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Your Music in a Video Game with Novo Interactive!


MrSneak
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Hello OC Remixers and composers!

Novo Interactive LLC is currently looking for composers to contribute to their upcoming fantasy-action title "Ye Olde Panic". We're looking for some awesome loops that are really exciting but also carry a fantasy flair.

Novo Interactive relies completely on volunteer contribution to make games, but take pride in professional quality production values. We're doing this because it's what we love to do, something I know the OC Remix community thrives on.

Check out our website and forums to check out the latest updates about "Ye Olde Panic" and Novo Interactive. We'd also love to have you as a member of our young (but growing!) community.

I have been personally involved as a listener in the OC Remix community for a while and I admire the skill and talent that goes into your work. I know many of you have what it takes to do original, professional quality music for video games. We hope the opportunity to make music in an atypical genre for a unique kind of game and studio will be attractive to you.

Any contributions that are used in "Ye Olde Panic" will provide you with a name in the credits and potential access to future opportunities with Novo Interactive. Anybody who has music in the game will also, of course, receive it for free when it's released.

In the case that there are more viable contributions than we can use, this may turn into a competition! We want our music to be as awesome as can be, so we'll pick the best of the best!

Of course, please submit as much as you want as often as you want. We'll be selecting successful contributions for the first time on January 31st and we'll see where it goes from there!

What we're looking for:

1. An overall style that deftly blends exciting, driving rhythm with a fantasy edge. Not your typical Lord of the Rings battle music, please! Electronic is definitely A-OK!

2. Lots of tracks that keep you on the edge of your seat.

3. Some more mellow tracks for shops and menus.

4. Some epic or heroic sounding tracks for title and game over screens.

Thanks for your time and I'm here to answer questions!

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Ha! Well, I wouldn't say that. But Castle Crashers and The Behemoth certainly utilized this technique to great success on Newgrounds. Something you wouldn't know about, would you "dPaladin", or should I call you "Dan Paladin!"

Okay, enough is enough, I'm just teasin'. Just remember, you should expect great things from me!

I know there's a lot of cheesy "studios" out there that are making games, or at least trying. But we're not a mod team and we're not an internet startup. We're a local group of professionals that want to do something special with our spare time. With the help of some awesome music, I think the game we're making will be something awesome for Xbox 360 and PC game fans.

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Sounds like you just want free shit from composers.

You're absolutely correct. As stated in the topic post:

Novo Interactive relies completely on volunteer contribution to make games, but take pride in professional quality production values. We're doing this because it's what we love to do, something I know the OC Remix community thrives on.
This includes myself and all of the other Novo Interactive contributors. We hope some do see this as an opportunity. Both to build a portfolio and to be part of a project that's not going into the pockets of some big monster game publisher, but will rather serve as a launch platform for an indie studio.
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What we're looking for:

1. An overall style that deftly blends exciting, driving rhythm with a fantasy edge. Not your typical Lord of the Rings battle music, please! Electronic is definitely A-OK!

2. Lots of tracks that keep you on the edge of your seat.

3. Some more mellow tracks for shops and menus.

4. Some epic or heroic sounding tracks for title and game over screens.

Thanks for your time and I'm here to answer questions!

How many tracks were you looking for total then? What about sound effects? For the benefit of people who are interested, I'm trying to get an idea of how much work you're asking for.

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... we get requests like this a lot, so a natural response is one of skepticism since so many of these games end up incomplete or just plain bad. Judging by your site, you've got quite a bit more drive than other "make music for my game lol" requests do, so the sarcasm in my first post was probably unfair...

I know where you're coming from here. I was a part of a lot of online art communities when I was younger (I am the Art Director for Novo Interactive, so Art is my primary field), and people would come in all the time looking for free art. I've also been a part of failed mod-teams and their ilk. As a founding member of Novo Interactive, I went into it already hating those things, but I also had the experience to know why they fail. I'm glad you can see, to some extent, that we may be different. We're certainly trying to be.

But still, this kind of thing generally requires a lot of information about the project. ... I'd want to know exactly how much music (number of tracks and estimates of length) would be expected like Liontamer said. But then I'd also want to know what everything (title screen and stages) looked like, so I could "personalize" the music to the scene.

Understandably. As stated in the topic post, all tracks would need to be loops. In all circumstances, the player(s) are going to be able to spend however much time they want in any given area. As a result, length isn't really an issue either and in most cases, but rather constructing the tune to be a solid loop is more important. I think this is one area where we can benefit from the creativity of individuals rather than trying to plan exactly how long each loop should be.

If composers want more direction than that, that's fine and we can talk about it, but I don't want to limit anyone either.

Regarding the looks of everything, we do have a lot of visuals to share if somebody wants more detail, but there's also some areas which currently use placeholder art and I'd expect composers to be understanding of that if they wanted to create music for those particular scenes.

I didn't know they had special kinds of music for fantasy settings.

You should! From Baldur's Gate, to The Elderscrolls, Lands of Lore, to Warhammer Online, Age of Conan and WoW, fantasy based games typically fill the air with symphonic music using wind instruments and harps, etc. Fable, Overlord, you name it. Few deviants such as the electric-guitar toting "Thief" series and the electronica ensemble of "Castle Crashers" break this mold for fantasy settings. We would like to shy away from typical fantasy soundtrack in "Ye Olde Panic", but we still want the player to feel like he's in a fantasy world.

How many tracks were you looking for total then? What about sound effects? For the benefit of people who are interested, I'm trying to get an idea of how much work you're asking for.

We can work with as little as 6 tracks but are hoping for about 19. There's four environments in the game and four phases of a day/night cycle. We'd like music for each of those (16) plus something for the shop, title screen, and game-over screens.

Sound effects are already being taken care of by a very talented sound designer, but we wouldn't turn away somebody who wants to contribute to that effort as well.

ah, how do i get sucked into all of these people's games?

pm'd.

Thank you. :) I'll be responding to PMs a little later.

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From Baldur's Gate, to The Elderscrolls, Lands of Lore, to Warhammer Online, Age of Conan and WoW, fantasy based games typically fill the air with symphonic music using wind instruments and harps, etc. Fable, Overlord, you name it.

This part I get.

We would like to shy away from typical fantasy soundtrack in "Ye Olde Panic", but we still want the player to feel like he's in a fantasy world.

This part confuses me. You want it to be different from the standard fantasy soundtrack, but still sound like a fantasy sountrack?

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This part confuses me. You want it to be different from the standard fantasy soundtrack, but still sound like a fantasy sountrack?

Yes, let me be more specific.

We're looking for music with orchestral elements, but also blended with electronica or rock elements to make it more intense, fun, exciting or upbeat.

Some examples from Newgrounds' "Waterflame":

http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/110798

http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/91476

If you blended these elements with a driving, chaotic rhythm like those found in MazeDude's "Wood Imps" and "Countdown to Death" (both found on www.mazedudemusic.com) you'd probably have the sort of music we're looking to use in our primary "stage" music.

Alternatively you could make the themes more listenable and have something that's appropriate for menus. Or something that's victorious and heroic, and that's what we'd want for our title screen or the game over results screen.

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I always enjoyed the Diablo II music. Instead of generic orchestral, it had a mellow groove to it that was mostly ambient, sometimes featuring electric guitar. Did you have something like that in mind?

[Edit] Just saw the previous post. So the mellow stuff would work for a night time setting maybe, but you would want more lively stuff for most of it.

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I always enjoyed the Diablo II music. Instead of generic orchestral, it had a mellow groove to it that was mostly ambient, sometimes featuring electric guitar. Did you have something like that in mind?

[Edit] Just saw the previous post. So the mellow stuff would work for a night time setting maybe, but you would want more lively stuff for most of it.

Diablo II style with electric guitar could totally work out. We've already received an awesome mellow orchestral piece with some cool rock drums that would work great for an environment at night.

Mellower music could also work well for certain menus or the game's shop.

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If you end up with tracks from several different people using all different instrumentations, aren't you worried that they will clash?

That's a pretty good question. Yes I've considered this, but ultimately how the music feels is much more important than making sure the instruments all match up. Many games cross a large scope of areas and time periods with widely varying instrumentation and styles, and that just adds to the ambiance, in my opinion.

Furthermore, if you ever played Morrowind on the PC (or any Xbox 360 game, for that matter), it's fairly easy to add to or replace the game's soundtrack with your own. Adding fitting music (for Morrowind like some of the Gladiator soundtrack, the Lord of the Rings, etc.) it never felt like it clashed with the stock music even though they were never intended to be together in that game.

What it comes down to is that we'll pick the tracks that fit with the game and won't include ones that don't. Hopefully I've communicated well enough what fits with the game so that composers will be composing in a style that will end up feeling cohesive.

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This is a bump from the second page with the hopes that composers with spare time over the holidays will be interested in this prospect. Thanks for your tolerance!

As an update, currently we have four composers that have expressed interest and I've already received several great tracks. If you want in on the action, be sure to shoot me a PM or Email.

Thanks for your time!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks prophet, I find myself eagerly awaiting your submissions with great fervor. As a wise man once said, "DANG! He got SKEELZ."

Snowstorm, no you don't have to be an OCRemixer. We're looking for creative and self-motivated people who are skilled enough to make music that's not irritating to listen to when looped, as well as following our creative guidelines. We're not demanding a degree or anything, it would just be nice to hear a sample or two to get an idea of a composers' capability.

As for us being a "scam", I have to chuckle a bit. As detailed, we are a non-funded but highly motivated team of local Seattle area game professionals. Currently our physical address is located at the home of our producer.

Bragon, being familiar with games is a bonus, simply because a game player will generally have experience with the kinds of music that work in games, and those that don't. But if this person can grasp that understanding, I don't have a reason to prejudice against them. At Novo Interactive, we're all about the games. But that doesn't mean we can't benefit from people who aren't necessarily into them as well.

Thanks for your questions and continued interest, everyone. The OCR community has not let us down!

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The Prophet's work on the project has been amazing. He's generated over 10 tracks since he's pledged his undying love for us.

...That's how it happened, right?

Anyway, there's always room for more in our little Novo-Interactive.com community. If you like indie games or are interested in watching a little game grow up to become a big boy, check out our forums and give us your 2 cents.

Yes, it's true. Sometimes little indie studios actually commit to their work and will actually make a game, as hard as that is to believe. Witness the wonderment with us.

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