Club Silicon

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.

Back again

Happy 2008, everyone. I just wanted to write in and say things are cool, just busy. Haven't seen a delay of updates like this since a few years ago I think.

Album work is coming along slowly but steadily. Craig Rundels is hitting some guitar tracks and I'm on the lookout for vocalists. Tenor male and soprano female, specifically. Jeanette will be doing some singing but I like the multi-vocalist idea of bands like Toto and Fleetwood Mac, so I'll be going that route.

Went to NAMM 2008 and here's what I saw:

The Bechstein is my mother's favorite piano builder, and while I didn't play it they sounded very warm and mid-range.

The guy at the mic is Joe Satriani, touting the latest Vox pedals. The 20th anniversary of the JS guitar series by Ibanez is going to be commemorated with an anniversary guitar, the prototype of which has a "3d" image of Joe's first big commercial release: Surfing with the Alien.

I had about two seconds of chat with Mix magazine and also got a bit bored really fast. Not knowing anyone and (my fault) not setting up appointments beforehand leaves you just to wander around, and there wasn't much "big" this year the way there was in 2006 when I first went and saw Yngvie, Vai, Petrucci and got a surprise performance where I got to listen 5 feet away from Al DiMeola (pure magic, absolutely beautiful).

I'm also going to be bowing out from Mix's "AudioNext" column, putting more juice into both Obsidian and the album. It was great introducing the pro audio magazine world to games on a regular basis (with awesome articles having been written well before my entrance by Blair Jackson and the like), but it's too much to handle with everything else. I'll be going out with a bang though with a huge feature on the PS3 vs. Xbox360 "under the hood", with interviews with Halo 3 director Marty O'Donnell, Xbox audio head Brian Schmidt and Gene Semel (director at SCEA San Diego).

Stay tuned for hopefully my first attempt at tackling some follow up for Club Silicon interviews and features now long overdue such as Game Audio Remix, a chat with Dave Warhol (musician on Adventure Construction Set), a look back into the grey book series with Jason Emery. Oh yeah, I've actually played a few of those games you all recommended in that post a few months back. I did review Mass Effect, but UT3 and a few others are still forthcoming. And a free song or two as well from the cellar.

Merry Christmas

Happy Holidays from Club Silicon! Enjoy the Pixel Joint supplied artwork, eat cookies, play games, and try not to get sick from irresponsible exercise instructors who bring their phlegm ridden hacking children to work.

A simple update

At long last I come up for air. With apologies to CS readers, here's what's been happening. Oh, but first a little explanation of the little shield to the left.

I have mentioned an effort to make this site a bit more pleasing to the eye, even if it is to the geeky eye. The "power up" you see represents a Gencore shield generator that you can acquire in Tyrian, the first game I ever worked on with Jason Emery and the great Daniel Cook (aka "Danc"). No doubt plenty of you have already heard the Tyrian Jukebox posted earlier. Danc of course runs Lost Garden and recently found most of Tyrian's tileset from this game we developed over 12 years ago, and I will be using quite a few of them to start each update in a "bullet" fashion of some sort.

First, my oldest and best friend Aaron Rudkin was married yesterday. It was a great ceremony, a great reception and my best wishes to both of them for a long, happy life, etc. etc.. Aaron has an uncanny sense of humor, enjoying both sides of the coin from Cracking Up to Yes, Minister. We've enjoyed many a day of drinking and discussion of life, love and above all, making fun of films and sitcoms.

Now that the wedding is over there is a great deal more to report. Here's what I'm working on at present:

Neverwinter Nights 2 Expansion Pack: Mask of the Betrayer
Aliens

And various other things I can't talk about, but the gist of it is that the buck stops with me, and I love it. I'm working very hard (hence the lack of posts) but am given trust and responsibility to do the job properly rather than paranoia and ego waltzing through the development process to create drama every day, the way I have experienced in various other organizations. Obsidian is a fantastic place to work and I hope you enjoy the audio from these projects.

Having said that, my first duty outside my job and family is that Fruit of the Loom song. So off I go to write it. Danc has waited long enough!

Switching Gears

Three years ago I took a different approach in my career, working at Midway Home Entertainment in San Diego. While there I worked with Josh Sawyer and David Kunkler, lead designer and producer, respectively. The project was Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows, and it had ambition. There were some great ideas in there. Then, well, reality sets in.

No finger pointing, no flaming. Isn't my style. Let's just say at least three things got missed that I think shouldn't have, and the game shipped pretty much on time. There's a benefit to shipping on time and at one point I was convinced of that goal above all else in a product. "Unreal" seemed to take forever, for example. When I told my father about the continual feature creep his response was "put it in a sequel." Seemed like a great idea. Then it came out and, well, sold a lot of copies. In fact, most games that have sold the MOST copies out there either follow the Miyamoto method (add six months to what you think the release date initially will be) or just plain go until they're done. Granted yes, Battlecruiser 3000 didn't exactly sell four hundred million copies which is how many it would have needed to actually make money, but my favorites pretty much go until they're ready.

As I'm sure hundreds of us have either spoken or written about (wait a minute, I'VE written about it before!), there IS a good marriage between schedule / budget / financial survival and stability and creativity yielding an enjoyable gaming experience.

Long story short, I think Obsidian can find that marriage and I want to be a part of it. I'll be starting up an audio department with them working on several projects, not the least of which is the Alien franchise, which I have been a rabid fan of since I was five years old.

Josh and Dave now work in their respective roles at this Santa Ana based developer and I'll be joining them on May 1st. I couldn't be more excited at this opportunity and more news will follow as I come onboard and get rolling.

Just look at that

Club Silicon can now be taken seriously by artists. Thanks to the great Daniel Cook at Lost Garden we now have a gleaming new logo. It is my hope that over the next year my posts will be as articulate and discerning as his.

Stay tuned for some really exciting stuff coming down the pipe. In the meantime, enjoy the delicious eye candy. Thanks, Danc.