

    What Nintendo needs to do is find that balance between leading the industry in hardware and software innovation and catching up to what the industry has already accomplished with things like online services.

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