lazygecko
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Posts posted by lazygecko
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This sounds like something Chris Hülsbeck would have made. The fact that Chris is in the file name also lends credence to this. He was involved with developing audio compression technology for the GBA which was licensed out to various developers.
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Deconstructing old sequenced music and listening to the separate components is one of the most interesting things you can do, and an extremly efficient learning tool. Not just for learning how chiptunes were made, but just growing and becoming a better musician in general. Elements that sound very simple and detached on their own but fuse to become more than the sum of their parts, or just knowing when to kill your darlings (like getting rid of the root note of a chord to save channel space, which the bass is already playing anyway) is not just a chiptune thing but also arrangement 101 and ultimately a means to getting a well balanced mix (since arrangement and mixing is largely intertwined). I feel as though it's a skillset that is becoming more and more rare in today's production climate. Top-tier arrangers do this kind of stuff all the time even when they're not beholden to technical limitations.
I think it's worthwhile for any musician, no matter what genre, to dabble around with chiptunes. And by that I mean specifically working with getting the most out of these constraints and not just resorting to "bleeps and bloops" which is the usual reductive thinking applied to this type of music. It's such a great way of training yourself in these elements and really start thinking actively about them overall.
I have provided 2 "stem" archives for some Genesis soundtracks I find technically interesting, by just isolating the channels and rendering them into .wavs so you can load them all up in a DAW and thoroughly analyze what's going on in them. You can do this yourself using the [url=http://www.smspower.org/Music/InVgm]in_vgm plugin for Winamp with anything from [url=http://project2612.org/]Project2612
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/66640537/Thunder%20Force%20IV%20Stems.zip
Notice how the rhythm guitar here is split up into 2 layers with different sounds. One for mids and one for treble. Then these are "dubbed" once again and panned (as well as detuned slightly for a chorus effect), taking up 4 channels in total to create this huge wall of guitars that is pretty much equivalent of a fully fledged studio metal production.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/66640537/Devilish%20Intro%20Stems.zip
I really like how the simple PSG squares synergize with the FM bells here to create a very vibrant sound. You can also hear how the "choirs" are really the same kind of synth string section you often hear on the system, but it just has this fast upwards pitch bend in the attack which adds this kind of formant quality to it that we usually associate with voices.
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Everyone just realised there was no topping Phil Collins' and Philip Bailey's remix of Double Dragon 2
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17 hours ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:
I would say it's evident that interactive software has outgrown the need to be a game.
Trying to artificially impose a distinction at this point is just superfluous. The evolution of language simply doesn't work that way and it always goes for the path of least resistance. Things like Gone Home are a game just as much as The Walking Dead is a comic.
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I think one of the root problems here is how overly stringest people are with "games" as a term and the criterias derived from it and applied to the medium, like rules and win/lose states. It's very evident these days that the medium has outgrown these definitions. But the original language we use to define the medium as a whole persists. And that's okay.
It's pretty much the same as comic books. Now, this is partly conjecture on my part, but I'm pretty sure comics as a term have their roots in the humorous serial strips (and prior to that, satirical cartoon illustrations) you could find in newspapers. Yet today we still use this term to define the entire medium (unless you're so insecure you insist on refering to them as graphic novels), even if there isn't anything inherently humorous about it.
Other than that, I find the term art to be so inherently arbitrary that discussions over what is and isn't art is pretty pointless. Art is something that exists purely in our heads as an abstract interpretation. A painting is just a canvas with a bunch of colored liquid thrown at it. It requires a brain capable of some semblance of abstract thinking and ability to discern patterns to derive any meaning from it. The same applies to games and all the components they are made of.
A person like Rogert Ebert doesn't really have the necessary insight and commitment to make any relevant statement about games as art, and I am fairly sure he admitted as much later on. Yet so many still get so hung up over seeking validation from from people like that. Frankly I find the inferiority complex on display from gaming culture as a whole to be pretty pathetic and embarrasing. And ultimately I find it to be regressive thinking as people with that kind of mindset also tend to be the ones obsessed with having games mimic high-brow Hollywood films just to get a proverbial pat on the back, rather than being interested in exploring and experimenting with what fundamentally sets the medium apart as an artform.
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That was pretty much the exact same premise of Mega Man Universe years ago. Which ended up canceled in typical Capcom fashion.
https://www.unseen64.net/2015/02/23/mega-man-universe-xbla-psn-cancelled/
At least we still have a plethora of elaborate rom hacks to tide us over.
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[url=http://www.mattmontag.com/projects-page/nintendo-vst]NES VST is the best plugin for NES, bar none. The problem with other emulation plugins or just trying to get the same sounds with generic synths is that they lack the unique envelope setups and features needed to properly replicate the more advanced and iconic sounds and timbres from the system. Things like abruptly changing the duty cycle of the pulse (at most you can hope for is a PWM LFO or ADSR envelope in an average synth, which isn't the same at all), or narrowing down the width of the noise to get that distinct alternate metallic timbre from it.
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The roleplaying elements and being able to have agency over your character and their choices was utterly nerfed to the ground in this installment, and is the game's biggest criticism without a doubt. Glad I didn't pick this one up at launch. Completely betrays the roots of the franchise, and you'd think Bethesda would understand this is something people want after New Vegas was such a success with Obsidian's quality quest design.
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Spicing things up in turn based combat with QTE elements can be fun, but in the end it's sort of scizophrenic and counter-intuitive to the core design. It's just one of several design aspects where I feel that the developer's choice of gameplay template feels almost disingenuous.
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Turn based combat is pretty awesome. But I think the issue with that in JRPGs as a whole, is how so many developers moreso seem to treat it as a kind of nuisance they just have to put up with because of tradition or whatever, and they often design things around mitgating the "weaknesses" they perceive around the format, like automation commands to breeze through all the mundane random encounter grinding, or adding in active timed elements (like the QTE bonuses in the Mario RPGs), instead of actually reveling in its turn based nature and playing to its strengths (ie letting you take your time to properly plan the actions of your party, and really emphasize strategic gameplay).
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The issue with retaining FF7's original ATB combat specifically is, if you'll excuse the term, ludonarrative dissonance. As games become more lifelike in their presentation, they are also peeling away at all the different layers of abstractions which previously helped suspend our disbelief. This goes not just for Nathan Drake's murder sprees which the term is usually associated with, but also combat mechanics, and right down to the little things like how item pickups are presented (I don't think eating a turkey found in a knocked over trash can would go well with a modern street brawler that wasn't lampshading tropes, for instance).
A classic example of this would be the problems people have with Morrowind's combat. This was a game that otherwise behaved just like a contemporary first person action game, but the combat was still deeply rooted in its classic dungeon crawler roots, and this caused significant dissonance due to the expectations set by how the rest of the game was presented. -
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Undertale topped the US Steam chart throughout October
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As for the "gods of marketing" proclaiming video games (or anything else) to thoroughly belong to a given demographic, I don't really think it works that way. It's a pleasant fiction to think that there are cadres of misled businessmen pulling the strings of an unwitting public and telling us who we are & how to be, but I think things grow up & evolve a little more organically than that.
I didn't really mean it as some insidious deliberate plot to shape the culture. These things just tend to happen on their own in a sort of positive feedback loop (although it is sometimes considered beneficial in long term marketing tactics to narrow down an audience by deliberately excluding other potential groups). But if you look at the history of games and how the "rules" of marketing have changed and solidified over time, the 90's was a very notable turning point. I sometimes read scan archives of old game magazines, and it's really interesting looking at some of the ads and how homogenized they were getting. Even Nintendo got caught in the zeitgeist and marketed games for all ages like Yoshi's Island in the same contrived edgy style as you would do for older teens.
Sega kind of got the ball rolling in the late 80's/early 90's by aiming for teenage boys as Nintendo was viewed as having the childrens market on lockdown, but it was Sony later who really started pushing the image of gaming as a lifestyle as they were asserting themselves on the market, and I think their marketing campaigns had a big influence on the industry as a whole. There was a series of PS1 TV adverts in the late 90's, and one of them had CG characters from games like Tomb Raider and Crash Bandicoot urging a guy to spend more time with his Playstation and not get "whipped" by his girlfriend. That's a pretty overt message about who gaming was for, and more importantly who gaming was not for.
I'd also like to highlight the computer game market which was growing parallel to consoles in the 80's and early 90's (which is often dismissed as this "other" thing in gaming history as a whole, like being conveniently ignored when the US industry crash of 83 is brought up). It was pretty different in how diverse it was. You had companies like Sierra whose business model was more akin to that of a book publisher, releasing games in a variety of genres (genre being stuff like comedy, fantasy, crime etc as opposed to shoot em up or racing) aimed at a variety of demographics, women included. But as the 90's went on you could see this aspect becoming marginalized for a variety of reasons while the more modern industry paradigm was forming, and eventually the computer market caved in and became almost indistinguishable from consoles in the sense that it was being aimed nearly exclusively at adolescent males.
So in the wake of this we have what we'd define as "hardcore" gaming culture. By that I mean someone who plays the latest games, keeps up with the news and reads gaming magazines or websites, and engages socially with gaming-related communities, and more importantly views it as a sort of lifestyle which defines their image. The bulk of this demographic being those who had their formative years in the 90's, or at this point also the 00's which largely overlaps.
This culture for a long time has struck me as being very exclusionary in nature. And I'm not just talking about gender here, but rather about what is and isn't considered a "real" game or whom is a "real" gamer. A real game by this definition would be whatever passed through the traditional market channels, getting magazine adverts and retail releases. Independantly released digital games used to have to endure this kind of stigma. If Minecraft had been made in 2004 and someone said it was their game of the year, they'd probably have been laughed out of the room. Thankfully this attitude has started to change, although I still see that kind of sentiment reeling here and there in how certain people think AAA games are the only ones that "count". But nowadays we also have both the fledgling mobile market and also independant titles that are challenging established fundamental formulas, like Gone Home. These are much more aggressively dismissed as "non-games" and actively sneered at (and it sort of goes both ways as those who exclusively play mobile games likely don't regard them as "video games" per se). Zoe Quinn was the creator of one of these alleged non-games through Depression Quest, and its recognition in the press (which are pretty much viewed as The Great Validators by the layman gamer) gave her a good deal of abuse even before the whole gamergate thing had started.
So to tie this lengthy post together, what's happening right now is that "real" gamers are lashing out because their view of what gaming is supposed to mean culturally, which is largely derived from the period they grew up in during the 90's and 00's, is being challenged as the industry is growing to become more diverse and inclusive.
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I certainly have my qualms about aspects of the arguments, although as a whole I still agree with her points, however the well has been so thoroughly poisoned I thought her right to express herself became a way more pressing concern rather than any attempt at sincere critique and constructive discussion which would inevitably get lost in the noise of pure vitriol, since people get so overly emotional about it (which is like, highly ironic considering the topic at hand). The people harrassing her don't want any real discussion, they just want her out of the picture. And I think this is also a symptom of something larger going on with the modern internet landscape which is why I'm trying to piece together all these isolated incidents into a wider perspective.
There's a lot of talk about the problem with "safe spaces" today and not having to be exposed to opinions that might make you uncomfortable. People usually equate this with US colleges/universities and as something leftist, but I see this kind of behavior manifesting across all sorts of internet communities for any kind of topic, and the phenomenom seems ideologically fairly agnostic. Perhaps the rapid proliferation of the internet and the possibility to pick and choose information more at our own leisure is conditioning society further into this kind of mindset, and the rise of "echo chambers". So to put this in the context of gamergate, I feel as though this is the millennial gaming and geek culture freaking out over the inevitable growth of the industry into a true mainstream force of pop culture attracting new demographics, and view this as some sort of intrusion on "their" safe space (that being video games, but also stuff like comic books, and to an extent, even the internet itself). And of course it was theirs to begin with, because the almighty gods of marketing in the 90's proclaimed it to be so.
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GG may not have been primarily about "ethics in game journalism," as it has been thoroughly lambasted for claiming, but it also wasn't just about being in "favor" of harassment in the abstract. More of a sociopolitical schism between gamers at large, who are a diverse lot, and game journos, who seem to not only lean hard left, but be okay with injecting that ideology into something that ostensibly should be a little more neutral... if you ask me. No need for a reductionist counterclaim... much of what GG has been associated with, accurately or otherwise, impeaches itself without the need for oversimplification.
That's more of a different thing than what I was refering to. I'm talking about the mindset that somehow Zoe and Anita are just as bad, they are opportunists who relish in the attention, etc etc. Mostly just comes down to thinly veiled victim blaming in my eyes.
It's both disheartening and fascinating watching both this and several concurrent social trends unfold the past years. That includes stuff like the countless internet lynch mobs out to shame people and even ruin their careers (anything from Zoe Quinn, to that poaching dentist, to that "dongle incident" at a tech firm), and the rise of xenophobic attitudes shedding their taboo with the European immigrant crisis, etc. Perhaps in 15 years or so we can look back at these things as a whole with some historical clarity and put it in a better understood context. What I find particularly interesting about both gamergate and the immigrant crisis (and I suppose also MRA) are the connections found to extreme right wing organizations, how they actively fan the flames and use these sentiments as a means to boost recruitment. In particular with gamergate they have better success at reaching out towards young, liberal-leaning men who would otherwise not sympathize with their ideologies.
Inbetween the downtime of this thread there was also an interesting video series released which I think did a good attempt at dissecting the underlying psychology behind the gamergate movement
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I don't really understand where the whole "both sides" thinking comes from. You either condone harrassment or you don't.
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The Master System is a great gem of a system which I had the fortune of owning back in the day in addition to a NES. The sound chip is not among my favorites though. It is quite rudimentary compared to the likes of the 2A03 for NES or SID for C64, with only basic square tones (you can alter the pulse width on the others) and a less flexible noise. It also has less pitch range than the others. This results in a fairly homogenized sound and lacks the different styles and character you could hear on the other systems.
It was quite an old chip though, developed in 1979 I believe so it predates the others by several years. The other chips were tailored specifically for the systems while this was third party technology which was implemented in several products, like the later models of the ZX Spectrum.
- Garpocalypse and WillRock
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This game has an insane amount of variables. I did a playthrough where I didn't kill anyone, with the sole exception of one of the skeleton brothers because why not, and there was a specific end scenario just for that situation.
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You're at the mercy of whatever attitude the IP holder has in regards to this stuff. The vast majority aren't going to care, but there are exceptions. Nintendo for example will forcibly enable monetization on your video and funnel all revenue to themselves. The revenue stuff I don't really care about, but it does suck that you're not given a choice in disabling ads for your viewers.
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They were mostly derived from popular romplers at the time from Korg, Roland and Yamaha. Soundfonts that pull from the same sources are probably very common.
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Wow, I've never watched a Nolan film and thought 'this sound mixing is terrible'.
The dialogue is often mixed so low compared to everything else it becomes borderline unintelligible. I suppose it's not as noticeable for international audiences watching in theatres with subtitles on by default. But when I watched The Dark Knight on DVD I honestly thought something was wrong with my audio, until I learned that this is how Cristopher Nolan does it deliberately. Interstellar is far worse. The music tends to drown everything out, and it's also compounded by the characters mumbling their lines a lot.
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What do you think of them? I saw The Martian a couple of days ago, and over the last few months I've also seen Interstellar and Gravity which I didn't see in theatres.
After all the buzz surrounding it, Interstellar turned out to be a colossal disappointment. Its biggest failings are the completely hamfisted and contrived human/emotional elements for the sake of drama, and it weighs down the whole experience so hard I honestly can't say I enjoyed this film much at all. It takes something truly special to make the human aspects seem more ludicriously unbelievable than the science and technology portrayed. It's pretty clear it wants to be a modern 2001: A Space Odyssey but the only aspect where it even comes close to competing is the visual spectacle and cinematogrophy. Where 2001 thrives on ambiguitiy, Interstellar tries to cheaply assert a message by tugging at emotional heartstrings with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. It has all the usual problems of a Nolan film like overt exposition and poor sound mixing, but this time amplified significantly. I can't help but suspect that he's turning into a George Lucas in that he's surrounded by a bunch of spineless yes men who won't call him out on his bad ideas due to his strong pedigree.
The Martian I liked a lot better and had pretty much what I wanted out of Interstellar in the first place. And that feels very ironic given Matt Damon's equivalent astronaut role in Interstellar exemplifies what I find so wrong about that movie. There are no token villains or shoehorned personal conflicts here, just smart and qualified people being really good at solving shit (almost literally), and has enough faith in those concepts to make a good sci-fi story out of it.
Gravity I really liked as well. It's too different a film to really be directly compared to the others. It's basically a disaster movie in space that isn't any longer than it really needs to (pretty much feels like the whole movie is seamlessly unfolding in real time with very few jumps) and pulls it off with a miniscule cast. Even though it's a foregone conclusion Sandra Bullock will survive, the movie felt very tense almost all the way through. And it also has some of the most hauntingly detailed depictions of corpses in space that will probably stick in my mind for a while.
Moon is probably the next on my list to watch. This one has also received very high critical acclaim so I hope it can live up to that. I also hope we get more hard sci fi films like these in the near future. -
I think it's cool to finally see a game take on the slasher horror subgenre. Although I would much more love to see a kind of asymmetrical multiplayer game take on this format rather than a Telltale style adventure. One side is the lone slasher villain and the other is the archetypical group of teenagers.
Undertale
in General Discussion
Posted
The game had a second big uptick in popularity after being featured prominently on several GOTY lists. What's interesting, and also kinda sad, is watching all the psychological "backlash" unfold on the internet. You've got everything from "This game is just cynical tumblr hipster bait. Wake up sheeple!" to "I liked Undertale before it was cool! You're just a bandwagoner!"
Apparently just enjoying a game on its own merits is really difficult these days.