Get back on The Horse

They say if you fall off a Horse the first thing you should do is climb straight back on. Now that we have all had our individual sulks and moans perhaps the best thing we can all do to re-build bridges is to have another comp - even if its just for fun.

I was reading another thread that was talking about the demise of the record company and how for some artists getting their music onto Films or TV may promted me to think we should have a `Soundtrack` comp.

How say you all?????

[Hydro Hellsing]

Actually Dave that has and does go down in games, more about World/Level Environment than Genre, played plenty of racing games set to horror themes, take Mario Kart games for example, the Haunted Ghost House level's, I was thinking that too originally tho, about the specifics, also you need to figure out what your doing, if your gonna do a soundtrack comp it should feature all the parts of a Game's soundtrack, Intro/Start Screen/Story Prologue/World Free Play/Multi-Level's based on theme/Ending Credit's...

[Matt]

Originally Posted by amadeus

good idea

untill the next sponsored comp is set up we could run something where the winner gets a promo slide (the first one) on the homepage and at the top of the forum for a couple of weeks?

Soundtrack or spoof pop song are the ideas so far. Any other suggestions or ideas? How about a soundtrack for a game? It could help the winner to show gaming companies that they won a soundtrack comp (linking to homepage with their track promo)? Throw up a few more ideas and i'll make a poll out of them.

A

ps i haven't deleted that other thread btw, just moved it to a new forum. Having some issues setting access but when its ready you'll see it.

sound track for gameeee!!!!

[msl]

Oh please do a gaming soundtrack competition!! That would be phenomenal!

[Amadeus]

A comp for gaming soundtrack it is. Could someone who has experience putting such soundtracks together put together the comp guidelines? Eg - track length, genre, cues for story line etc. I can put the page together, get a slide organised for the forum and help out generally but I'll need someone to take up the mantle of comp manager (comp manager can still submit a track/entry). If anyone is interested post up here or drop me a pm.

[Hydro Hellsing]

msl does that kind of shit, there's your manager.

[Disfunktional-DJs]

I think maybe someone who is on site more often than not would make more sense.

why not Ant..he started the thread and well yeah he started the thread.

[LIQUID]

Originally Posted by Disfunktional-DJs

I think maybe someone who is on site more often than not would make more sense.

why not Ant..he started the thread and well yeah he started the thread.

lol you dont happen to work for the same company as me do you? anybody who suggests anything there always gets the action to implement it as well - guess what - people soon stop making suggestions

However if nobody else wants to do it and Mr A is busy at the mo then I`ll pull it togther even though I know little about the format so the first thing I`ll do is request advice in a new thread

[msl]

There are numerous ways we can approach the competition actually, which I will get to in a minute. I haven't had real experience writing music for games, but I have a general idea of how music is composed for a game.

You have about 3 types of tracks:

1) Opening and ending themes (not to be confused with title screen and game over)
2) Music that loops within the game
3) Music that plays during animated/cgi cutscenes (in essence, filmscoring).

The sound of video game music has become so expansive that it has become convoluted in what truly defines video game music (which is what makes this theme for the contest a great idea). It can essentially be any genre you'd like it to be as long as fits within the context of the game you're composing for.

The process in which one composes for a video game is similar to that of film scoring in which you try to get the right mood for the scenario. Within my limited knowledge, game composers often start brainstorming with just pictures of the in-game world, characters with biographies, and/or a storyline given by the company.

As for how to approach this competition, we could leave it open ended in which a user submits a track fit for a video game, or we could develop a specific theme for the user to base their track around given a scenario and a set of pictures. For the sake of everyone not familiar with video game music, we could leave it very open-ended.

The only condition I'd suggest to make it easier for judges is to leave an explanation of what type of game you had in mind while composing it (examples: upbeat track for racing game, an emotional theme for a cutscene in an adventure/role-playing game, a credits theme, etc.).

As for length, I've heard pieces in games that last from 20 seconds to 20 minutes long. Whether or not you would like to put a cap on length for the judges sake is up to you. However, I do recommend that you do not make a track that's 20 seconds long because that tends to leave no impression for the judges (maybe at least a minimum of 2 minutes).

If you're doing a loopable track, I suggest that you repeat it once fully and end it on a fade out at the beginning of the 2nd repetition so we know your intention clearly.

So these are suggestions I have for it. This was a very long post...