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[Theme: Combined Inventory Objects!]

Sprite Jam (October 7th - 14th): C-c-c-combined Inventory Objects!

Welcome everyone to this week's Sprite Jam!

Everyone last week did a great job, and I hope this week results in another group of great entries. This week I thought we'd try something maybe a little different. I've noticed these types of rules don't result in a lot of entries, but I'll take the chance.

Theme: Combined Inventory Objects!

How many times have you found yourself struggling with a puzzle only to realize you've completely forgot about combining inventory objects? I know it's happened to me more than a few times. It's always those blasted crazy combos! Who comes up with those ideas anyway? You do!

So this week, draw two or three inventory objects that combine into one crazy contraption or device.

Rules:
- Draw two or three simple inventory objects of your choice
- Draw an additional inventory object that combines all of your original objects
- Resolution: 150 x 150 pixels max., but try to keep your objects on the small end, like 50 x 50
- Colors: Keep the unique colors low, but it's more important that all sprites have the same style

I'm not going to say the crazier contraption the better, but this is a forum activity! Not only are you workin' your noggin' but you're having fun on your favorite Adventure Game Studio based forum! Lets see a bunch of entries this week!

Have fun!

!

[Self Portraits]

Alright. Sprite Jam time.

A few days ago I received an email from my dad. He's a head honcho at a help desk services company, and everyone knows that those geeky help desk workers get bored. All of the people in my dad's office are doing self-portraits of themselves in MS Paint. My dad can't even draw a stick man so he "commissioned" me to draw a portrait of him. So now I ask you to draw a portrait of yourself. I'll keep the rules the same as the rules that were set by my dad's office.

Here's the portrait I did of my dad.


Theme: Self Portraits
Rules: You must draw a portrait of yourself and you MUST use MS Paint. (Sorry Mac users. You can't properly use AGS on a Mac, so get a PC. )
Size: Any size you want, but nothing wider than 500 pixels.
Colors: Use as many colors you feel necessary, but try to restrict yourself. Paint isn't designed to utilize hundreds of colors.
Bonus: Draw another portrait of a parent in the same style.

I know some of you like having more guidelines, so if you like that sort of thing, use the same work area as I used. 65 x71 pixels with a 2 pixel border.

You've got a week, but I'm in the process of moving, so I might be busy unpacking/forgetting that I'm hosting a sprite jam.

Eh, and I guess I'm being too tough on Mac users. If there's some sort of online or Mac based equivalent of MS Paint, use that.

I recently graduated high school and two days ago was my 18th birthday. For both my birthday and grad gift, my parents are buying me a laptop for college. Anything I want, basically.

Here comes the problem.

My dad works for an IT company, and through his work and clients, he gets discounts on HP and Dells. He suggested (more like requested) that it was an HP, Dell, or IBM. Money is an issue, but quality and reliability, and my overall happiness with it, are more important.

What I want is something I can record music with and use as my Digital Audio Workspace (DAW). My desktop will get handed down to my sister, so this thing needs to do everything else too.

I've got the hardware to record, but I need speed and memory to work efficiently. I work mainly with recording, but I'm also getting into using samples. Working on the go with a little keyboard and a bunch of samples would be ideal.

Macs are pretty much out of the question. And even though they're probably perfectly good computers, I don't want a Dell. Two reasons, every one I've ever worked with made me want to kill myself, and I don't want to be mocked for it, especially with a catch phrase like "DUDE!"

Are there any music artists out there, or laptop gurus, who can give me some suggestions?

Also, I'm going on vacation mid July, and I'd love to be able to relax and compose on my trip, so I'm kind of in a rush.

Even though MTV will just turn around and trash this show just like they did with every other great performance, I can't help but love them for it.

I finished watching Korn Unplugged about two hours ago. And it's still growing on me. I downloaded the torrent imeadiatly.

I'm not that big of a fan of Korn, but I know that they are all musical geniuses and deserve respect. They have done some of the best covers of all time and they know how to treat other musician's work.

This show was outstanding. The best show I've seen on TV and I've seen about a hundred broadcast concerts. An amazing cover of Creep by Radiohead and a version of Freak On A Leash with Amy Lee from Evanescence, who in my opinion has the best female voice in music today.

But the best part, by far, was the duet with Robert Smith and the rest of The Cure. Combining Make Me Bad and In Between Days, and the polar oppositions of their voices make for a blood chilling work of art.

Anyone else see this show? If you haven't seen this I highly recommend it. You can find the torrent online and it's totally worth the download. (Psst: BtJunkie has the most peers, by the way.)

I'm on my fifth time listening to these songs. Great show Korn, and great job MTV.

I've been trying to record some of my music for ages. I finally got the hang of Audacity and mastered some of my recording techniques, and got something that I think is pretty polished. Audacity has crashed at least five times while working on this, losing almost half of my progress each time, so it's progressively gotten better. No drums at my disposal, and I didn't want to bother to match midi drums to the whole thing, because the time slows in some parts.

Critic anything and everything you want. I might, very likely, redo all of it. So anything would be great.

Strings

And I know I personally don't listen to music people post. But it's not midi! Hooray mp3!


Lyrics:

I'm not trying to be
anything extra. Ordinary
things will put me out of
place.

Now I start to see
that none of your tunes are too happy.
I still don't know why.

Oh,
you don't have to
prove yourself,
improve yourself or
dilute yourself with him
like you do with me.

I can't scream and
shout
because you won't even
talk this out with
me.

I've tried to seek the truth about
writing special things about
you, because my words don't
compare.

"It's no big surprise.
Just open your ears and shut your eyes
and things will write out in your mind."

Go ahead and burn the bridges, fence the ridges.
Wash your hands of me.
But you know I won't
watch you let me go.

Tears and drama,
fame and fortune,
keys and strings,
And the girls that cause them.

"I hope you don't mind that I put down in words,
how wonderful life is," is what she heard
"Oh, now Boy, that won't be
me."

"Life's a bitch and bittersweet.
Love is her pup and she's in heat.
And you can take this all from me."


Extra credit to anyone that can name the two song references in the lyrics.

[Edit:]

Okay, so my new amp doesn't have a built in reverb and I've got a few tanks lying around and I thought why not make a reverb tank into a pedal. Good ol' springs.

I looked for information on how tanks are split and panned and whatnot, but I can't find any information on them. So, I've had to make some conclusions myself.

There are two possible ways that I've concluded that it could work. Really, it's just a matter of placement of the boost and how it's panned.

The first idea would be to split the input into two. One side would go right to the output, and the other to the reverb tank, then to a boost pedal to limit the volume through. Then it would meet back at the output. Not really a pan, I guess. Half would be straight through, the other reverbed. I think this is how most amps use tanks.

The other idea would be to split the signal and pan between the two and add a boost to the end to add some gain to the more reverberated levels.

I made a quick MSPaint drawing.



I think that my thoughts are right, and I believe the best option would be the second, and just buy a panning pot. Really, the level won't be adjusted much and I don't plan on having an on/off switch. Just full time use, adjusted when necessary.

Are my dreams of a tanked pedal crazy? Any insight on how to go about this?


Edit: I found a small company that makes what I'm going for. And I think that this is how they do theirs, which I think is the best layout yet.



I think this is solved for the most part. Feel free to add your input. Or list your pedals or something, so I didn't waste this space. :-p

I've got a terrible addiction to buying music equipment. I recently bought an Ibanez Artcore, a hollowbody with a Bigsby style tremolo. It doesn't stay in tune at all. If you work with the tremolo a lot it'll loosen up and I can play without tuning for a while, but use it rarely and it'll throw you'll whole tuning out.

I have a great computer tuner, and I used to have a tiny hand tuner, but sooner or later I'm going to need a sturdy tuner for shows. Right now it's between the Boss TU-2 and the Fender PT-100.

The Fender is half as much as the Boss, but the Boss has a cent display. Anyone have any of these? Is the cent display worth the extra $50?

I know you can get reviews of these things online (MusiciansFriend), but I rather hear it from a person that doesn't say "OMG! Tehish es teh BeSt tuNers eVres@!1"

Also, any tone difference between the Big Muff and the Little Big Muff?

I guess this could turn into a "Here's my Rig" thread, which might be fun too.

[Flyin' Saucers/UFOs]

Time for this week's installment of the Tune Contest. The rules are simple; create an original song however you want. You can use midi, actual instruments, or even make instrument sounds with your mouth. Every week there is a chosen theme and some rules and all songs should follow those.

This weeks theme is Flyin' Saucers/UFOs!

The Rules:
- Your song must paint a picture in our minds of those crazy, hovering unidentifiables.

Tips/Ideas:
- Choose a special sound for your craft to make it stand out from the others. Pull out those Moog samples from the back of your library. Or maybe give it something more wild, like a bassoon or harmonica.
- Pan your sounds to give it the feeling of movement.
- Try and use different tempos and dynamics, giving us an idea how fast, or slow, this thing is going.

So pull out those Theremins and slide whistles and let's get started!

Yes, yes, I know the rules and I know that I shouldn't post things like this here, but I really need help. LGM and I have managed to get ourselves into a huge project. I can't give you any details because it's a secret, but I can tell you it has nothing to do with AGS and we're calling it "Project UFOVSKGB".

Currently in this project, I need to trace out this wheat and make the background color (the grey), transparent. It has proven to be a very hard task because the grey area around the wheat I can't seem to make transparent. Most tutorials tell me to just cut out the grey and make it a multiply layer, but that doesn't work at all in this situation. I'm not one for masking, and haven't worked with it much, but that seems to be the only way.



Here is a bigger version to work with.

Comments? Ideas? Tips?

Cleaned up my computer the other week and ran across this.

Well M0dsiepoo?

There wasn't an offical "Christmas" thread, so here it is. Happy Christmas.

Well, Phil Reed is starting a "Free Music Movement". It's an CD collection of 100% free music. You can read into it on his website. Anyway, he asked me to create a CD design and gave me a lot of room for interpretation. I kicked a few ideas around and roughly scratched this up.



I had some idea of what I wanted to do, but really developed most of it along the way. I wanted to have pieces of the string cut and hanging from her mouth, but am stumped when it comes to making it look real.

When it comes down to it, its Phil's choice. I still want to buff up my PS skills anyhow. I'm sure I'll do another design. All input and C&C is more then welcome.

Larger size.

I was flipping channels and a familiar face caught my eye. Andy Milonakis. It was a commercial for his new show on MTV, 'The Andy Milonakis Show.' It starts Sunday I believe, I'm not sure though.

http://www.mtv.com/onair/andy_milonakis/

Andy hit the bigtime. Congrats Mr. Penis.

I'm sure some of you wonder where some of the long lost AGSers go or what has happened to them.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5976880091

You see what happens when they leave the nest and go out into the real world?

I was browsing the ATC thread and I realized I've never made a QUALITY game, nor have I pixeled in like forever. So I busted out some sprites at like 3 in the morning. I've never been good with this stuff. Any help would be great.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6258455/

I thought this was interesting. Not a ton of proof, or a huge link, but a link non-the-less.

Edit: Another article.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6600514/

Do you heart sheep as much as I do? Do you get bored at home or work. Do you need a friend who's always there for you?

http://www.goldfiles.com/freeware/desktop_pets/portals/esheep.shtml

Its no naked lady, but it'll do.

Whoa, I just saw this movie today. Let me tell ya, scary as hell! I have all of the lights on in my house! I literally was shaking in my seat. The movie itself wasn't very good plot wise, but I nearly peed myself. And I laughed durring Silence of the Lambs, I thought that was hilarious. Good bye "The Ring", hello "The Grudge". Anybody else see this movie?

www.doyouhaveagrudge.com

I was hoping to post this some other time when the forums wern't as busy, but I've been ancy. The whole thing turned into more of a story about myself, rather then a question on musical theroy. Sorry about typos.

I've been playing guitar for more then a year now. I own 2 acoustics and an electric. I can play a bit of clarinet and flute and can read music for the most part. I play my guitars about 3 hours a day, writing licks, riffs, and progressions, some of which are pretty good.

Recently, I've been trying to get into a band. My singing voice is ok.
Sadly no one is really as into a band as I am. I've grown up with a huge variety of music. From N*SYNC to Elvis. Black Sabbath to Lyle
Lovett. Everyone in my family listens to something different and we all have a great feel for other and new types of music. I'd join pretty much any band if they were serious.

My choice of action has been failing. If a band has formed they don't really need a guitarist or vocalist. I've come to realize that I need to form my own band. I can pick whatever sound I'd like and chose who helps and who doesn't. But I can't just jump in and grab some people.

So, I've been trying to write some music myself, that I can do some solo gigs with, hopefully meeting some people along the way. My first "official" song I wrote for my English class. I had to write some poetry so I decided to kill two birds and brought in my guitar. My teacher loved it along with my class. People in her other classes said that she couldn't stop talking about it. One girl in my class who is very popular said she loved it and wanted me to make her a cd of some of my stuff. I regretfully said that I didn't have anything else finished.

I toyed with the song and decided to record it. I listened to it and it sounded awful. The progression was repetitive. The lyrics were terrible. But the song had serious meaning to me. I don't think that any other previous event in my life could make a better song. I realize I'm my own worst critic, but sometimes that's a good thing.

So I started reviewing popular music. Often listening to the song over and over again for hours trying to find out what makes it tick. Slowing and speeding the song up, audio filters, different octaves and tones.
I've dissected several songs from different bands, all of them popular, with basic instruments (i.e.: guitar, bass, drums, and sometimes keys). I haven't yet looked at rap and the ever-popular "Bump 'n' Grind" music, with all of it's computer effect generations. There are several things I've found.

Good, popular songs have simple yet meaningful lyrics and the music accents the lyrics, giving them attitude.

Good lyrics are straightforward, yet often metaphorical. Everyone can
Relate to them somehow in their lives. The lyrics themselves are just words, but when music is added behind them, they give them a sense of mood and opinion.

Popular songs also have a "good" part. The song itself is ok, but there's that one part that everyone loves that people wait for when listening to the song, keeping them listening. Lets look at a popular song and dissect it.

Lets look at Maroon Five's "She Will Be Loved".

Amazon.com conceders them a "fuse of R&B and rock" and compares them to
Stevie Wonder and Motown. Their smooth bass lines, catchy tunes and unique vocals make them very popular. But is that all? Those who have listened to this band would agree, they wouldn't sound good with lyrics such as Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby" or maybe Metalica's "Enter Sandman". The lyrics really make any good band.

"She Will Be Loved" has very simple lyrics. Any Tom, Dick, or Harry could have wrote this if they put their mind to it, even though it wouldn't have the same meaning. Everyone can relate to them, or relate them to someone else.

Most people would agree that their favorite part is the chorus and pre-chorus (0:45 - 1:15), and would be happy enough if the entire song was just that. Yet everyone seems to think the bridge is the worst part.
The composition of this song however keeps you listening.

The intro is very relaxing, seemingly making you to lazy to change the song. The verse is the same way, however the mood doesn't last long. At
0:28 of the song, a guitar comes in and foreshadows what is to come in the rest of the song, giving it a more upbeat attitude. And at 0:47 that time comes and gives you a great, smooth beat to dance to or just sit and listen to. As the upbeat section fades to an end (1:17), it brings you back to that foreshadowing section again, keeping you listening once more for the chorus. Then the anticipation trickery comes out. At 1:34, the vocals make you expect that funky rhythm to come back, but nope. More games to keep you listening till 1:53 comes around. This extended chorus brings you to that nirvana of happiness only to shatter it with a bridge at 2:33, and another disappointment at 2:53 when they make you expect another chorus, but give you another verse instead. But at 3:04 that trickery comes back, making you think the song is over, but finishes with a whopping chorus exceeding a minute, and brings you down from that high with a slow fadeout.

I bet that never crossed your mind when listening, did it? Well, it didn't cross mine either. When looking back on what I've written, it doesn't even compare. How do people write such great music, and plan such composition?

I've noticed that many people here have bands, and I wanted to know, how do you go about writing music? Do you have anything you think is amazing and would like to share? Maybe, if I get the balls to do it, I'll post some of my music. Kick up some dust, and lets get musical.

As I was sitting at my desk I looked at my clock. So I move my mouse down to the bottom right to find the time is 11:56 PM, September 11. I had totally forgotten until the last 4 minutes. Not only that but I didnt see anything on the news, or hear anyone else mention it. Now I was fealing guilty. The day was over with and I had forgotten. Not only that but I couldnt remeber how many years ago it was. I had to sit and think for 2 minutes to remember. Have we all forgotten about this day already?

Viktor's background totally inspired me to do some work. It didnt turn out much like his though. More like a mix of his and Darth's styles. I need help on some wood textures and ocean reflections.