Hy Bound

As for the motion sickness problem: I get motion sick playing a PC FPS game for over an hour. I seriously had to go through Half-Life 2 in a much slower time than I'd like because I would be physically ill after a few hours. That being said, I played the demo back to back on my 32" about 10 feet away and had no problems. Every once in a while it made me slightly dizzy for a couple seconds, but my wife thought so too and she has an iron stomach so i think that might end up being a problem for extended plays.

This has happened to me a lot. I'm sorry to say I'm not as well-versed in old-school gamery as I'd like. After having gone back and played Metroid Prime, Chrono Cross, Mega Man 2 and several others, I've noticed a lot of music I hadn't remembered listening to in the first place but had nostalgia for nonetheless. Hell, FFMusicDJ's String Machine resonated so well for me that when I revisited the Corel Prison in FF7 (a song i didn't remember at all the first couple times i played through) I suddenly had a rush of nostalgia for that song. Not to go terribly off-topic, but I recently bought the Mass Effect album for the galaxy map music even though I didn't really enjoy the game. I ended up loving the entire album so much I went back and finished the game. Then I loved the game so much I've almost gotten 100% completion on a second playthrough. I never thought a game's music would color my experience so much with it; it brought back a game I was "meh" about to one of my favorite RPG's.

Just got done with the demo. I love it! The graphics are REALLY good. The character models for your sister are kinda poo, but otherwise I'd say it comes close to MGS4 as far as visuals... Sure there's less to model and the models aren't quite as high in polys but its still pretty incredible. The controls are also good; they don't seems like it at first, but they become pretty intuitive when you finally get used to them. From what I've played its like prince of persia meets dystopia with less annoying battles.

It seems like their animation department is comprised of a couple of mentally handicapped children attempting to use MS Paint on a calculator. All of the models are actually not terrible on several of the models, but the animation is horrendous. All-around. Terribly horrible. Even with the fact that there are a bunch of different types of inhabitants in the game; you'd think the canned animation of walking, for people at least, wouldn't be as bad as it is. The worst part is that the environments are so compelling and interesting and they suck you in so well. Then, you see a guy lurching lifelessly up a hill towards you with the same shit animation as he would be running on flat ground. It completely takes you out of the experience. He might as well just float toward you with no animation.

A sandbox game is any game that you don't have to stick to a main gameplay route or story to play the game... I guess many RPGs are sandbox games in a sense...

You won't regret them. Worth every penny. My dog even ate the wires well after my warranty expired and they sent me a new wire set for free! (20 bucks plus shipping otherwise)

Heh, no, i wasn't kidding... I don't know a hell of a lot about graphics cards and one of my friends has my Crysis disc so i can't test with a new game.

What r ur system specs? I am incredibly interested in the game despite not being terribly interested in the 3 hours of Oblivion. I have a quad 2.4 GHz, 8 GB RAM and NVidia 9600(GT?) graphics card. I want to know if it'll work on that with at least medium settings. Anyone know?

Well, what is it? Traktor Scratch or something? I don't know a whole lot about this kind of thing, but I'd be willing to help out if i knew what all you have to work with.

Seriously, get Ableton Live... That is exactly what it was made for. When I saw Thomas Dolby he used it REALLY quickly and easily. I've messed around with doing that myself and though I don't fully understand how to use it to maximum effect, its very simple and easy to make simple loops. You can get it with a school discount for like 250 bucks. Also, I love it...

I've got a pair of Sennheiser HD 600s for mixing when i'm not using monitors and also have a pair of Sennheiser 280 pro's for a second opinion and casual listening. Since the 600s are open, everyone can hear me, but the 280s are perfect for on the plane and such since they completely cover my ear and absolutely no sound gets in.

This game kicks copious amounts of ass. Let me start off by saying that I seriously can't play horror games. I can't. I'm a raging pussy. Despite buying Resident Evil 4 for both PS2 and Wii, I couldn't get into it. Couple the feeling of dread I get while playing with the shitty controls and the "should I have just used that med-kit? I probably shouldn't. I should probably restart. I will probably need that later. Should I restart? Well, I shouldn't have used those two bullets on one enemy. I'll need those later. I need to restart. I don't want to restart. Dammit! I need to restart!" feeling I get while playing survival horror games. Well, damn it all, this game is so compelling that I feel, dare I say, compelled to finish it. Its taking me some time; I just got to the third chapter, but I am forcing myself to play through because the game is just that good. I had a similar feeling when I was playing Bioshock the first time. I couldn't stand playing the scary moments, but the game was so damn good I couldn't help but soldier through. I haven't been terribly interested in the story so far, mostly because I watched those prequel animations that basically seem to have spelled all of the interesting stuff out. I hope there is some sort of twist coming up, but right now, the gameplay is compelling enough to get me through it.

Head on over to VGMusic.com and you can get MIDIs for most every popular video game song there is. I usually start there first. As for the recreating a song first; I usually just pick the main melody and any other hook-based instruments out of the MIDI and then experiment with them.

Do you by chance know of another way of doing this (a.k.a. free software)? Money's a little tight at the moment and I don't have a hundred bucks to spend on that or another MIDI interface. Thanks!

Actually, my Mark of the Beatsmith mix was a bunch of ideas mashed together... Its incredibly blaring (at least to me) and I really wish I could go back and make the entire thing a bit more cohesive instead of cutting and pasting different parts together and then trying to blend them. I would say that my mix is a huge reason you SHOULDN'T try and do that. I worked on the thing for 7 months; going back and trying to revamp it every couple months. As a result it ended up sounding like the aforementioned four songs mashed together. Each piece has its pros and cons, but overall, the feel is nowhere near the cohesive whole I'd like. However, I would say that if the pieces you have from four songs are in the same musical style/feel, it shouldn't be too terribly difficult to blend them together. Switching out choruses and verses with what you like from each song shouldn't be too difficult, but I would suggest keeping a mainstay throughout the song. For instance, if you have a drum beat or melody instrument you like, keep that throughout the song instead of switching out totally. From experience, its a lot easier to accept a major change in a song if there is a small constant to keep your bearings. That's my opinion for ya, i hope i didn't ramble too far out of the topic area.

I love this song. The soundscape (har har, but seriously, no pun intended) is absolutely stellar; it perfectly captures that 80's sci-fi movie feel, yet still keeps the sound fresh and new. It actually made me go back and listen to the Bladerunner and Mass Effect soundtracks, which I once again love. Cain not only has an awesome name, but is a great guitar player and the sound works perfectly into Mattias' great synthetic tapestry o' soundliness. Also, soundliness should totally be a word. Damn English and their word exclusivityliness.

Actually, the first song that I really LOVED was "Leave You Far Behind" by Lunatic Calm. Then I heard Hybrid's Wider Angle album and I realized I wanted to make music a lot like both of them...

Awesome, I always liked your music. I'll definitely have to bookmark this.

Same here! twenny fo'th fo da winz!

It actually sounds like frequency clipping... A lot of low quality mastering and low(er) quality sound cards expose this in several prominent instruments; piano being the biggest. Since pianos have the widest harmonic frequency of any instrument (for instance if you play a middle C, you'll see sound in most every frequency in the spectrum) they tend to be really hard to record in high-quality. With a bunch of notes being played at a time, those trailing frequencies tend to build up a bunch of mud. Then, when a recording is mastered with compression and limiting it tends to compound those odd trailing frequencies and clip. Someone listening on higher-quality speakers/sound-cards/stereos can't hear these minor imperfections since the speakers can handle really complex textures, but someone listening on not as high of a quality setup will hear it a lot. ... Or it could be an incompatibility with your audio drivers and I'm just being a long-winded asshat... But I really do think that is the problem. I hear crackling a lot when I listen to piano mixes and when I'm working with piano on my low-end audio card (even when I'm using my sexy Sennheiser headphones). However, when I switch to my Mobilepre soundcard it all but disappears.

That would actually be pretty awesome, but I'm pretty sure if its VBR, it would be pretty hard to code for that. If it isn't VBR then you'd think somebody here would make an encoder like that. Of course, if there was one, everyone would probably have a 6 MB song file no matter how long the song is... Which wouldn't be a good thing.

Huh, you both must have Guitar Center Superstores or something because both of the GC's near me have jack shit in the way of nice DAW setups. In fact, I don't think I found anything that has to do with computer music at either of them... That does sound nice though, I'd like to see what a well-treated room with high-end monitors sounds like.

Well, I love my M-Audio Mobile Pre. It works as a preamp as well as a great sound card. 's very nice!

Well, there's most likely many other "better" sequencers, but it really only matters what your soundfonts, samples, synths and FX sound like if you're worried if it will compromise quality. From what I see of the screenshots it looks relatively simple, but if you are used to it, you can most likely work around many of the shortcomings of it. The only thing I would be worried about is if it does automation well; i didn't see anything that looked like automation in the pics. Truthfully though, it comes down to preference. Do you enjoy using it? Does it work the way it seems like it should (eg: MIDI arrangement shouldn't be a pain in the ass)?

Well, as long as we're talking about all of our composer friends, I guess i should mention that i know Harry Gregson-Williams, Hans Zimmer, and... Timbaland (hur hur)... intimately... VERY intimately... After that one night... That Hans is such a slut... Anyway, me having no composer friends aside, This seems cool and all, but for that price ($1500) you can get EWQLSO Platinum and then use some of your own FX, like Waves, Reaktor or anything else to get what you're looking for... Sure its a tad more expensive to get two programs if you don't already have some sort of FX bank, but the FX will work with more than just the sample library. To me, the only and i mean ONLY reason I would buy this is if its less CPU intensive, but even then I'm getting a new supercomputer so that point is becoming moot for me. Sure, the sound is good, but you can get that same sound (if not better, with multiple solo instruments to boot) for the same price with EWQLSO. Hell, Gold ($500) is worth the money alone if you don't want more instrument articulations than you need. To each their own though; I'm not knocking you for posting your opinion, seeing as how its a worthwhile alternative. Especially if you hate that EWQL is going to a fucking retarded dongle-only sampler. Those samples of yours are quite good by the way, the composition is very well-done.