Jump to content
gdf

Plug your shit

Recommended Posts

Last week I held a lecture at Dutch anime convention Tsunacon about the history of the shinsengumi, the shogun's secret police in Tokugawa Japan. I put it online, with English subtitles, so if anyone feels like a 20 minute history lesson with tons of pictures, this is the YouTube Video to watch!

 


Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

We recently finished our look back at 75 games from last year. I think it turned out pretty good, but you can definitely see my editing slip up a bit towards the end there. Didn't get much sleep that week.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Hey again folks!. 

A shameless update from myself regarding Beacon. We're less than a week away from EGX Rezzed & showing the game playable, for the first time ever! Hopefully it will attract some of you to come check us out and all the other rad games at the show :)

 

The game has had quite the transformation over the past month as we are finishing up our demo build! We've probably had dozens of new assets made, loads of new animations created, original foley, particles, you name it. And I think it's starting to pay off. I'll let the screenshots do the talking!

 

Dujn5vO.png

 

FvaW9uW.jpg

 

Also, some of the illustration work Tay has put together for our upcoming website!

 

gHzdG9m.png

 

1OxG7Ek.jpg

 

I'll spare posting any more for now haha. But we'll be putting up a new blog post this weekend, and a huge post-mortem of our time at EGX and all the work that went into it.

Thanks everyone!

 

Edit: Bonus stompy robots!

 

JzbJ3FW.gifTSv9P2D.gif

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm terrible and forgetful, is there a twitter I can follow for updates on the game? Whether it's personal, one particular to the game or studio, whatever.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

those look super great

 

love those trees

 

Thank you!

 

I'm terrible and forgetful, is there a twitter I can follow for updates on the game? Whether it's personal, one particular to the game or studio, whatever.

 

There is indeedy! https://twitter.com/MONOTHETIC is for our company, but we have fairly frequent updates regarding the game, with links to our devblog (new one going up today)

Or you could follow me I guess (@arranseaton). I tend to post much more frequently with lots of in-progress stuff. But I also probably post a lot of dumb garbage. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I tend to post much more frequently with lots of in-progress stuff. But I also probably post a lot of dumb garbage. 

That's the perfect combo! Followed both.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

By jove, Beacon looks terrific. Looking forward to playing it!
 
So my girlfriend wrote another comic. It's called "This Is A Terrible Comic - The Tales Of Moisture Man" it's a 4-panel comedy manga about a rabbit who profusely sweats. I think it's hilarious (even if I am a bit biased), and has already got a 20-page comic printed, just not online. If anyone wants it, it's only £3, just not on any online store since that stupid VATMOS shit came in.

 

a82ecc7c493048aabb7ab118ca469cd3.jpg

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So my girlfriend wrote another comic. It's called "This Is A Terrible Comic - The Tales Of Moisture Man" it's a 4-panel comedy manga about a rabbit who profusely sweats. I think it's hilarious (even if I am a bit biased), and has already got a 20-page comic printed, just not online. If anyone wants it, it's only £3, just not on any online store since that stupid VATMOS shit came in.

 

Yes please, bring me a copy to buy when you're here picking up your NOLFs!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Not my kind of music, but it sounds well done to me. :)

 

I'm playing around with some music production software at the moment, and what I'm doing sounds amateurish on its own, but even more so in comparison. Not that that bothers me, I actually like that amateurish quality. Still, I couldn't even produce (semi-)professionally if I wanted to so far. I might post the result when I'm done with it. ^^

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Well...it's music that happens as you try to learn the ins and outs of a music production program. ;) Otherwise I had no preconceptions, apart from wanting to try out sampling, which I've barely done before, preferably with recordings of my voice. I did some recordings for the track, but since this activity annoyed my neighbors, I continued to only rely on using appropriate recordings I could find, which are with one exception vocal recordings by myself. I chop them up, edit them, and puzzle them together in the hope that they fit.

The program is called KRISTAL Audio Engine and is quite limited in its functionality, but I thought it would be good for a start. It supports real-time effects like delay and reverb, so I rely a lot on those. I also use Audacity for tasks it can't handle. After I'm done with the current thing I'm working on I want to try out FL Studio. What program did you use for your track?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Haha got it, ive been there (and still am really). That sounds cool though.
Does KRISTAL come with any default VSTs? I use Ableton Live 9 with a handful of third party plugins. 

I think FL is pretty great I have a few buddies who can create magic with it and swear by it. Although i'm not sure how great it is with recording and traditional studio stuff. Both Ableton and FL are producer DAWS through and through. FL is a way better deal though, it is relatively cheap and I think they do free updates. Also has a ton of cool plugins that come with it so id say definitely try it out and see what you think. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

KRISTAL has no support for plugins. It offers four effects which come with presets and can be customized. It has no digital instruments. It's free for personal use, and I thought its very limited functionality would be great for a start. I once tried FL Studio before, but I found it to be quite daunting. The same goes even moreso for Cubase, of course. ^^

Thanks for your advice! :)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Been working on providing more guidance to folk who want to pitch to our site, which includes a list of other places to pitch to that could prove interesting if you ever thought about trying to get paid for writing (it's still expanding)

 

Would anybody here be interested in a weekly games criticism club where we read formative games criticism and a dash of critical theory as a quick tour across different styles and conversations? Hosting something like that would likely be my next big project.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

We're running a new challenge over on my community, to re-imagine any scene from the Half-Life series.

 

b2fc1b0064c24f4442aba729af15a7bf.jpg

 

That is, to look at a part of the game from an entirely fresh perspective like this:

 

  • The Tram ride at the beginning of Half-Life. What if somebody else pushed the cart? Gordon was late, so they got somebody else and the resonance cascade happens when Gordon is still on the tram. It crashed to the ground but leads him to a previously unseen section of Black Mesa.
  • Black Mesa. What if Half-Life's infamous research facility were hidden underneath a city or town rather than out in the desert?
  • Surface Tension. This particular event occurs on the side of a Citadel. Yes, it doesn't fit the story, but that's not important. This is about high cliffs and long falls.
  • Opposing Force. What if Black Mesa were devastated by this game's nuclear bomb quite early on during the story, leaving Adrian Shepherd to navigate a version of the research facility resembling a post-apocalyptic nightmare?
  • Point Insertion. Instead of arriving at a city train station, Gordon finds himself in a deserted and derelict village station, perhaps near enough to Ravenholm, to feel the threat. Being seen by Civil Protection may be the least of his worries.
  • City 17. What if the Combine had chosen the United States, France, or London to be their primary city?

 

We've had great success with our previous challenges, bringing about some lovely work. As the site was founded around Half-Life modding I'm expecting a pretty good turnout, but as with any mapping projects there won't be much to see for a few weeks. Still, I'll come back and post some highlights if anyone is a Half-Life fan but isn't so interested in the development side of things (which will be getting tracked day-by-day).

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I finished the track I talked about a week ago. I hope y'all like it! ^^

https://soundcloud.com/ted-ist-tot/moaning-groaning

 

It gets better as it goes on, I promise! ;)

A few words about it: I made only two recordings for the track, both of which can be heard at the very beginning. They were recorded with a laptop mic at about 5:30 AM. The table pounding woke up my neighbors, so after that I limited myself by not recording any more for the project. I sampled both of the recordings exhaustively throughout the rest of the track (sampling is not something I really did much of before). Otherwise I delved back into the archive of my recordings and made use of those. I also sampled a porn clip because, uhm...artistic intuition? :getmecoat

The program I used was crazy limited! Effects were somehow only applied to the left channel of a stereo track, so either you could live with that, or you had to reduce the stereo to a mono track or you had to do without the effect. You are also limited to only 16 tracks per track (uhm, poor word choice, eh?), which means that you are merely able to settle on 16 different combinations of volume, effects and channel (whether stereo or mono) settings! Towards the end of my work on the track I ran out of options, because I already used every track and had difficulty working within my already chosen settings. It helped to make the samples louder or quieter in Audacity, but there are limits to that, too, of course.

Not that anyone would care, but I needed to vent a bit about my frustrations with the program.  :violin:  Still, I learned an awful lot while working on the track! Next time I'll use something a lot more powerful for sure. ^^

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

×