Johannes_von_Luck

Just a friendly bump and reply. Actually we've seen a crazy amount of sales on "Tower Assault! Curse of Zombie Island" in comparison to "iRis AG", so we've actually been really happy with the end result. We put a ton of effort into the design and construction of the game and were really happy to have initially went out and grab an OCRemix remixer to do all our audio work for us. Brad and I were even joking about making a new game with the effect of having an expanded crew of musicians, much like how the OCRemix albums are created. I think it worried Brad that he may get some upshow , but it was just hot air for the meantime. Just throwing it out there to see if anybody picks it up and runs with it. The problems with "iRis AG" were several, but, it was a good experience to have learned from and this second time around we covered a lot more ground on what things were to be done and what things were not to be touched. Things like multiple themes went out the window, and things like accurately describing gameplay mechanics, in earlier designs, in much more extended detail, worked out incredibly well. We never even thought we were going to have a game like this until we started combining a few various ideas. Another programmer/designer, James, came up with the idea of tower defense and zombies. I basically stole the idea of Zantar off of "Wayne's World" (the part about the Noah Vanderoff guy who talks about the new arcade game with the gelatinous cube that eats medieval villagers). Of course, gellatinous cubes don't really have a lot of intelligence behind them - just moving wherever - so we figured that mechanic wouldn't work quite right. Then we started playing with the concept of zombies in the role of the gelatinous cubes, and viola. We had a winrar. At any rate, Brad does have his OST up and publicly available on the TA!CZI site here: http://www.roguepirateninja.com/games/taczi/ - As always, RPNi is a HUGE supporter of OCRemix and we hope that you guys can support us as well! =)

Hey everybody, RPNi is a long time supporter and fan of OCR and its musicians, we even employ "The Prophet of Mephisto" at RPNi, and we were hoping that we could convince you all to help us out and become a fan of our new FB page: http://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/bw6ga/rogue_pirate_ninja_interactive_has_a_facebook/ If you have time we could also use an upvote or two on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/bw6ga/rogue_pirate_ninja_interactive_has_a_facebook/ Thanks guys and gals! Johannes

I'm just used to reading books that span several hundred pages. I tend to want to express myself as best I can. Lets not mention the 70,000 lines of code in egw. But I've worked on cutting it down.

Not always.

I'll try to address some of the things in here since quite a bit of people have replied. Actually I get the idea of what you're saying, but it still isn't as "dry cut" as what you're saying... There is a lot more to making games than making them not "apps". The platform that you're on still has limitations and expectations that are different than that of console or desktop. Although lets not argue technicalities - I know what you're getting at and agree with you. Really? I'm really sorry that you thought we had actually invented digital pie and punch... I mean, wasn't it already obvious that it was a joke considering that it had "*smirk*" italicized next to it? (You saw the small print disclaimer too, right? ) Oh well can't please everybody. Thanks for helping though man. Congrats on grabbing the code and thanks for the reply man! Nobody freakin plays on hard . Kudos. I want to answer the idea behind this below, but just to summarize: You have to get 4 blocks of the same color next to each other in any zig-zaged form (diagonally, horizontally, etc.). Depending on difficulty, blocks are worth different amounts (easy: 50pts, normal: 75 pts, hard: 100 pts). If you reduce blocks that are stacked on top, they count for 2x that amount (in addition to the base blocks). The best way to get the maximum amount of points is to stack them around in a circular pattern and then take out the base. If you remove all blocks off the base, you get another 2x on top. If you get too much "mass" on the screen, then it's game over. Now that I think about that, damn, that is too complex. Aww well more on that in a sec... Yes and no. Yes, we are telling OpenAL to adjust the pitch as the mass bar fills to try and adjust the tempo (well... pitch...), but No, Apple's implementation of OpenAL does not behave correctly and doesn't do what we told it. I've tried playing with it for quite a while, with no avail. I don't have a lot of knowledge of signal processing, so we managed the best we could with this one. I could essentially add in a max filter, but, I really don't think the time to fix is warranted. Again, I want to comment about this below in more detail. Thanks man! I really appreciate that. We tried our best we knew how. That's a secret. But more about our process below. That was only in hard mode right? Yeah, I noticed that a bit myself, and, really it didn't seem like it was a complete deal breaker at the time (and I was running out of time) so we just put it in and went with it. Rarely anybody ever plays it on hard mode anyways, but I do know the particular aspect you're referring to. And finally, I wanted to talk a bit about the process involved in this game, since it is relevant to answering the story behind the story of why some of the things you see are the way they are. First, I should probably mention that we're not going to proactively do many updates on this simply because it isn't worth the time to put into it. Not so much in terms of not supporting customer interest, but because the customer base is really small and has not generated enough real monetary interest to justify the business decision to further work on it. However, I'll pass it along to Sam, and see if he wants to take up any of those things as a side project (never know). But of course, a lot of the issues you expressed were not so much "as designed" but rather an issue of "mis-design". You see, we did a game that we all liked and thought sounded cool on paper, but there in lied the problem: We built a game that we, a professional software engineer, a professional artist, and a professional musician, thought was interesting. We did not do enough prototyping of the concept to begin with (to figure out the gameplay was interesting but potentially too difficult). We did not pair it with consumer interests, or for that matter really try to figure out what the market wanted. Of course, there are a few people who have done things that way and have been met with success.... Seriously, there has been a lot of people who have done their best to try and make something they themselves like, and have made bank, simply because their interests overlap with the markets. It is actually a running debate between myself and our main artist whenever or not we should be continuing that flow of logic, because its a trade off mechanism: If we do what we personally enjoy, we will put every ounce of effort into it and force it to have the best amount of polish possible. But, the trade off is that if we make something that is for the market, there is more potential to nail a product people other than us want to buy - what we like does not mean the market likes it too. You can't really have it both ways, but you have to find a way to compromise and make something you are going to enjoy making and thus put the utmost amount of effort in, while at the same time making something that is going to work in the market. It really is a both-and world in this case. On the flip side, we have really learned a lot from this entire experience. We have already actually heard your exact same criticisms (obviously not in the same verbiage, but same content), and it's good to know that we're on the right track... We've taken a lot of hints from feedback and have spent a huge amount of effort to work on a lot more things in pre-production, including completely revamping the design process and nailing it down on our wiki in an established and methodical way (even prophet here has commented several times on how pumped he is to do our next title ). This basically bottoms into an issue of ensuring that the work effort we're putting out is going to make the cut in the end, because, well, if we spent more time prototyping, testing, drawing up more concept artwork, and just basically really getting to know the game exactly before writing a line of code or a single note or a single art asset, maybe we would have a better chance at really nailing something fun. I really appreciate the input we've received thus far from everybody (126 replies as of this writing), because what we plan on doing is matching up our designs and doing an actual product analysis, part of which is taking our design and standing it next to our survey responses... I mean, obviously there may be some form of error involved (say others who did not take the survey had a different idea than the survey said were actually in the majority (which is statistically less likely as number of respondents grows, but never know - we could just wind up targeting a specific "internet gamer" market by accident)), but we are worried about people we can actually market directly to telling us what to make anyways. Other aspect of course is just an issue with correctly iterating through a design, modifying it to better fit different aspects at work, exploring different gameplay avenues, etc., but that's another post entirely. Okay, sorry for the wall of text. I hope that is a good reply to your input though, and thanks so much for coming back and writing what you thought.

No please don't eat the cat. My gf would be very sad. I still don't know why Brad calls me "boss"... It's not like I sit there with a whip forcing him to mix for me... oh wait... At any rate, a shameless self bump with an iRis AG promo code: AJKPKRKAKFKM (note: only works in US iTunes store) Thanks everybody for taking the time to go do our little survey. We really do appreciate the help and really look forward to seeing some trends form that will help us make a better game. Feel free to post replys commenting on anything else you think about that we didn't have on the survey (that we should of). Also, I freaking love OCR. It's one of the most common types of music I listen to while coding. Thanks to all the mixers out there that make this site awesome.

A long while back I, with no posting history, posted a request for a musician for an eager young start up... We had no code written, no artwork done, and no music... I came in with my head bowed, and my heart open. When you do this, a lot of people immediately say, 95% of these things never go anywhere. And, well, they're right. But, we did go somewhere. Brad took a chance and, we made it to the end. Thank you OCRemix. Thank you for being here. Thank you all for what you do. Thank you for taking the time out to trust a rogue forum posting. I contacted DJP and proudly have the OCRemix logo in our credits: =)

Excellet! Thank you sir.

Which other one were you referring to? Actually a lot from Ailsean is actually pretty good guitar. I've been listening to a lot of FF4 Torian Love Song and Castlevania Vampire Spanker. The DD one posted earlier is now my fav. =)

Hello everybody, I'm looking for a variety of different OC remixes that have good guitar playing, somewhere from OCR800 onwards. If anybody can point me to some good remixes it would be much appreciated.

lol, I'm not a robot and do not need a robot to confirm that I am not a bloody robot. Domo erigoto mister roboto. [segmentation fault]

Wow, I wasn't expecting so many people to be interested. Very much a relief. For those of you who have mailed me and PM'ed me, I should have a good detailed reply going back at ya. Really exciting to see such a great community here. =)

Hey everybody, I just want to say that I've been a huge fan of OC Remix ever since I first picked it up. I listen to a lot of the mixes on the site as I code, and can identify a good number of them within the first few beats. =) I've always loved some of the style that some of the remixers here put into their songs, and that is why I was going to come here, and hopefully without making a total jackass of myself, ask if somebody might be interested in helping out a small Indie game development team attempting to make a game for the iPhone/iPod Touch. You see... I don't want, at all, to make anybody here feel as though I'm saying "need musics now, thxs" - I assure you that is not the case, not at all. I wouldn't be posting here if I thought that I would only get flames in reply. The development cycle we have laid out is now just starting, and I am hoping to secure some talent early on. However, do note that this is a paid project - as long as the project comes to completion and starts making money. Depending on how much effort I can offer a fixed sum or, if warranted, profit sharing. More detailed discriptions of payment and such can be supplied later. Currently we have a small team of about 5 or so guys. I will be graduating this December with my M.S. in Computer Science, along with 3 other programming friends I've worked with while in school helping out part-time. I have another great friend of mine, a 3D artist from Sweden, helping doing the artwork at full-time. He's done plenty of modding and independent artistry work for a variety of different projects in the past, including some of mine. This is now my third major project that I've worked on and have led. I can supply screenshots and such of prior work, if that is at all an issue. I've also worked professionally as a programmer for military-based 3D applications and a few different software companies around the way. We're looking for somebody who would like to get their name out. Being Indies ourselves, we know first hand what the playing field looks like, and how competitive things are. Personally, I feel that there is a lot of un-tapped talent out there, with the corporate mongol's nose up in the air and unable to see some of the great work that new players to the game are capable of. That's one of the big reason I love OC Remix, and hope maybe somebody out there might be interested in helping out. I would love to have a great theme song to be shipped out. =) I can be reached via e-mail at jonathan.wolf _AT_ gmail.com, or via MSN messenger at jonathanw _AT_ hotmail.com. Thanks for your time, Johannes von Luck

It really is a paradoxical medium... Even me, as a programmer, thinks of programming as a sort of art form (especially some of the more advanced 3D math and how it comes together)... But I also think of it as a construction process... There is a lot of different personalities that come together to really pull it all off. A game designer (or director, whichever one perfers) that creates the game and its mechanics, programmers that write the game code, 2d/3d artists who create the models and textures, sound and music artists who create the game sound and music, and then you have subgroups and combinations of each. You have screen writers, dialogue writers, game mechanics design, AI coders, sound/graphic coders, network coders, tools coders, game mechanics coders, texture artists, modeler artists, animation artitst, sound FX artists, VO talents, music artists, and then some more... I know people probably have biasisms as to which is more important (I'm sure on OCRemix, it's more concenered with the sound/music, on GameDev.net more concerned with the programming, etc.), but I honestly see everybody as equals who chip in their talent to create something new and different - an impossibility without artistic and creative minds. I think we can all agree - without art, games would become stale, the same thing over and over again, but without concentrated construction and hard work, games will never make the finish line. I think it's more about finely tuning the talent you have available to work in a collaborative way - no one person is able to do it all, but together we can do anything. That is almost an artform in and of itself as well. It's all just a healthy balancing act.

"Not a good strategy to just waltz in and say "I am thinking about making a game, need music plz."" - I couldn't agree more. Anybody who would do this sort of thing would be, at the least, a complete jerk. For me though, it is surprising that more Game companies (Indie included) don't come to places like these sniffing out new talent. Some of the remixes I've found on this site are nothing short of phenomenal - even if it they are still just are following a set music score. I think there is a lot of untapped talent here. "Though, no one is likely to be interested unless you have a demo, or at least something to show how far you are in development." - Again, I think you're dead on here as well. Publishers don't even like handing out anything to any venture that doesn't already have a viable demo ready to go. Even getting to that stage is a hardship, especialy with the amount of detail that goes into the development process. It is almost a sort of deadlock - you can't get help unless you have something, and you can't have something unless you get help. It's a one man ship up to the point that you've done 3/4 of the work... Then everybody jumps on-board and expects equal shares... :/ "And, speaking third-handedly, there are plenty of people here trying to make it in either game music or film, and they desperately need something real on their resume to prove their clout so... it's a symbiotic relationship. Win wins all around." - Ya know, that truly is the one thing that holds a lot of people back, just being able to be immersed and included in an actual project. It seems, at least to me, that certain people have a lot of passion and want to get into it, it's just that they aren't offered the opportunities, or perhaps rather don't know the right people. I know I've been in that stage for a long while now - just trying to get a few people to help me out with the stuff I'm trying to work on has been a real pain. But, I'm reassured that once I get some fancy graphics being produced, things will improve, as I found out with one project that, sadly, kinda died out due to implementation problems: http://korps.sourceforge.net/images/dwip_cap53.jpg http://korps.sourceforge.net/images/dwip_cap55.jpg Thanks for the replies though. Nice to see that the community here on OCRemix is level headed and not too terribly hostile to stupid threads like these .