Off Topic Chit Chat.

Discussion in 'GENERAL DISCUSSION' started by Ben Thumbs, Apr 7, 2014.

  1. Ben Thumbs

    Ben Thumbs Clone Master Moderator

    If there are any budding computer game music composers out there who'd enjoy hearing a few of their creations in a game I'm working on, send me a PM. :D
     
  2. FBI Light Rock

    FBI Light Rock Techno Fury Moderator Beta tester

    I'm looking to compose an amateur-ish piano piece pretty soon but I don't think it would probably fit for any games. :( I've learnt quite a fair of music theory online over the past few weeks, and I felt that it was time to start applying it by composing my first piano piece. Definitely going to be amateur-ish being based around chord progressions and I don't think it'll sound good at all.
     
  3. Ben Thumbs

    Ben Thumbs Clone Master Moderator

    :D Good luck with that!
    I'm after some fairly specific stuff, based of some incredibly vague ideas. :lol:

    NEED:
    Track 1: Main screen - something droning and ominous.
    Track 2: Monkey Enemy Waves - something spacey and alerting.
    Track 3: Monkey Queen Spawner Boss - something spacey and gloopy.
    Track 4: Monkey King Boss - something spacey and industrial.
    Track 5: Game Over You Lose - something spacey and distraught.
    Track 6: Game Over You Win - something spacey and triumphant.

    :shock: I've tried out a couple of free music creation programs but quickly came to the conclusion that I don't have any skill whatsoever in composing anything beyond a few clicks and beeps! :oops: :o :lol: :thumbup:
     
  4. FBI Light Rock

    FBI Light Rock Techno Fury Moderator Beta tester

    Have you heard of freelance music composers? Why don't you try to contact a few and see the best one to use. Could recommend you one. Have you heard who was the music composer of the critically acclaimed Plague Inc? It's Joshua Kaplan! You can contact him or give him a visit through these details:

    San Francisco Bay Area
    OpenHeartSound.com
    joshua@openheartsound.com

    I wish your game all the best! :D
     
  5. Ben Thumbs

    Ben Thumbs Clone Master Moderator

    Thanks for the tip!
    I've sent him an email but I'd imagine he'd be way out of the price range for my silly little game. :D

    I will definitely check out the freelance composer idea you suggested though. Hopefully I can find someone who is just starting out and is willing to do it for free initially (or cheap) and we can work out a fee for if I ever get the game finished and published etc. ;)
     
  6. Ben Thumbs

    Ben Thumbs Clone Master Moderator

    FBI I got a reply from Joshua who comes across as a super professional and nice guy but after checking out some of his stuff, quickly came to the conclusion that a pro like him is way out my league for my silly little game.

    I ended up asking Whitaker Trebella's advice who is a world famous indie game composer and developer, who I've been communicating with for a while and he recommended I check out the Reddit developer classifieds (r/gamedevclassifieds). Within a couple of hours of doing so I contacted and received replies from some guys who are just starting out into the world of game composition and look likely to be a good match. :D
     
  7. FBI Light Rock

    FBI Light Rock Techno Fury Moderator Beta tester

    Great you found your suitable composers for your game! Is your game already completed? As in, have you finished the game mechanics, physics engine, etc, aside from the music and perhaps the SFX? Perhaps you could ask the guys here or even perhaps Reddit for beta testing! :D Well, I've never done that before in my life though, willing to give it a try though. :)

    As for me, chosen the scale for composing, worked out the possible notes to use and mapped out the possible chord progressions to use. Learnt a few more advanced composing techniques here and there but probably won't use them for my first piece. Now just need to start experimenting around! Long way to go, urgh.....:( Hopefully I have the persistence to go all the way!
     
  8. Ben Thumbs

    Ben Thumbs Clone Master Moderator

    Oh hell no! Just starting off really (and I'm still very much a game dev newbie) but I wanted to find a composer early on to help set the mood of the game and to be a major part of the process. I'll send you a build for sure if it ever gets finished. ;)

    I'm in the same boat as far as hope to have the persistence to go all the way, hopefully having a good composer on board will help to keep me motivated and to not give up if I hit any major brick walls.
     
  9. FBI Light Rock

    FBI Light Rock Techno Fury Moderator Beta tester

    I see! I guessed you do have an idea of how your graphics will be like? Hopefully you don't have to hire another newbie graphic designer to help you. :) The little costs can add up. If you like, I could get help from my sibling who is pretty good at designing stuff (Well, not his profession though). Although I doubt me and my sibling knows a lot about this GAME MAKER STUDIO you are using, so you would probably have to fill us with the limitations of your program's graphic designs. :mrgreen:

    Just curious, what will you do with your finished game? I do guess that you are making this game purely for the fun of the process in creating it, not really to earn a profit for it. Honestly, its novelty value quickly fades after a while of tinkering around with the complete version, so it's important to enjoy the process of creation! :D But would you keep it to yourself, share it with a selected few, or post on some website (From the looks of it, probably your own websites you set up, like this Badland forum!) for others to enjoy as well (And perhaps your game might even spread through the net to become a sensation!)?

    I'm doing fine at my side. :) I just started composing today and doing quite okay. Faced a setback at one point in time by accidentally using wrong chord progressions, and had to re-correct a couple of chords. I won't know how nice my composition will turn out until I start adding (mostly) singular notes between the chords, but so far the chords alone sound okay. I've also mapped out the stanzas of my songs, so I can segment the chord progressions in each stanza clearly.

    Just thought we should ask each other on how much we know of the opposite side of what we are doing. Do you play any musical instruments, Lunartic? Like, do you have some kind of grade for a specific musical instrument? Also, have you learnt any kind of music theory before? (Music theory is universal throughout all musical instruments, like reading the grand staff, reading intervals, knowing the basic chords, etc) I have no grades in any instrument whatsoever, and only recently picked up music theory through the net. My musical instrument of choice is the keyboard.
     
  10. Ben Thumbs

    Ben Thumbs Clone Master Moderator

    I'm doing all of the graphics myself. It's all uber pixel stuff and is quite retro but I enjoy that style and even though I don't consider myself a pixel artist AT ALL, I've been able to knock some stuff together that doesn't look totally horrendous. :lol: Well maybe it does and I had too much fun making it so I can't see how bad it is.

    You can check out a bunch stuff I've done for it already at: www.bluethumbs.gamerz.co and let me know what you think. Don't worry about hurting my feelings, most Australians have very thick skin. :D

    These are my goals for this are:
    - Learn the skills required to complete a game that actually plays out somewhere close to how it plays out in my head.
    - Get a game published on iOS and Android.
    - Have a complete stranger say that they love my game.
    - Have a complete stranger say that they hate my game.

    And yes if I can get the game playing at least half decently, I hope to be able to post early builds of the game for people to test out and let me know what they think. All of that will be done through the www.bluethumbs.gamerz.co site. I don't want to sidetrack any of my other sites with this anymore than I already have done so.

    Nice. I'm more of an extreme / black metal guy myself but as with me and my game, I hope you can go on to create something that plays out as well as it does in your head. ;)

    I don't play any musical instruments unfortunately. I've always wanted to learn to play the bass guitar but there always seems to be something that grabs my attention more.
     
  11. Ben Thumbs

    Ben Thumbs Clone Master Moderator

    Here's the first little taste of what's to come in regards to the soundtrack, my boys enjoying a test track by Shaun Finnegan for my (now called) "Destroy the Monkeys!" game.



    That's a "very basic outline/rough non-mixed idea track" for the monkey King Boss. I asked for "something spacey and industrial" and this early mix is bang on target.
    I'm super excited about this and Shaun looks like he's going to work out as a perfect fit as the composer for this game!

    STOKED!!!

    Don't ask me where my eldest son got those impressive dance moves from, I've got no idea!
     
  12. FBI Light Rock

    FBI Light Rock Techno Fury Moderator Beta tester

    Sorry for my absence over the past few days! Had been "busy" :P going out of my house here and there to enjoy some fresh air.

    How have you been progressing, Lunartic? :) Any developments (From your Blue Thumbs site, it doesn't look like a lot, though admittedly it's great to organize stuff here amd there)? Unfortunately, haven't had the time to listen to the soundtrack you posted; but I will hear it soon.

    At my side, I've temporarily stopped composing for a while. It could be because I needed a break from composing, but more importantly I'm pursuing another part of my music passion, which includes learning how to play a new music piece. I'm not going to stress myself out by undertaking 2 things at one time, so I'm going to complete learning the piece first before I continue. However, the chord progressions for all stanzas except the Bridge is complete.

    IMO, it's quite a nice but somewhat basic music piece which unfortunately, relies on repetition. Perhaps it may sound boring to you? Its title is Phylonoe. Weird name, yeah. Came from a high quality mobile game Splice by Cipher Prime.
     
  13. Ben Thumbs

    Ben Thumbs Clone Master Moderator

    Yeah it probably doesn't look like I've been doing much, but actually I've been doing heaps! First of all I went through all of the code and stuff I've built and backed it all up backstage in the Blue Thumbs forums. I've also started to build a new main game file from scratch for the game because the other file was getting messy with stuff that I was testing, stuff that was bugged out and other stuff that was working really well. I basically spent 4 hours last night just getting all of the little things set up ready to go in the new file but woke up to some really terrible news this morning: http://bluethumbs.gamerz.co/post68.html#p68 :cry:

    Not boring at all! I like how it changes up just past 1:30 into a sort of folksy / medieval thing for a while.
     
  14. FBI Light Rock

    FBI Light Rock Techno Fury Moderator Beta tester

    Yeap, read about the creation of the main file, and I consider that organization (admittedly, massive organization!) since mostly it's just copying and pasting from the messy game file. But then again, I only know that much of game programming, so personally have no idea of how major of a breakthrough this is. In my POV, something major is adding new content to the game, since after all it's the content that is most obvious to us consumers. :)

    Have you tried the new game on the App Store? You should and compare it to your game and see where your game strikes out on it's own. Does it have a boss? Does it have, perhaps, a few fixed enemy pattern like yours? Also, you could play the game and modify some of the interesting ideas you picked out. :)

    Frankly, the number of COMPLETELY original games coming out these days is almost zero. Every game, in at least one way or another, is an adaptation of previous games, and it all boils down to the ancient Atari games. Badland was an adaptation of Jetpack Joyride (A popular mobile endless runner game), as Frogmind explained. The only thing that makes a game stand out is it's uniqueness in certain aspects. Mixing and matching here and there isn't a problem neither.

    Anyway, it's your first game, don't take it too hard even as it doesn't turn out too well. I'm taking my first musical composition in a pretty messy and unorganized way as well, so I'm not expecting the most beautiful piece, but just a decent one. Just to say, I have completely no melody in head neither; I'm just going to go with whatever that sounds nice that was created on the spot. IMO it's the best way to compose something original, since the number of piano pieces will probably influence me if I stuck with a melody from the start.

    Thanks for the compliment on my piece that I'm learning now! :D When I heard it originally in it's purest MP3 form, it was beautiful. But when I played it myself, the quality of my played piece completely pales. It's probably because I haven't added in the sustain yet. Phylonoe was my second favorite of it's album, Angelology and Algorithms. My favorite, Ganymede, couldn't possibly be played solo. I highly recommend this album and it's sister Flight of Angels for great relaxation!
     
  15. Kati

    Kati Member Frogmind

    Do you people celebrate Halloween in any way? You know get some costumes and decoration to your room/house?
    I have to say Halloween is one of my favorite holidays! This year I dress up as Pikachu (I'ts been my favorite for 2 years). I've been thinking
    of getting Spyro costume too!

    Clone costume would make my day tho!
     
  16. Ben Thumbs

    Ben Thumbs Clone Master Moderator

    I'm Australian and we don't really celebrate Halloween there, but because I run my own kids English school in Japan where Halloween is very popular I have to dress up. For years I've tried to dress up with cool 'scary' costumes but nearly all the kids for some reason show up for their Halloween lessons dressed up as princes and princesses, so this year I decided that if you 'can't beat em, join em':

    https://twitter.com/ThumbsBlue/status/5 ... 1992565760
     
  17. Kati

    Kati Member Frogmind

  18. Ben Thumbs

    Ben Thumbs Clone Master Moderator

  19. Kati

    Kati Member Frogmind

    Hello fellow Badland gamers! It's been forever since I've been here, really nice to be back! As you probably know, we are going through really much (all that console and Steam porting etc) and we have lots of new amazing stuff coming! How are you all doing? :)
     
  20. <|-|!<0

    <|-|!<0 Dr. Doomsday

    Great Kati, hope everything works out. The game will look beautiful in ps4.

    Hey, is anyone else getting the screen brightness to suddenly fade on IOS? i'm there playing badland and the brightness is dimming like 40% out of nowhere and it's really annoying and this wasn't happening before.

    Anyone else?
     

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