The Coop

Ooooooooooo... essay questions! 1. What first encounter with VGM? What kind of effect do you remember it having on you? My first memorable encounter with the bloops and bleeps of yesteryear was with my Atari XE's . It has a funk-inspired, jazzy intro song that's catchy as hell, and got stuck in my head for a while afterward.2. At what point do you remember considering yourself a VGM fan (or OCR fan) in relation to your first VGM experience? I probably became a VGM fan after hearing the soundtrack to the arcade game, Darius. More specifically, "Captain Neo" ("Cosmic Air Way" was a close second). This was back in the mid-80s, and that song really captured my attention. It's short, but good and memorable (enough that I eventually did a remix of it... which is on this site). And while the rest of the soundtrack was good as well, it was that particular song that really got me paying attention to VGM. Then came my SEGA Genesis and games like Thunder Force II and Ghouls 'N Ghosts to cement the love. 3. How did you hear about OCR? I heard about OCR back when I was a relative newbie on the now dead version of the website, VGMix. It was the beginning of 2002, and I'd been submitting remixes on VGMix for a couple of months when someone on the forums there mentioned OCR as a website similar to VGMix. I came by and checked OCR out, and eventually signed up in May of 2002. 4. What do you feel would be some non-musical examples (fan art, videos, interpretive dance, horse racing, rock-throwing) of the OCR society? Well, it kind of depends on what you want out of the website. If you just want to make remixes without having to potentially butt heads with the OCR judging standards, you have various fan competitions and occasional projects like "An OverClocked Christmas" that aren't official site projects, and thus are open to everyone, regardless of their talent level. There are signature making threads, where people can use their artistic talents to produce small images for people to use on the forums. There also used to be fan art competitions, where you'd have a couple of weeks to draw something relating to a game/game series. There are Workshop forums to post original music and remixes where you can get feedback, a forum called "Off Topic" to just shoot the shit about anything, and of course, all the officially posted remixes and remix albums to grab. Then there are all the discussions taking place that range from talking about games and music, to helping people with relationships, various kinds of mental or physical illnesses and treatments, even finding answers to niggling little things that bug you sometimes (like trying to remember a movie or game title). The forums are filled with topics that range all over the place, so even if you're not into game music or remixing, you'll still likely find something to talk about at least once in a while. 5. How has VGM and OCR affected your life? VGM got me to pick up a keyboard so I could learn to play the game music I liked, and that led to me writing my own original music. As for OCR, it was in the then-called "Unmoderated" forum that I first learned how to do pixel art (for a signature I wanted to use), and I've since gotten better at pixel work. So basically, the two things introduced me to a pair of new areas to be creative in.

There's always some kind of legal agreement with something like this; whether it's between the company publishing the remixes and the copyright holder(s), or between the remixers themselves and said copyright holder(s). So yeah, either the person you're talking about has a legal contract under his belt in some fashion (is it Smooth McGroove?), or he's going to eventually be getting at least a C&D order.

Walking into someone's house unannounced, and digging through their stuff looking for food, items, and money. ... Honest!

I haven't seen a Marvel movie since "Iron Man 3," but I want to see the second Thor and CA ones. I love how they all get connected, yet remain their own tale as well. Sucks having to wait for the new CA to hit DVD though, since it's been getting rather good reviews. But, that's the price you pay when you can't hit a movie theater in my area without taking out a loan first

- "Resurrection by Erection" - "Raise Your Fist Evangelist" - "Sanctified With Dynamite" - "Son Of A Wolf"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWbfztup-6Q - "Cardinal Sin" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poz7ilMaRCI&feature=kp - "Secrets Of The Sacristy" A pair of tunes from each of Powerwolf's last three albums (they have five). Basically, it's German power metal, a touch of symphonic metal and choirs, songs about werewolves/vampires/demons, and some story telling and various kinds of religious themes. It's all done with a dose of irony and humor as well, making for songs that are just... well, catchy and enjoyable. Attila Dorn's got a solid voice for this stuff, and the Greywolf brothers deliver good riffs and licks. Yes, it's cheesy and in some ways silly (go look up how they dress for their shows). But the music's good, and instead of heavy-handed messages about personal and world issues, the songs are just fun. Whether or not these guys are obscure or "gems" is open to conjecture, but I'd never heard of them until last year, and they've been around since 2003. So I figured I'd post them.

Nope. It's been canceled. We all just forgot to tell you

Yeah. It deemed my song worthy as well. NO TAKE BACKS!

Then I suggest that the next time they do a trial run with JUDGANATOR 2.0, they run some of my old VGMix 1-era remixes through it before going public with it. If anything like "Chaotic Space," "Goin' Down," or "Resurrection" passes, there's a problem

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xil51mt5nogt9vk/wtf_JUDGANATOR.png Sorry it took so long. I had to dig through my browser history to find it once I was done with dinner. But, there's your screenshot link, DS. As I said, something's amiss. And yes, I know, my printer's almost out of ink.

If you'd ever heard that old remix of mine, you'd know that part was very serious feedback. Something must have happened with one of the algorithms it uses to evaluate the music, if that song got through its rigid standards. The thing even gave me this message to boot... I mean, what else would SNK Engrish mean if not that something's gone haywire?

I think Judganator is drunk. It accepted my old Hellfire remix, and asked if I could give it Skynet's number

At first I read that as, "have ALL the herpies," and I thought, What a horrible thing to wish someone on their birthday. ... Yeah, I need some rest.

A touch late, but...

.gnorw ti gniod er'uoY

The number of keyframes never made a difference. The speed curve always has that uptick resulting in a speed up. And since the tangent bars can only slide to the right and left (not in a circle like in so many other programs), they're of no use in dealing with this.

So here's the situation. I've been working on a project in After Effects 7, and so far, things have gone well. However, I've run into a situation that seems like it should be mind-numbingly simple, yet is proving to be an absolutely infuriating pain in the ass. I made a kaleidoscope using a photograph. The project has the kaleidoscope zooming in up close to one section of it, where a portion of the image is scrolling by going right to left. When the scene's done zooming in, I have the picture I used for the kaleidoscope popping in and replacing the kaleidoscope seemlessly, and scrolling along right to left at the same speed the kaleidoscope was scrolling. What I want to have happen next, is get the picture to gradually slow to a stop. Seems like a simple enough idea, right? But... http://thecoop2.webng.com/AE7_problem.png This in the speed graph from the section I'm having trouble with in AE 7 (just for reference, the numbers on the right tell you how many pixels per second the object is moving, and each vertical line is one sixth of a second). The pink line is what the program is doing to the picture speed-wise. As you can see with that pink line, the graph shows the scrolling speed abruptly increasing at the second keyframe (keyframes are the yellow squares), which is very noticeable when I export the project. I don't want it to increase like that at all. I want it to go from its current scrolling speed, gradually to a stop, like the green line I drew in. I've tried all sorts of settings in the program, dug around the Web, and all of the things I've tried result in a speed jump when I apply "Easy Ease In" to the third keyframe where the picture stops. Linear, Bezier, Auto Bezier, Continuous Bezier, Hold... no combination on the shown keyframes seems to get rid of the speed up at the second keyframe. And adjusting the keyframe tangent handles doesn't help at all, as they just make the speed up curve more abrupt, or make the slow down curve much less gradual. So my question is, can I get this object to slow down like what the green line does? Is there a way to eliminate this damned speed up after the second keyframe, and get the object to smoothly slow to a halt? There has to be something simple I'm missing, and it's driving me crazy

This band will have more line up changes than Megadeth. Just you wait

For me, modern video game music is quite good, but it's a different beast from the olden days in one major way; short, hook-filled melodies. What's always struck me about them thar olden days, was the way the 8-bit and 16-bit games often had their music handled. The composers knew the songs could only be so long due to memory space, and that the music would likely be repeating a lot throughout a given level. So, they seemed to work harder on making open-ended, memorable, and enjoyable melodies, harmonies, and such, with what little space they had available on the carts of the time (well, the good composers did anyway). They had to really focus on keeping the player interested with each 1-2 minute music loop, and that pressure vanished when memory space became less of a hurdle as time went on (both on PCs and consoles). Once space wasn't like a concrete barrier limitation anymore, the songs seemed to evolve into more "movie soundtrack"-like compositions, and left the short-hook melodies behind more often than not. Now, that's not to say that newer game music doesn't have it's own familiar melodies (Halo's opening chant), that older games didn't also make "normal" structured songs (Master of Monsters), or that some modern games don't try to capture that hooky melody feel. But more often than not, the music back in the 8/16-bit eras were short, hook-filled, and the songs didn't really have a real beginning or end a lot of times. They just looped forever. And it's that shortened quality, and open endedness, that seems to inspire people more. Yeah, nostalgia plays a role too, as the idea of remixing the game tunes you grew up with is quite appealing. But I really do think that the compositional shift I mentioned also affected the remixing possibilities in a small way. With older game tunes, there's room to make those familiar melodies and hooks grow and expand in new ways, without leaving them behind. You can take a one minute loop, and change it so that it's familiar, but different, as the song progresses. That's a very different trait to play with when compared to remixing a four minute song that doesn't really repeat throughout its duration. And I think more people are just drawn to the so-called "growing loop" idea I described. I know I am. I know people will disagree with me, but that's my take on it. And I do remix newer VGM. I just did a remix of Trine's "Crystal Caverns" for the seventh volume of An OverClocked Christmas (which you can hear right here).