Club Silicon

Tyrian fan sites and Open Tyrian

Ladies and Gentlemen, Tyrian was my first project. It involved many talented people, primarily my old friend Jason Emery. 

But in addition along the way Epic was instrumental in making it what it was. Robert Allen, our producer, found Daniel Cook, the most incredible 2D artist I've known to this day, Bruce Hsu, another great 2D artist, and I found the likes of the great Arturo Sinclair, who wanted to turn the game into much greater a production than it was meant to be.

Also, Robert dug up a fantastic bit of "super" AdLib compatible audio code called "Loudness" which enabled just about any PC at the time to sound like a Sega Genesis on steroids. At the time, that was a big deal.

All of this wouldn't matter now and might have been forgotten if it wasn't for the people responsible for these sites:

http://code.google.com/p/opentyrian/

http://members.iinet.net.au/~vannevar/tyrian/

Mindless2112 and whoever runs the other site, my profound thanks.

Essentially it blows my mind to know that without any effort except giving away the source code (and possibly some question answering) on Jason's part, the game has been ported to things like the FRICKIN' AMIGA and the PSP and DS. The FRICKIN WII, for crying out loud! This game was released almost FIFTEEN years ago. Thanks really don't cut it when you have people this enthused with the game after all these years.

Rock on, fellas. Keep it alive!

Under construction

Hello all!

I'm currently looking at the world of widgets, and trying to get one that will play all the original MODs I wrote along with all the game music I've written. I think that'd please a few people on here. It won't be downloadable or purchaseable for copyright reasons, but at least you'll be able to listen to it. Besides, folks on here already know how to get it anyway. :)

But an additional plus is the ability to listen to my video game music greatest hits collection. It's only about 4gb, but I believe that I should be able to narrow it down and do some sort of more regular weekly posting without having to do a full blog post.

Yes, yes, album is coming along too, and I need to get on the ball with that as well as the badass remix of a Deus Ex tune that Jimmy penned up. Hell, it's almost perfect as is but I'd be a fool not to get in there and mess around. What an inspiring remix.

Thanks for your patience. The current system I have on here only takes posts visible on the main page, which won't work too well.

The death of 3d Realms

I figure that you would all appreciate an update as well as a few words to make you chuckle.

3D Realms as I'm sure most of you know was a video game company. They recently posted something on their news site titled "Goodbye", and news sites worldwide have documented their closure:

http://www.3drealms.com/

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23518

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6209271.html?tag=result;title;2

3D Realms spawned from Apogee Software. Jason Emery and I pitched our game "Tyrian" to Apogee and Epic Games years ago. Epic brought it on under Safari Software and eventually made it a full Epic Game. Scott Miller and George Broussard were interested in Tyrian but understandably had two other projects they were interested in funding already: Raptor and Stargunner.

While both are fine shooters, Tyrian eventually ended up getting higher review scores than either of these, but the demo Scott and George saw was sub par, well before we got one of the best pixel artists in the business. We settled on a contract with Epic and parted communications with Scott and George with good grace.

Quite a few successful franchises arose from Apogee, which soon spun off a 3D Realms division to publish games such as "Duke Nukem 3D". At the time, id software was at the top of the heap with Doom and Quake, but eventually Epic took hold as the shareware publisher to rise to the top for sales as well as reviews, in addition to its hugely popular Unreal engine. 

Jason and I were lucky to be with Epic during its early days of Unreal but it wasn't long before George asked if I'd like to work on Duke Nukem Forever. The project had already been steeped in legend since it had been six years since it was announced. But I had thoroughly enjoyed the entire Duke Nukem series. I politely declined since at that point I was starting a family and things seemed secure at Ion Storm. Sadly this wasn't true. But seven years later we must bid 3D Realms a fond adieu.

Everyone wants to know why it took so long. I can hazard an educated guess. Ultima 9 took a really long time too. Mostly because of technology and gameplay expectations. People wanted it to be the "killer app" of RPGs, and it almost was really, but it took so long to get there that by the time it was released it was already dated. This is a huge challenge in games, and I feel DNF suffered the same fate. Too much redesign and too much technology change. After all, 3DR was caught in the same issues we all were who had grown up with previous generations. Those generations taught us that it was easier to iterate on tech within an acceptable release cycle while working in our parents bedrooms than to manage salaries for 30+ people and do the same thing.

No moral to all this really. But given that the album IS dragging on longer than the original release date, here's an update:

I believe I've found a vocalist. However it's not as easy to record a vocalist as it is to sit down at your PC and track. I need to provide scratch vocals which I plan to do this week, then actually record the guy which costs more than a couple of bucks. But if all goes well this album is going to take an enormous leap forward.

Heatwave Interactive now has a new website. No product announcements as of yet but boy does the website look better. And I was involved in a small way in its launch, since I am now a director of Creative Services, which includes, audio, video and web at the company. Onward and upward!

I leave you with this: if you can find it, read Murder Ink.

Peace!

Overclocked Remix

John Romero introduced me to this site quite some time ago and it is a crying shame that I never gave it serious props until now.

OCR. Bask in its glory.

For years composers have felt inspired to rewrite (or more accurately remix) their favorite game music. I never thought much of the idea since all I ever wanted to do was take 8 bit tunes such as Metroid and make them fuller. Little did I know this in and of itself is a form of remixing.

But what was really cool about this? Well, possibly most of you have heard a song done in a different way that makes you say "huh, interesting", such as "Enter Sandman" by Metallica (the original being a heavy metal song) sung in the style of Frank Sinatra. It actually makes a good song in both genres oddly enough.

So take that and turn it on its ear for game music. Final Fantasy tracks turned into smooth jazz. The great Jake Kaufman "Virt" wrote one of his famous Contra remixes here, and that remix was so popular Konami asked him to score Contra 4.

Yeah, my stuff is on there, and there'll be at least a couple of tunes to follow. But what is REALLY cool about it is that there is a TON of music available for free. Not to mention detailed reviews of most of the songs that really are well written.

Just peruse it. Even if it takes an hour to find a piece of music you really like, wouldn't it be that way listening to the radio? Yep. Enjoy it. It is a gift.

Animusic 2

For all my talk about going monk, I've got an excuse with this little recommendation. 

I'm fairly sure that the hommes du monde out there of the geek world have known about this video for ages, yet I discovered it only last week.

I went into the great Fry's of Austin (great because it has a giant piano over the doorway) and right past the front door was a big screen LCD playing Animusic 2.

Here at last was a combination of Beyond The Mind's Eye and Mannheim Steamroller. Brilliant. The boys enjoy it too. Have a look at this on YouTube.

The pursuit of perfection (or, the death of productive creativity)

No fancy graphics this time. Just words.

I'm sure I've explained that I'm stopping the PC upgrades and constant reading about new gear and software so that I can focus on music. That is happening. But there's more to it than that. I've discovered that time previously spent doing something creatively productive (which includes more writing of posts like this one) is spent reading news about the economy or the game industry, or reading the fail blog for example.

This stuff, even more than kids, sucks your time away like nothing else before.

Before the internet there was email and BBS, and before that there were user groups. Personal interaction and even one on one time with yourself has been replaced with surfing the web and communicating with the outside world. Where before you read a single newsletter called "Nintendo Fun Club News" and your gameplay time was a single console, and discussing it was only done on the phone (which was limited) and at school, where you had no choice but to socialize personally (well, most had no choice), now you can explore the world from your toilet and gain a wealth of knowledge without actually experiencing anything firsthand.

In many ways this explosion of awareness has led to a more rapid acceleration of usability with all manner of devices. Case in point, I just got a Blackberry Storm. As I was looking for apps for it I stopped myself. What a waste of time. I could do this for the rest of my life and not accomplish squat. 

No more. I've got a backlog of DAT recordings. I've got an album to write. A guitar to practice. Game composers to interview. I've got about ten other projects that have been thrown by the wayside because of this new access to the world and its drive for bigger and better.

Enough. It is time to leave the rat race and not keep up with the Joneses. It is time to create a cocoon of creativity and limit communications to those my brain can process in a meaningful way. Those such as you, CS readers.

The Album: Update

Well, I know I said April 1 folks, and I'm doing my best to get there. But it may not happen. If anything it'll be close.. within a month, two at the most.

Truth is, the biggest reason I haven't completed things is that I've been lazy. But on top of that there has also been a big move to Texas and a lot of crunch time at Obsidian that preceded the move.

On top of THAT, the laptop I've worked on was work owned so I have to transfer all my projects on to a new one, and as mentioned previously, without knowing exactly which DAWs and plugins you use (I take my stuff from a repository of things stored on DVD), you can wind up doing a lot more prep work just to get back to where you started!

Seriously, my friends, I've struggled to cope with change, but I have to accept it. I'm not writing music 24/7 anymore and it is hard to find time and energy to do it now. Believe me I don't love it any less but it just ain't like it used to be. This also culminated in my last post, declaring my desire to put a lot of duct tape around my gear and mark it "DO NOT UPGRADE, EVER". The Fatman did that at one point and man, did he have a good idea!

So tonight I plan on relaxing with my wife and taking it easy. Tomorrow I plan on delving in to the album. I've delved into my back catalog of MODs and found quite a few that would be great to finish / remake. There's also the three or four other projects (such as one called Earthscape that will consist of pieces that will all be written only on the Clavinova and be something of an homage to Mannheim Stemroller) that I need to figure out. 

Top that off with my elusive interview with Miki Higashino (Gradius), Spencer Nielsen (Ecco) and a few other cool old game music bits, there's a lot to do. And I sincerely appreciate your patience.

The missing link

I recently had an epiphany. An epiphany so obvious it really was humbling. And I wish to share this with my creative brothers and sisters.

Just as the song by The Police goes, "The Missing Link" are words from their hit "Synchronicity". There is a pronounced missing link from my efforts and indeed from everyone's efforts.

Mankind, particularly those in developed nations, and most particularly those in the United States, are caught in an ever accellerating sequence of technological upgrades. From games to music to all manner of technology, it is not enough that something does a job well. Because that job can always be done better. Unlike hope, this really IS the source of mankind's greatest strength, and its greatest weakness.

I realized that the main reason (no, not my wife or children) that I am not progressing musically at the speed I want is because I am constantly distracted with new toys, whether they are phones or software synths. My epiphany ended with the need to stop, to put back this missing link, and to return to the creativity that led me here in the first place, that brought me true artistic progression. Ironically it was the slower pace of each technological lifecycle that was this mystic ingredient to my productivity. From the Ad Lib card to MODs, I have written far more music using these two forms of composition than I have anything else.

I marvel at Tom Kenny, my former editor now senior editor at Mix magazine, for his life is forever moving forward. He is always aware of the latest gear and who is doing the coolest stuff in their studio. Fascinating, because in itself there is no creativity. It is pure journalism, pure reporting. It is entirely possible that Tom can trace the entire line of Solid State Logic boards, and even understand how most of them work, but has never sat at one for hours coaxing a perfect mix as Peter Gabriel might in his studio at Real World (which I am told has a main room that sounds awful, despite its awe inspiring visual design).

I no longer wish to be on the cutting edge, knowing exactly what Wwise does tomorrow or what the best convolution reverb is. I need to create. I need to live and breathe using the tools at hand. I'm going to pull a "640kb should be enough for everyone" and feel GOOD doing it. 

My next PC will be the one I use for at least ten years. If it breaks I will repair it, not replace it. I will not upgrade it. I will not add on to it. The same goes for my gear and my software. It will be a snapshot of compositional power I had not dreamed of growing up, and I will take advantage of it, and bathe in the gear and software that exists NOW, and not come up for air. 

I encourage all composers who read this to do the same. Create. Create. Create. Leave the innovation to the engineers. 

Back to where we belong

After five years in California my family is returning to Texas. YEEEE-HAW!!

I start at Heatwave Interactive as Audio Director (managing and A/V department) on February 2nd. 

While I have loved Obsidian, and our experience in California has been very valuable, SoCal is not a place to raise a family on one salary, unless you're insanely rich. There's a lot of other reasons I'll go into not the least of which are those damn jacked up trucks ;)

Needless to say we're very excited and relieved to be moving and will keep you posted as to developments.

Spreading the cheer

A little judicious levity this time around, folks. Santa preparing a molotov cocktail. 

I sincerely hope you've enjoyed your holidays thusfar, wherever you are from and whatever your religion. A few thoughts have struck me as I sit at my parents-in-laws' ranch in Thrall, Texas, for as much nothing as there is out here, nothing is sometimes exactly what I need to let a good idea flutter into my ear.

Generational perception of progress in technology and the concept of ideals

As you all know, I like to reminisce. But at some point you need to look forward rather than backward. Put simply I'm trying to relate my "Ideals" series with the progress gaming has made. And as Andrew Sega so aptly put it, "sometimes you need to take stock of what you're doing, and why." Let's find out where we are.

Breasts in video games

Greetings all. Time to bare my soul yet again, without removing a single article of clothing. I think I'm one step ahead of a lot of industries, right?

I'm a guy, which means I'm attracted to the same things that a lot of other guys are attracted to. My wife in fact naturally poses in ways that would be right at home on the nose of a B-52 bomber, and it drives me up the wall. But that's just one of the things I love about her.

Breasts catch my attention. In fact they catch a lot of people's attention, and they catch more womens' attention than most would admit. Because of this they have been used for years in marketing campaigns and entertainment as a way to draw attention and hopefully dollars in sales.

In southern California breasts are not in short supply, and while I don't look at any deliberately, let's face it, plenty present themselves. Recently a pair presented themselves in a screenshot from a game, X Blades. A hot chick with a huge pair jaunts around slicing up enemies. It occurred to me that this is bad. Very very bad.

I like strong women in games. I've liked them in entertainment since Ripley shot up the Atmosphere Processing Station. But Ripley wasn't sporting a bouncing pair. Her sexuality is only ever, EVER displayed at the end of the first Alien film when she climbs into a suit to blast her first Alien into space from the Narcissus, and in that scene you're just about to bite your tongue in half because the giant dripping thing has just popped out of the air conditioning and she's practically hyperventiliating in fear hiding in a closet.

So chicks can be cool, and sexy at the same time, but not in a game. Take Nina from Soul Calibur 4. She's got the most desireable body of any woman other than maybe Jessica Rabbit. So much so that it is ALL you can focus on in a game of SC4. At least it is a big distraction for me. The same goes for X Blades. I won't play or buy it because I don't want to be staring at tits the whole time. Yeah, I need more willpower. But you can't deny that triple Gs really do anything for a game. A film, sure, but not in a game.

Storm of Zehir Released!

Greetings my friends! A bit under the gun and behind it all but at last I'm able to report that my second effort at Obsidian is now in stores: Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir.

Another romp through the Forgotten Realms, this game takes a different tack than the others with an overhead map view rather than the typical Neverwinter Nights "close" party view camera and travel on a map (which oddly enough was what Curse of the Azure Bonds did even though it felt a lot more open world-ish back then). I feature as the voice of Volothamp Geddarm and wrote a couple of tunes, so not as involved composer-wise, but the soundtrack I must say is a step up from the last one: written by Rob King and Paul Romero (main theme), Andrew Barnabas and Paul Arnold (overland map + several others, particularly Crystal Caves which is gorgeous) and newcomers Kevin Chow and his team at Rogue Dao, the soundtrack with guidance from myself and lead designer Tony Evans is one of the best fantasy RPG soundtracks I've heard, let alone had the honor of working on.

A promotional release is on its way from Atari so stay tuned, once that happens I will distribute a few select tracks right here on CS.

The reviews seem to enjoy it! Admittedly our voice acting was not up to par, partly because of a disastrous writing schedule / pipeline which I'll detail later (it is a huge post in and of itself), and because I dared go non union as well as not be nearly as hands on. Overall not bad but a few voices really stick in the mind as pretty lousy. Still fortunately it doesn't drag the score down and the soundtrack more than makes up for it. While I've no wish to anger those who demand higher rates, the soundtrack was written for less than 50k that got us over 55 minutes of great music. A triumph of "less is more".

IGN: "The audio features some epic, Hollywood-esque fantasy music."

Gamespot: "The soundtrack is absolutely brilliant. This subtle, sweeping score is right up there with the best that Hollywood has to offer, giving you something to hum long after you've shut down the game. "

Now go out and buy it!

Dungeons and Dragons

Hi there all, well the time has come to analyze one of my pillars, that pillar being the first way any person had a structure beyond pure imagination for pretending to be a part of a fantasy world: Dungeons and Dragons.

Another fun hobby introduced to me by Jason Emery, these days I've asked just what I found fun about it. Because well, I haven't played a game in about fifteen years. 

Folks do at Obsidian to be sure, there was a campaign run every week for awhile with miniatures and a dungeon master, the whole shebang. A group plays Warhammer 40k as well. So there's a lot of my enjoyable days remembered played out every week in the same building. Why not partake?

Obvious answers really: I live an hour away and I have a family. But that's not a REAL reason. I'd say a real reason is just because I don't find it as fun as I used to. And I think I like music a little more than games after all, though only just a little.

The red cover adorned by the painting by the great Larry Elmore pictured here was the first D&D rules I ever got, given to me by my Grandmother. It was awesome. I read these rules, got the dice, enjoyed painting miniatures and reading Monster Manuals cover to cover. I think what really lacks these days is the fact that not much has changed about it. The games are far more detailed and much more like a true representation of professionally written modules (The Lost Caverns of Tsodjcanth would be the one I'd love to do myself), but the basic tenets are the same, despite 4 rule changes. 

But let's not get too "old man" about it yet. There's definitely some cool things going on now that Wizards of the Coast has the reins of the series.

D&D Insider: Essentially an online way to partake in the pen and paper aspect of D&D, with online magazine subscriptions to Dungeon and Dragon, a character builder which is like a character sheet that has a bunch of bells and whistles that you can keep in a secure database and share with others. A compendium that people can have custom characters stored in. Just a big database really for $4.95 a month.

Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach: The Neverwinter Nights series allowed people to create modules and campaigns themselves for the first time and was a fair success. But as far as an online representation of D&D in the new world of Eberron, this was the first time it happened. It also was a fair success. Nope, haven't tried it. Hell, I haven't played a D&D game for more than a couple of hours since Neverwinter Nights 2. 

Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition: Apparently the 4th edition is a good one, better than 3.5 from what I hear. Given the middle aged hardcore game design gurus at Obsidian there's a lot of critical discussion of it, but if I do decide to dive back in and give it a whirl I'll let you all know.

Any comments on the state of D&D nowadays please feel free to write in. Jason, the very guy who got me interested in the first place, doesn't find it that fun anymore himself. So if you're a current fan or an old dissillusioned fogie, write in!

VGM Greatest Hits: Twin Cobra

 

1987 was perhaps the greatest year of the golden age of video games. Ultima 5 was about to be released with Ultima 4 reaching its peak of perhaps the best game in the series. The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Castlevania, Mega Man and Kid Icarus were released. One of the first hydraulic "mega" arcade games was released (After Burner II). Some of the most lasting game series' began their journey on this year.

It was also a year for some killer tunes. One of the first pieces of game music I remember enjoying in the arcade was "Twin Cobra". Written by Tatsuya Uemura, little did I know that this game was a sequel to "Tiger Heli".

Twin Cobra was one of the first shooters other than Gradius to provide a very cool set of power ups. The player would acquire colored floating power ups and each color would yield a different kind of shot. Yellow was a rapid fire shot that could, when increased in strength shoot in 4 directions. Red was a tracer that would increase in a frontal pattern. Green was a laser shot, and blue, the best of all, was a wide spread ball shot.

Enjoy the music of olde!

Download TwinCobra.mp3

The rise and fall of game audio

A lame attempt to link / ripoff / "use" other works as the "meat and potatoes" of my own site? I think not. This article has heart and I'd be an utter fool not to link it here. My only correction to its title would be "the rise and fall of game music". It doesn't address VO and sfx.

On The Fatman's site, his explanation is even shorter than mine: "just read it". 'Nuff said.

http://www.armchairarcade.com/aamain/content.php?article.48

You just can't ignore this

First, thanks to Darth Mandarb who uploaded this art to Pixel Joint.

No matter who you are, you have to live somewhere. The street, an apartment, a hostel, a house, etc.. I'm sure a lot of people both here in the USA and overseas have been reading about the financial crisis brought about by people not being able to pay their mortages and financial companies going under who guaranteed those mortgages.

So today I looked at house prices in Irvine. That's Orange County, California. A 3 bedroom, 2 bath house (attached, average single family size) goes minimum for $400,000. No yard to speak of but 1500 square feet. And on Realtor.com there are about 430 such houses available. Granted, Irvine has a population of around 180,000 compared to Austin's 2 million.

Now we look at Austin, Texas. Over 4,000 houses available, and an equivalent house with about the same features and a corner lot goes for $90,000. Amazing, isn't it? Sorry, but humidity and not having a beach doesn't jack up the price four and a half times, ESPECIALLY if people can't afford it.

Just what crack are people smoking in SoCal? I did take economics. I studied the basics of supply and demand. But this isn't a natural case of supply and demand. Realtors and builders are jacking up prices in California because they believe people will still pay for them. The truth is they're not anymore. They can't. Four years ago I read that only 10% of the people moving into San Diego could afford a house. How can you stay in business? Only two ways: lower housing costs, or keep the prices the same or higher and hope the few that you DO sell will keep your own bills paid. With the financial crisis that's taking place stemming from overpriced housing in the first place, you'd think that would change in California. Nope. Greed wins.

I really hope something is done about this in our country. I'm ashamed of this sort of wanton greed. All I can do to change it is not buy a house. And if prices stay like this in Cali, I never will.

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

My wife was generous enough to let me play one of my birthday presents early. The final chapter in the Metroid Prime series: Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. Bless that Austin developer Retro for yet another very worthy Metroid title.

I confess, I've left a few still popular Nintendo "sure and steady" series' behind such as Zelda. But I'm still going strong in Castlevania, and I believe I've played every single Metroid game out there. Definitely haven't won them all (Fusion was a BITCH!), but it is the one series along with Half Life that hasn't let me down.

An ode to pro audio

Life was simple back in the days of the Ad Lib soundcard. I thank my lucky stars each day that I was able to progress from such humble beginnings as writing music on an OPL chipset, but then a lot of people got their start in humble ways, whether it be strumming a guitar, singing, or saving every dollar from a guitar playing stint with Frank Zappa to build a small studio to record "Passion and Warfare".

Musicians and audio folk in general learn new things each day. On Friday I taught Fryda (Obsidian's technical sound designer) how to use delay rather than reverb to achieve a slap back effect for some voices on the deck of a masted vessel in one of our games. She used Waves Supertap 2 with some tweaking to achieve it and the game sounds 1% cooler. I'll take 1% in 5 minutes of fiddling any day.

But these lessons are constant and some of them aren't learned easily. In this new series "ode to pro audio" I intend to examine some of those unanswered questions.

What's the difference?

These days I'm studying small format consoles.

Where game dev begins...

 

This is a recording of Jason Emery and Alex Brandon, roughly 1991 or so, at Alex's parents' house in Annapolis, Maryland. On the PC one of us is creating an adventure / RPG using Stuart Smith's Adventure Construction Set. The other is playing Mega Man 3. We switch not long after the recording begins.

This was the fuel for the fire that became our careers. I'm sure many of you have had similar experiences, from games to attempting to create them (as we clumsily were in this recording). Let posterity make its own judgements, and there's even a little humor in here. Enjoy this little slice of life.

Download JasonandAlecMegaMan.mp3

What's Happening?

Yet another long overdue update, dear readers.

Obsidian

My being overloaded with work is a given, but first to ship soon will be the next expansion pack for Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir. While I don't want to give anything away before it is actually out I can say it has a killer soundtrack, with some hard work by both myself and the designers to implement it. Soon we should see some things trickling out of marketing with appropriate announcements. I also have the honor of voicing Volothamp Geddarm, a fairly well known character in the Forgotten Realms, as well as writing two of the game's pieces of music and the odd sound effect.

One thing I can tell you is that the toolset we're using to create these games is so limiting I'm amazed that we're still making competitive products with them. We have programmers who work wonders within their tangled mass of antiquated code, but things are still pretty old school. So for any of you who buy this, remember its based on a code base and audio implementation scheme that was started more than six years ago. Beat THAT.