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Quintus

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13 hours ago, Grace Under Pressure said:

Didn't know you were involved with TOR.

Yes, that and the gritty Star Wars 1313 which was far into development but was cancelled after LucasArts was acquired by Disney and they began making Battlefront instead.

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2 hours ago, karelm said:

Yes, that and the gritty Star Wars 1313 which was far into development but was cancelled after LucasArts was acquired by Disney and they began making Battlefront instead.

Based on your work in the composer's thread I'm guessing you did some music for them?

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  • 1 month later...

The other day Tower of Dawn popped into my head and as usual, it still hasn't left.

 

Man, that heightening late-game tension and stakes, helped considerably by this cue... hearing this on loop for 10 minutes until finally that finale kicks in signalling that you can rest!

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  • 2 weeks later...

I want someone to make a big project out of "remastering" GBA soundtracks.  Re-creating the tracks with slavish faithfulness, just without the distortion/compression (or whatever you call the issues with GBA sound quality, I'm no audio engineer).  Has anyone done much of that?

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On 17/11/2021 at 8:52 AM, karelm said:

Yes, that and the gritty Star Wars 1313 which was far into development but was cancelled after LucasArts was acquired by Disney and they began making Battlefront instead.

 

Wait, you're Karim Elmahmoudi? I feel like I just took a hit of acid or something... all these years I thought your name was Karel M. :lol:

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6 hours ago, Disco Stu said:

I want someone to make a big project out of "remastering" GBA soundtracks.  Re-creating the tracks with slavish faithfulness, just without the distortion/compression (or whatever you call the issues with GBA sound quality, I'm no audio engineer).  Has anyone done much of that?

There are a few of them out there, though not sure how far they go in reducing what you don't like. (As in, do they just lightly dust off some things, or do they actually sand down, and refinish the tracks? ;) )

For example:

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

This week I started playing Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders for the very first time (the only Lucasarts Adventure Game I had never played), and the main theme is really cool:

 

 

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32 minutes ago, Romão said:

This week I started playing Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders for the very first time (the only Lucasarts Adventure Game I had never played), and the main theme is really cool:

 

I was totally unfamiliar with this. Partly because Zak is the one Ron Gilbert adventure I never made it through, but perhaps even more so because the C64 version sounds rather lame:

 

Brilliant though they were from a software engineering point of view (SCUMM!), those very early Lucasfilm games sadly didn't really take advantage of the SID's potential. Maniac Mansion suffered a similar fate, although the theme itself is fun:

 

The Zak theme as composed and demoed, before it was adapted into the "original" C64 version, sounds cool though:

 

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None of the versions posted are what I remember from my childhood, which would have been the PC EGA version.  I think I found what I'm familiar with on youtube:

 

 

 

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That's pretty good for PC speaker.

 

The best PC speaker sound I've ever heard in a game was in Pinball Fantasies. It's the only game I know of that played fully PCM sampled music and live sound effects on it:

 

Except for the frequency range (mostly down to the speaker itself I guess), it sounded almost identical to the Amiga version - at a time when even most sound card based PC game music usually still sounded much inferior to its 4 channel sample based Amiga counterparts.

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On 11/01/2022 at 3:10 PM, Disco Stu said:

I want someone to make a big project out of "remastering" GBA soundtracks.  Re-creating the tracks with slavish faithfulness, just without the distortion/compression (or whatever you call the issues with GBA sound quality, I'm no audio engineer).  Has anyone done much of that?

 

Quite a few. I listened to a Golden Sun one recently. 

 

 

 

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Popular Uematsu pieces are usually the most average: It's too many Final Fantasy fans, who pretend they love Uematsu, not real Uematsu fans!

 

If I mention Protect the Espers/Save Them, most of them will respond "what?"

 

 

Somehow the way this track loops reminds me of the battle of Tybalt and Mercutio.

 

 

 

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Some of you might enjoy seeing some footage from Star Wars 1313, the cancelled game that was long in development when it was cancelled after the sale to Disney.  I was part of the music team. :( 

 

From dot esports: 

"Star Wars: 1313 was an unreleased title that looked like it could’ve been one of the best Star Wars games of all time. An E3 trailer in 2013 gave fans their first look at the title, showing two characters descending to level 1313 beneath Coruscant and fighting off an enemy ship. The gameplay included cover-based combat, a short hand-to-hand segment, and a parkour section on the outside of a burning ship. The game was still early in development, but it looked incredible. 

 

The game was canceled when Disney purchased Lucasfilm and shut down the video game section of the business, LucasArts, in 2013. Fans everywhere were disappointed that they’d never experience the exciting game. New footage showing Boba Fett in action in 1313 has reignited the pain for some players, salting the wound almost 10 years later. 

 

It’s unlikely 1313 will ever come to fruition at this point and fans will be stuck wondering what could’ve been."

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53 minutes ago, Jay said:

Disney shouldn't have canceled that!

Especially since it was like 3 years in to the development.  Which pretty much means the game is done and they're fine-tuning game play and testing but that takes another year or so.

More info from John Rodd's website: "I did a bunch of work on Star Wars 1313. I was brought into LucasArts to meet with the animators and the chief art director. It was awesome seeing all of the concept art of what it was going to be: dark, underground, and edgy. I then flew to Abbey Road to record the orchestra before mixing it in my own studio. It would have been a really great game, if it hadn't been canceled when The Walt Disney Company bought out LucasArts. But, in terms of orchestras in film scores and games, you can do a classical style where it's set back and roomy. But that's not necessarily going to work well with sound effects, jets, and explosions. For me, part of the fun is balancing the room mics and getting it to sound big that way, but also using spot mics for detail. Not messing up the bigness, but just adding some presence. Abbey Road's big room has a long reverb, but with some careful work I can add some presence to the score. Then, of course, there are all of the virtual instruments. You want them to coexist, but not necessarily at the same distance because things can be closer or farther away. It's really fun sculpting."  What could have been.  :( 

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Can you tell us more about how much was done music wise? I know Harlin's main theme eventually was put out...I believe by him? 

 

Was it all recorded? That quote there is a little confusing about it. 

 

The only other one I've been dying to know about is Rogue Squadron Trilogy. There was a real orchestra version of the main theme in that trailer that came out later, but I have to assume that's not all that was done.

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12 hours ago, SilverTrumpet said:

Can you tell us more about how much was done music wise? I know Harlin's main theme eventually was put out...I believe by him? 

 

Was it all recorded? That quote there is a little confusing about it. 

 

The only other one I've been dying to know about is Rogue Squadron Trilogy. There was a real orchestra version of the main theme in that trailer that came out later, but I have to assume that's not all that was done.

 

Just that it was scored for large orchestra (standard Star Wars orchestra) with winds in 3 (plus auxiliary winds like piccolo, english horn, bass clarinet, contrabassoon), 6 horns, 3 trumpets 4 trombones, tuba, timpani 5-6 percussionists, harp, piano, and strings.  There was an "Imperial orchestra" and "rebel orchestra" with slightly different instrumentation.  I don't know how many sessions they did but that we were working hard on the deadline for scoring which was 10 years ago now I guess but don't know how much music was recorded in total, just what I worked on.

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  • 2 weeks later...
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The level of care that goes into finding the perfect sound for these tracks on PPF's part is amazing.

 

The DKC tracks in general are a miraculous thing where usually having them played by an orchestra makes them sound worse. They're one of the few video game scores where they take perfect advantage of the tools at their disposal. I can't even count the number of modern game scores where they're written for orchestra even though it's obvious the game doesn't have the budget for one, and they end up sounding like crap. Compare that to the DKC SNES games and they're masterpieces. 

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On 25/03/2022 at 12:29 AM, karelm said:

Pyschonauts 2 vol 2 now available with many more great cues, these are jazz and rock.  Lots of groovy tunes including Cosmic 1, sung by regular castmate, Jack Black.

 

I'm really looking forward to these. I have them (I'm a backer), but I want to wait until I finally get around to playing the game before I listen to the music.

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10 hours ago, SilverTrumpet said:

The level of care that goes into finding the perfect sound for these tracks on PPF's part is amazing.

 

My favorite for this new one is the plastic horn, pretty sure it's this one: https://www.westmusic.com/jhorn/401949

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  • 3 weeks later...

I've been listening to new arrangements of Chrono Cross music in the new remaster. I'm really enjoying the use of wind instruments in these new versions. They add a real sense of soul to the music.

https://youtu.be/arWghzUlAMY

 

Edit: still not working for me. On my Google phone on mobile chrome, it just shows a link.

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You just paste in the whole url into the post and it automatically turns into an embed. 

 

It doesn't work if you use the youtu.be short version like you did

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8 hours ago, Jay said:

You just paste in the whole url into the post and it automatically turns into an embed. 

 

It doesn't work if you use the youtu.be short version like you did

Hmm... that's the link the YouTube app gives me.

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Oh right my bad, youtu.be links do work, of course

 

If you paste the URL the youtube app gives you into a post, it should immediately turn it into an embed.  At least it does for me on my android phone.  Maybe iPhones are different, idk.  Maybe try pressing enter after pasting it in?

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7 minutes ago, Jay said:

Oh right my bad, youtu.be links do work, of course

 

If you paste the URL the youtube app gives you into a post, it should immediately turn it into an embed.  At least it does for me on my android phone.  Maybe iPhones are different, idk.  Maybe try pressing enter after pasting it in?

still not working for me. On my Google phone on mobile chrome, it just shows a link. I hit enter after posting the link. Not sure what's up, but I'll survive.

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Huh.  I literally copied your link, pasted it into this post, and it immediately turned into an embed >shrug<

 

 

i didn't even have to hit enter.  I just pasted it, and a second later it was an embed.  Weird.

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