Chris

Idle Thumbs 14: Interface with the Animus

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20 years from the earliest claim date plus any extensions granted, says wikipedia.
Also, when do patents expire?

:shifty::shifty:

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I think somehow the patent should become ownership of Michael Land through blackmail and death threats, thus making Mr. Land rich through all the companies who will soon want to make use of the iMuse system.

But I think even if he took it over, it would expire 2011. I don't know, I'm not a lawyer.

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it all depends on the actual content, you might be able to do similar stuff without violating the patent

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Software patents always seem malleable anyway. I don't really think there are many things iMuse does that haven't also been implemented by plenty of other studios and middleware companies at this point. If LucasArts wanted to put a lock on all that shit, they would have had to been on that long before now.

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I think somehow the patent should become ownership of Michael Land through blackmail and death threats, thus making Mr. Land rich through all the companies who will soon want to make use of the iMuse system.

Spoiler: This quickly turned into a side-rant that is unrelated to your post, so don't take it personally. I know you were probably not being serious, but it reminded me of a stupid thing, so I went off. Just so you know.

I think that Michael Land is already doing fine for himself. Also, why would he get the patent? Not only was he not the sole developer of the system, he did it for pay while employed at LucasArts. I doubt he was ever under the delusion that he would own that technology, and hopefully he was also never under the delusion that he was the only person responsible for making it happen. Just because his name is on it among the list of developers, and just because he was also the lead composer on Monkey Island 2 doesn't mean that it was wholly his creation. He probably had a very large role in its conception and implementation, but I don't think that makes it "his."

I'm fine with giving people creative credit where credit is due (and Michael Land is due a lot of credit for the creation and execution of iMuse), but even more than in film, it seems like gamers are extremely eager to credit and call out sole creative voices on projects they like. I wouldn't be surprised if that happened as a reaction to the game industry's tendency to not ever call out or namecheck creative leads at all, but the flipside of just saying "iMuse is by Michael Land" or whatever, is also maybe not the best. It deifies people in gratuitous weird ways.

At the farthest end of that spectrum, you get the 90s PC Gamer "Game Gods" cover issue, and at the other extreme you get the industry standard of absolutely no recognition. I know people like calling out the contributions of names they know (and I know that I am harping gratuitously on what was an offhand remark which wasn't intended to be taken this way) but in gamer culture it sometimes goes to such an extreme that it breaks with how things actually get conceived and made.

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I think that Michael Land is already doing fine for himself. Also, why would he get the patent? Not only was he not the sole developer of the system, he did it for pay while employed at LucasArts. I doubt he was ever under the delusion that he would own that technology, and hopefully he was also never under the delusion that he was the only person responsible for making it happen. Just because his name is on it among the list of developers, and just because he was also the lead composer on Monkey Island 2 doesn't mean that it was wholly his creation. He probably had a very large role in its conception and implementation, but I don't think that makes it "his."

Well it was a joke with no real bearing to seriousness, nor do I really think people who make things under employment for a company are entitled to anything, since those are the rules and all. Rarely, but sometimes in TV shows or movies, creators get to take away rights to certain elements (characters or pieces of art), so I guess I was referring to that. It was really just a dumb comment with no deep thought behind it to fill the internet up with more text crap.

I also don't seriously think only one man made iMuse, and was kind of bothered in the Rogue book no one else got credit for it besides him. Even when they made a little aside for the Best of Soundtrack CD from years ago, they wrote something half assed like, "featuring musicians like Michael Land AND OTHERS." Like the guy couldn't even do some research and list a couple of other names of people who were featured on that soundtrack.

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But I like the idea [of iMuse]. The first Hitman game had a system like this. It used the same music format as Deus Ex, I think, and not simply recorded tracks, so it was possible.

I dunno about Hitman, but Deus Ex used the Unreal Engine's music system which was essentially a tracker: a sequence of short samples and simple effects. (Supposedly, Unreal's .umx files are similar to .mod files. Yeah, .mod files.)

If an iMuse-like system were to be made today, I would think a tracker-like soundtrack system would work best. Synthesized instrumentation (à la Monkey Island 2 and other MIDI stuff) has a very limited (read: retro) sound, and using fully produced recordings (MP3, OGG, CD audio, etc.) would not allow for much beyond fading in and out of a few pre-recorded pieces of music.

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Jake is only upset because his contribution to Telltale's games is limited to random bits and pieces ;) BTW, when you listed the stuff you've done for the games, I realized that it's all stuff I've felt has been done really nicely. While they're not critical to the games, the good implementation does make the games more enjoyable. :tup::tup:

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What you really need is a bunch of high quality samples of instruments and a real-time sequencer with rules embedded in the environment to provide cues. Unless I've completely misunderstood something someone's said above and that's already been done. I would be surprised if it isn't already present.

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I just listened to you guys talking about iMUSE and it was driving me crazy.

First, you totally didn't mention X-Wing and Tie Fighter. Those games were made a hundred times better by the use of iMUSE. You would be flying around a perfectly banal level, then all of a sudden the music would swell to announce a new threat entering the system. It was really awesome and if you only played the Windows 95 / CD-ROM version of the game you missed out on it.

Second, preferring FM synthesis over General MIDI is totally goofy. It sounds like you never actually heard it, or bought the wrong GM board. I had a MediaVision Pro Audio Spectrum 16 and it was a HUGE improvement over the sad bleeps and bloops of the SoundBlaster card it replaced. Unfortunately, I had to retire the card prematurely because it had a built-in SCSI adapter that Windows XP wouldn't play nice with.

After the PAS16 I had an Ensoniq card and they were constantly releasing new patches for it that put FM synthesis to shame. If you remember Ensoniq as the guys behind the crappy sound cards you were getting free with your Gateways, then yeah ... you had the wrong card. You had to spend a couple hundred to get the good stuff. ;)

Anyway, just wanted to throw my two cents in.

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I dunno about Hitman, but Deus Ex used the Unreal Engine's music system which was essentially a tracker: a sequence of short samples and simple effects. (Supposedly, Unreal's .umx files are similar to .mod files. Yeah, .mod files.)

You can open up the tracks in Milky tracker and modplug and see who wrote them and a few short messages. To me Deus Ex music was disapointing, tracks just lurched into into each other and sometimes played patterns starting with silence so the music would drop out.

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First, you totally didn't mention X-Wing and Tie Fighter. Those games were made a hundred times better by the use of iMUSE. You would be flying around a perfectly banal level, then all of a sudden the music would swell to announce a new threat entering the system. It was really awesome and if you only played the Windows 95 / CD-ROM version of the game you missed out on it.

Second, preferring FM synthesis over General MIDI is totally goofy.

Hell yeah it was, I was just thinking the same thing. That was an awesome implementation of iMUSE.

Also, you know what is even more awful? As a young teen I couldn't convince the parents to loan me some benjamins for a real sound card. They felt my pain and one Christmas I woke up thinking I got an awesome soundcard. To my horror it was a Disney Sound Source. At least it worked for Blake Stone.

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Also, you know what is even more awful? As a young teen I couldn't convince the parents to loan me some benjamins for a real sound card. They felt my pain and one Christmas I woke up thinking I got an awesome soundcard. To my horror it was a Disney Sound Source. At least it worked for Blake Stone.

But do you even know what you could have done with a Disney Sound Source?!

I mean if I had that, I could have made my OCD Mickey adventures in Follow the Reader have voice without tons of ear splitting static and distortion!

I think you also could have used that sound card for a few shitty Roger Rabbit PC games too. Oh Disney Sound Source, such a great buy!

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Fumito Ueda had this to say in his 1Up interview:

Yes, because I wanted to create a totally different world for Shadow of the Colossus compared to the world of ICO, I was thinking of using songs that are dynamic and gallant from the beginning. Also, I had an idea for songs that dramatically changed depending on the situation of the game character. There had been some games in which several tracks were played and turned on and off depending on the situation of the scenes, but my ideal was that to change the melody and how the song develops as the situation changes, just like how they work in movies. It's my challenge now to come up with songs that change more dramatically for the title I am working on.

Which sounds pretty close to iMUSE to me. Awesome!

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Yeah I think all the iMuse exclusivity stuff has been tongue-in-cheek so far in the thread, at least on my end.

It really doesn't seem that hard to do event based music and I'd bet almost all games do it to some degree these days, although it probably just doesn't stand out as well because of (in my opinion) the lack of great music in most games these days (or past days as well). Definitely can't do it on redbook audio type games. Munch's Oddysee did it especially well when getting close to more dangerous areas or enlisting more Mudokens to follow you around.

Only thing is the music in Munch's Oddysee was shitty generic techno.

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