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Let me know if you need some help with music or sound or play-testing. I love Space Quest and I think my style of music might fit. Riffing on classic SQ themes sounds fun.

This is how I tend to play some adventure games: I enter a room, hear the start of a new song as I dink around, then leave the room and the song cuts off after only a few seconds. I'll hear the first 15 seconds of a song 100 times over the course of the game, while never listening to the song all the way through. So, for this tune contest, make the best gosh darn beginning of a song that you can.

-I will be looking for a catchy musical phrase within the first few seconds.
-Annoyingness is BAD. Hooks don't have to be annoying.
-Entries should be at least 45 seconds, OR able to be looped for at least 45 seconds without getting too annoying.
-Every part of the song should be fairly similar - if a player leaves the computer for a minute, he should recognize the song when he comes back.

Some random examples that I like:
Skyrim: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5txtITwAvs
Mario: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiAxiGZKpGQ
The beginning of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFa1-kciCb4
Any great movie theme song like Indiana Jones and Star Wars.

That's it. The rules for this one are a relatively lax, yes? No excuses for not doing it.

Alrighty, I didn't have as much time as I'd hoped, but at least I'm in before deadline.

https://soundcloud.com/adamh034/battlemarch

Cool, I've been meaning to write a militaristic piece for my game so this comes at the perfect time.

To reiterate many excellent arguments:

I agree with so many of you that it's pronounced "Gif", with a "G" sound, just like Gin, Gypsy, Gipped, Giraffe, Geoffrey, Giselle, and Genuine. Saying it's pronounced "jif" not "gif" is an embarrassment to this argument. Stand strong, true believers! Type it boldly: "It's pronounced GIF"! If you are misinterpreted, it's the reader's fault for not knowing phonetics.

The list of acronyms that you pronounce phonetically is larger than the list of acronyms that you pronounce by stringing together the each individual sounds from the words the acronym is derived from (i.e. no one is arguing to pronounce jpeg like JEG because the p is silent - kudos Babar). 

Lastly, I'm pretty sure if you invent a word you can be the tiebreaker in a controversy like this.

Your original gif got taken down so I can't compare new to old.

The head moves in a V shape, but I think it should move more in an upside-down V shape.

The legs still kick out to the side a lot. Also, maybe consider shrinking the toe a little bit when the foot is closest to the camera. The perspective is such that the camera looks pretty close to the character, which may or may not fit the game.

Maybe have the character turn a bit less as well? When I walk my shirt zipper doesn't move relative to my face.

The bouncing strings on the hoodie is a nice touch. The wrinkles on the sleeves also appear well-thought out. I'm quite impressed.

Did a quick edit (verrrry quick) where I only made changes to frames 3 and 7 - I copied the legs from frames 4 and 8, and I moved the head several pixels closer to center. The head now moves more in a figure 8 and the feet don't kick out as much. I think it's a slight improvement even with the screwy neck/shoulders and copy/pasted legs.

You are a mean SOB! That piece is craaaazy. I'm very impressed by the performers.

Putting a limit on the length is just so that I'm not forced to listen to the whole thing in order to judge it. It doesn't disqualify the piece IMO.

Anyways, that's an amazing contribution. I love the unusual combo of instruments. Since it was an older piece of yours I'd say it can be beaten out by anything else, but it doesn't look like you have any competition. So feel free to post another tune contest, or wait to see what everyone else wants to do, or whatever.

Yeah do that!

For this contest you'll get back to basics! Compose a piece of music following these guidelines:

1) There must be 3-5 parts or voices, each playing single notes.
2) Each voice should be active for the majority of the piece.
3) The same instrument can play more than one voice. So a piano that plays a string of 5-note chords would be an acceptable entry (as long as there are no other voices).
4) No unpitched percussion.
5) Your piece should be 1-3 minutes long.

Some examples of music that would follow these guidelines are barbershop quartets and most chamber music. Basically, your piece must be playable for any group of 3, 4, or 5 instruments (adjusting for range). Let me know if the intent of the rules is unclear.

I'll judge based on creativity and composition, while attempting to ignore polish. The deadline is May 21.


And most importantly, have fun!!

Hooray! Jondahr's was awesome, so I am quite honored.

The guitar part was a real guitar mixed with a basic midi nylon string guitar sound.

I'll put up the next tune contest as soon as I can!

I think the problem is that everything else in the background is perfectly precise - there aren't any lines that are almost horizontal or vertical. It creates an expectation of perfection so that it's almost disorienting when the view isn't quite centered on the door.

Two solutions would be to either make the odd perspective more pronouced by moving the door more to the left (the left side of the background is fairly empty so this seems reasonable to me), or move the vanishing point to the center of the door so that it's symmetrical.

If you don't want to change placement of the door or the vanishing point, you might try placing something notable on the right side of the door, and/or add in more lines running to the same vanishing point. Possibly change your cobble stones to be more 3D - sketch parallel horizontal lines as well as lines coming out of your vanishing point (forming a grid of trapezoids on the road), and then draw in an irregularly shaped cobble stone for each trapezoid. Then the cobble stones should subtly line up with the grass lines.

I don't know, just spitballing here.

First!

https://soundcloud.com/adamh034/sassytango

3x3 pixels! BECAUSE I CAN.

[imgzoom]http://i40.tinypic.com/igl102.png[/imgzoom]

It actually doesn't look that bad at 1x or 2x. I can't figure out anyway to do punctuation other than period.

[Baron]

I vote Baron, for holding my interest and making me laugh.

Spoiler

I'd guess the army is an army of ants, but that's not the question, so... um... a human? The sun?

[close]

[Atmosphere]

Gut picks:

Atmosphere: Kasander
Composition: Kasander
Functionality: Kastchey
Technique: MeditativePixel

[Doc_Savage]

It's too hard to pick.

I like Doc_Savage's over-all finished product, but just looking at composition I like Jondahr's. Bingonight's is awesome too but the transition from sun to rain is less obvious.

So I suppose I'll go with Doc_Savage.

[Kasander]

I gotta go with Adam H Kasander. Love those jiggling hands.

All right, here's another hidden word riddle:

"How old is this mess?"

According to wikipedia, Harold park is on an isthmus (Howold isthismess -> Harold Isthmus). So that's sort of interesting.

Also, "This Mess" is a song that was released in 2007.

Cheers!

I did some playing around with your solution and got a simple reduction just by tweaking your angle from 120 to 115 (which is 360/pi) and using my 1-foot-death-zone approximation instead of your 33 cm: the odds are approximately 1 in 2r, where r is the distance in feet (3 ft ~ 1 m). Then if you don't know the distance, the solution is 1 over the integral of 2r from 0 to M (upper bound), which is 1/M^2.

So if you know the distance between you and the intruder then the solution is 1/(2r),if you have a cone shaped area the intruder could be in then the solution is 1/(M^2), and if you have a rectangular area then the solution is 1/(W-1). And I think we should leave it at that.