Arcana

This song is nothing more than rapping on top of a slightly redone Schala loop. The rapping's solid though, this guy definitely knows what he's doing. If you do something else like this with more rearrangement, I can envision it being an easy pass. NO

How'd you get started? Did you approach it with the mindset of, "I want to start a business, I like DJing, and I've identified a need in the market" or was it more like some buddies going to you and saying, "Hey Biznut you know a lot about music and have gear right? Think you can do this for us? We'll even pay you" and then the light went off in your head? Or is there a third and fourth and fifth option that I haven't thought of?

As pretty as this game is, I actually found that many of the backgrounds were somewhat bland. There were not enough unique occurrences going on in the world. I actually found Gran Pulse interesting for that Reason (unlike everyone else) because I got to see some of the Famed "brutality" of the world via monsters kicking the crap out of each other.

Logic Studio also costs $500, Sonar costs $500, Reason & Record costs $400. As far as professional audio software goes, Cubase is pretty much in a comparable price range as many other programs. If you're not sure you want to splurge on the whole system, there's a "cheaper" version of Cubase out there which probably doesn't include a few plugins and allows you to record fewer things at the same time. bLiNd and Rayza also use Cubase so it's seen some use in this community. In fact you can see a bit of the interface if you check out Rayza's screencasts. That'll give you a sense of what it looks like. I used to use Reason, and then I went to Logic. As far as programs go, Logic is much more similar to Cubase than it is to Reason, and I found that there were a few advantages with Logic over Reason personally. The biggest one of course is the availability of VSTi/AU plugins; if you're serious at all about making music then the expandability and the ability to specialize through VSTi is pretty mandatory. On the flip side, Reason is an extremely popular and capable program because of the fact that it's efficient, has a really good sound, and is relatively easy to start learning with. Reason's default sounds are extremely good, and the versatility you can get with Reason's synthesizers is unparalleled. Overall it came down to two things for me: interface, and expandability for choosing Logic Studio over Reason.

Depending on your Program you migt be able to beat match on an audio part that is played live, and use that to trigger the tempo changes in your track.

More like "it's cheap because it sucks"? Try finding a North American cart of Earthbound or Secret of Mana for $10. (BTW if you do, mail it to me and send me a bill).

Reboot the franchise = create an alternate universe for it (a recent example is the live-action Star Trek directed by J.J. Abrams). Often that also means discarding things that were previously held in the series as tradition. I don't really follow Castlevania much but I know people who are huge fans and might not actually be thrilled with the idea of a "reboot". So that's why I was prepared to come in with a whole bunch of vitriol to crap all over this. But, but look, they hired REAL ACTORS.

I was about to blast the idea of a "reboot" as being potentially destructive to the entire heart of Castlevania (look at what the Wii fighting game did to the characters) but then I heard Patrick Stewart's voice in the trailer. Now this game is epic.

I would argue that, most RPGs age poorly unless they have a particularly legendary battle system, or an immensely complex story that has many subtleties in writing and plot direction. About the only RPGs I can think of that I would still play and really enjoy for the battle system alone is Final Fantasy Tactics, Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, and possibly Tactics Ogre. Almost no RPG would gain 'instant classic' points based solely on the storyline. While a lot of the games have stories that are "good the first time through", many of them simply do not have the writing or the acting to back them up. Someone brought up art direction as something that makes a game transcend time. I believe that this is true but only second to the story and the battle system. For instance, Kartia is a still-unknown game that I love to death because its writing is extremely solid (seriously, it has pretty much zero translation errors in an era of games wrought with translation difficulty), but also because its art direction really backs up its storytelling. The battle system kind of sucked, though. But I don't know if I could play it a second or third time without getting bored, since I know what the story is like already. I think something that is key here is the effect of playing a game versus replaying a game. There are many games that I can recommend playing without replaying, and in fact I would say the vast majority of single-player games are best played once, and then never again.

As someone who's still really learning, these could be a great learning tool. I recently collaborated with someone who does have a great deal of knowledge of chord progressions and music theory. She gave me a chord progression, I produced the song and came up with something that actually sounded really good. I think that there's three benefits here. First, if you don't have any theory knowledge, you can sit down and read some things based on what you've been given. I keyed in something and got: The progression currently shown is a ( I - IV - ii Add 9th - V - vii half dim 7th ) progression in the key of C Major. If you don't know theory, you'll have a lot to look at based on that phrase alone. What are the Roman numerals? What's a 9th chord? What's a half-diminished 7th chord? Second, it allows you to learn what "certain chords" sound like. I personally have a terrible ear and can't detect chord tones easily from listening to songs. But, if you give me a progression and then give me a "sounds like?" question, I'll probably be able to figure it out. So you can get a sense if the song is uplifting, or dramatic, or meandering, or whatever. Finally, if you like music but don't really want to work on the composition side of things (!!!), a chord progression generator allows you to focus on production without you getting tripped up on bad notes or whatever. But, I remember one question long ago on these boards that went along the lines of "Should I compose first with harmony, or melody?" Overwhelmingly, the answer was that you should avoid learning to compose harmony first, because then your melodies will end up sounding generic and boring, which is a problem. Another issue with that generator is that it only appears to give you 2-6 chords at a time, so if you want to make a song with more than 4 chords (you do, right?) you'll either have to end up plugging stuff into the generator multiple times (leading to a lack of unity in your song) or you'll have to actually learn how to fill in the rest of the song.

I can actually understand why a particular director or developer would be against a game going multiplatform, mostly due to implementation issues. If you as a director have a vision, then going cross-platform risks compromising the vision (through making various graphic and control sacrifices). You need to consider dumbing down your game to meet the lowest common denominator. However, the XBox 360 and the PS3, from an end-user standpoint, have analog features across the systems. XBox 360 has memory cards and hard drives, PS3 has hard drives. XBox 360 has soft squishy buttons on its controller, PS3 has soft squishy buttons on its controller. PS3 has full HD, XBox 360 doesn't quite have full HD but it's close enough for 66% of people not to notice a difference. About the only appreciable difference now is that the XBox 360 requires disc switching compared to the PS3. And, XBox Live! is much more mature than PS Home, but I don't see online connectivity affecting a single player RPG much. There's very little reason nowadays not to release cross platform, unless your game uses some niche feature of a system, or if there's some kind of political reason (ex: exclusivity deals).

May your days be ever filled with good trance and electro-house.

I was curious about this so I looked this up and found: http://kotaku.com/5518301/final-fantasy-xiii-ps3-nearly-doubles-xbox-360-version-in-us-sales Thus for April, in the USA: PS3: 828,200 XBox360: 494,300

I wanted one of these because you could play games with one hand and take notes or talk on the phone with the other. This was back before all RPGs came with built in dungeon maps and auto stat previews for items.

Have a good birthing day ms maelie jade.

Considering that web cams and 3D glasses are things you are seeing in use today even now, I can understand why they decided instead to go for R.O.B., the Power Pad, and the Activator. I liked watching the 80s commercials though, those were pretty fun.

I quit using Reason at 3 and haven't upgraded to Reason 4 or Record. Is there a compelling reason to do it now? I kind of got tired of having to navigate a huge rack of equipment with an insane combination of wires in the back, and trying to figure out which automation tracks matched to which mixer channels when doing mixing and effects.

Your studio monitors can probably push up to 128-135 dB. If you're testing an audio set up, make sure that the volume levels are turned down low because if you blast something from them by accident you'll nearly knock yourself out. I heard a story along those lines from a friend who was trying to set up his mixing desk and he didn't realise he had all of the levels turned up to maximum, played a test sound, and basically stood there dazed for a few seconds. He felt winded as a result of the sound.

Cheers Fratto. You can grab a drink from the "Post Something Random In This Thread", there's a large variety to choose from.

bLiNd serves up some nice hard stuff in this track. But yet it's so refreshing and bright. There's so much good texture to this song and a lot of subtle things that go in in the background. There's so much talent in this guy, I'm glad that he's so willing to share it.

Okay I think I managed to rectify a bunch of stuff with some advice. Part of the problem was actually just the mix itself, there were a lot of tracks that weren't levelled well, I had a lot of effects applied poorly, and it all and contributed to a muddy, dull sound. I believe it's loud enough now. I'll post excerpts later this week for comparison just to make sure.

Uematsu said specifically that he was greatly inspired by Koichi Sugiyama, of Dragon Quest fame, and that in Japan Sugiyama is considered the grandfather of video game music. Uematsu was specifically asked to produce something that sounded different from Sugiyama when he was hired for Final Fantasy. But there are also little differences in video game music compared to when composing music for a movie for example. Hardware limitations, compression of files (MP3/OGG for example made a huge influence in PC and console music because it meant you could now have fully-recorded soundtracks), the need for looping, and the need to record enough music to last a player tens of hours (compared to the 2 hours or so for a movie soundtrack).

Out of all the things to complain about, I don't think inconsistent characterization would be the thing to highlight. To me the characters seem quite consistent in the way they act and in their motivations. Your issues with plot pacing, to me, are much more tangible. There's a particular event about halfway through the game that probably should have been foreshadowed to the player much earlier. They tried it with a few techniques, but it wasn't nearly obvious enough.