Castle Paradox

msw188 · Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 1041

One of the things I have done in preparation for rereleasing Tales of the New World I is rebalancing the music using headphones, which I hope sound similar on all computers. I have also implemented panning (didn't have that with BAM!). I have uploaded some of the songs for people to listen to, if they wish. These ones were all made using notate back in the day, and then were converted over to .mid with our bam2mid command and Anvil (a very painful process).

Way back, Iblis seemed to think that the music was one of the highlights of my game. It's all short and meant as background music, but with a melody. Any thoughts are welcome. I will upload more tomorrow, including a piece that is an attempt to 'orchestrate' these themes into one master song used for a special occasion in the game. That is the tune I'm actually proud of to some extent, but I'd like people to hear these before they hear that.
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My first completed OHR game, Tales of the New World:
http://castleparadox.com/gamelist-display.php?game=161

This website link is for my funk/rock band, Euphonic Brew:
www.euphonicbrew.com

Moogle1 · Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2007 7:57 pm Post subject:

Did you mean to post a link? You should post links. Then I will listen and tell you good things.
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Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design

Inferior Minion · Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2007 8:02 pm Post subject:

msw188 · Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 1041

Sorry about that! I named them all TNW1whatever, because they all come from Tales of the New World 1. I meant to say that in the original message, but looks like I forgot. Thank you to Inferior Minion for putting the link anyway.
_________________
My first completed OHR game, Tales of the New World:
http://castleparadox.com/gamelist-display.php?game=161

This website link is for my funk/rock band, Euphonic Brew:
www.euphonicbrew.com

Moogle1 · Posted: Tue Jul 24, 2007 11:13 am Post subject:

Boat is really slow. I get the impression of a fat, drunken captain drifting aimlessly at sea. Is this what you were going for?

Cave reminds me of 7th Saga. Man, that was a cool game.

Imperial is appropriately regal. A castle theme?

Outside is... uh, the theme to Lord of the Rings. What's with that?

War is catchy, but you can't have a real war theme without drums and trumpets.

Overall, you need more instrumental variation. You tend to use the same three instruments in all of your songs. They're also really subdued, as if they're afraid to be any louder. War in particular needs to be much, much bolder.

If you'd like, I can post an arrangement of one of your songs to show you what I'd do with it. You have a good grasp of musical concepts like melody, harmonizing, and so forth, but the devil is in orchestrating the song, the arrangement. Listening to these songs is kind of the aural equivalent of playing a game where an obviously competent pixel artist only used the default palette 0 for all his sprites.
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Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design

msw188 · Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 1041

Ha ha! So Outside began as me tinkering around on a keyboard trying to figure out the Lord of the Rings thing, but failing pretty miserably (as I thought). This was confirmed (I thought) when I showed several people the song and tried to tell them where it came from, and they couldn't understand what I was talking about. But now someone has called me out, but its not like I'm selling the game or anything, so I'm not too worried about it I guess...

Boat is supposed to be slow (there is a different song for when you get a faster boat). Not drunken though. Hmm...

I'm not sure how to take your Cave comment.

Imperial is for Imperial castles and towerr, so I'm glad it got the right idea across.

For what it's worth, War does not play during much fighting. It's mostly for war preparation scenes. I've been meaning to make a separate song for the action sequences, but I haven't yet.

So here are the explanations (cheap excuses) behind your spot-on general observations:

1. I have never taken music theory of any sort beyond "This is a major scale"

2. When I composed these songs, I had nothing but notate.exe, and furthermore, only about ten or so voices played on my computer (which was a serious cause of confusion for some time). None of these voices were drums.

3. I also began the 'orchestrated' version of putting these songs together on notate, and so when I switched everything to midi, I was afraid to change too much. I also thought that it was finally cool as the player to hear orchestrated versions when you reached the specific point in the game when this song was made available.
_________________
My first completed OHR game, Tales of the New World:
http://castleparadox.com/gamelist-display.php?game=161

This website link is for my funk/rock band, Euphonic Brew:
www.euphonicbrew.com

Moogle1 · Posted: Tue Jul 24, 2007 1:41 pm Post subject:

It would be well worth your time to reorchestrate the songs, even if that only consisted of changing the instruments around.
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Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design

msw188 · Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 1041

Well, I'm trying to squeeze the rerelease in for July, and I still have many hours of playtesting (plus fixing anything important), so I doubt I'll get around to this, but perhaps I will in the future.

I just uploaded the 'orchestrated' version, called TNW1Orchestra. I'd assume that Inferior Minion's link above still works to bring you to the song. This one, although begun in Notate, was switched over to Anvil midi and actually got some serious time put in 'fixing' it.
_________________
My first completed OHR game, Tales of the New World:
http://castleparadox.com/gamelist-display.php?game=161

This website link is for my funk/rock band, Euphonic Brew:
www.euphonicbrew.com