First Experiences!

[Vaylos]

Well, I finally got around to creating a character and logging in today. Played a couple hours.  I don\'t know if this kinda topic has been done before, but I think it would be nice if others recounted their first experiences and impressions on entering the game for the first time.

Disclaimer: I -do- realize this game is just barely getting into the alpha phase, and I do realize most of the issues will be polished as development progresses. I am just recounting my own experiences within the game, and giving some minor opinions. This is -not- intended as a bug-report, and it is not intended as a Suggestion thread.  Though I will probably have some constructive criticism here and there.


My overall impression:

Well, for the little bit I explored today namely Hydlaa, part of the sewers, and shortly after, the death realm *cough*I have to say that the textures and overall feeling was pretty nicely done. Particularly the city design intrigued me. I felt  the overall feel of the building architecture was well done, and felt like a believable medieval/fantasy style cityscape.  The sewer was appropriately dingey and dank looking, and the death realm was...well...very dark.

Combat is a little awkward, and I had some minor issues with my optical mouse and the horizontal camera panning on third person F seems a bit slow. I tried adjusting the camera settings to no avail. But it might have been me being stupid and not setting the right values or something.  Not a big deal though, i mean, it\'s barely an alpha release. I will explore the game more as my time allows hehe.

I think the music fits the game decently enough...but...on the other hand, I think the music could be better.  The audio quality itself seems clean enough, and I don\'t really hear compressiony artifacts. So no problems with production quality. But I think some of the compositional and melodic aspects could be improved upon. And I\'m sure Talad has a certain feel in mind for the game, so I won\'t step on any toes...well...not intentionally *grin*

I know I tend to nitpick on music, but I can\'t help it being a musician and an amateur/student composer (student because i\'m always learning and bettering myself).  I think compositionally the music is sound, and fitting, but I just think more could be done to fit the overall ambience. I felt that the music was more...\"warm\" than dark or providing a really good ambience.  Perhaps some more reverb in the death realm and sewer areas, maybe some \"ear candy\" to go along with the music tracks?  Just food for thought. Heh, maybe I should apply as a composer/contributor? *grin* I have ideas brewing now that i\'m getting a general feel for the game hehe.

One of the more interesting experiences:

So...after entering the death realm, I ran into another new player who had died from cliff diving a number of times. Apparently he was using a flat-panel monitor, and the settings weren\'t exactly favorable for \"uber-dark\" situations.  So I tried my best to guide him step-by-step as we both figured out how to navigate our arses outta that place.  It was an interesting and rewarding experience to say the least.  Always glad to lend a hand if/when I can.

Feel free to post your initial experiences and impressions.

[Asraniel]

yes you should apply as a developer for this game :-)

[defender43]

Nice post.

But instead of deleting the drop-dead AMAZING music (which I have to have turned off   ), maybe we could make due with just rearranging the music so it fits better?

[acraig]

Originally posted by Vaylos
Well, for the little bit I explored today namely Hydlaa, part of the sewers, and shortly after, the death realm *cough*I have to say that the textures and overall feeling was pretty nicely done. Particularly the city design intrigued me. I felt  the overall feel of the building architecture was well done, and felt like a believable medieval/fantasy style cityscape.  The sewer was appropriately dingey and dank looking, and the death realm was...well...very dark.

Yeah, it\'s a little bit too dark in there .  We have actually put a lot of work into having each race have it\'s own unique architexture.  Each race has it\'s own building style and homes.  There is a lot of concept art that we have developed to try to give each race it\'s own \'feel\'.

Combat is a little awkward, and I had some minor issues with my optical mouse and the horizontal camera panning on third person F seems a bit slow. I tried adjusting the camera settings to no avail. But it might have been me being stupid and not setting the right values or something.  Not a big deal though, i mean, it\'s barely an alpha release. I will explore the game more as my time allows hehe.

Yeah, combat does need a fair bit of work.  But as a basic system it works pretty well.  It may seem a bit clumsy in game but the actual calculations behind it are pretty complex that take into account a lot of different variables.

I think the music fits the game decently enough...but...on the other hand, I think the music could be better.  The audio quality itself seems clean enough, and I don\'t really hear compressiony artifacts. So no problems with production quality. But I think some of the compositional and melodic aspects could be improved upon. And I\'m sure Talad has a certain feel in mind for the game, so I won\'t step on any toes...well...not intentionally *grin*

I find the music pretty impressive and I think we are doing a good focus on some of the \'bells\' here.   Sounds are based on time of day and weather conditions.  If feel you can contribute to the sound system I am sure we can look at that option.  

So...after entering the death realm, I ran into another new player who had died from cliff diving a number of times. Apparently he was using a flat-panel monitor, and the settings weren\'t exactly favorable for \"uber-dark\" situations.  So I tried my best to guide him step-by-step as we both figured out how to navigate our arses outta that place.  It was an interesting and rewarding experience to say the least.  Always glad to lend a hand if/when I can.

Yes, I think the death realm is a little too dark as well and may get a bit better when we recalculate the lighting for that map.

[zanzibar]

Originally posted by Vaylos
I think the music fits the game decently enough...but...on the other hand, I think the music could be better. The audio quality itself seems clean enough, and I don\'t really hear compressiony artifacts. So no problems with production quality. But I think some of the compositional and melodic aspects could be improved upon. And I\'m sure Talad has a certain feel in mind for the game, so I won\'t step on any toes...well...not intentionally *grin*

Music is such a subjective thing that I don\'t think you\'re being entirely fair.


And plus there\'s way more ways to messing up a recording than just bad use of compression.

[Vaylos]

Oh, don\'t get me wrong. I -never- meant to suggest deleting anything. And I never meant to say that the music was \"bad\" it\'s not, and there\'s a fair number of tracks I like. Plus, I haven\'t heard all of it yet And I didn\'t mean compression. The compression of the music is fine. Besides, Vorbis > mp3 anyways.  And in all fairness, it was 2am when I was writing, so my thoughts might have been a little jumbled. I\'ll try to clarify a bit here.

For the most part I like the music. It works. I -never- intended to suggest it was bad or anything heh. I dig the track that plays during creation, and so far I haven\'t heard all the tracks.  I wasn\'t giving a comprehensive opinion, just a kinda \"First look\" impression. ...  and it was late when I was playing, so I had headphones on lol.  I wasn\'t looking at the music specifically, I was playing the game  

If I sounded overly critical, I apologize...it was about 2am when I was writing lol.

Next time in I can concentrate on a closer look though, explore other areas and get a more rounded feel...I mean...i\'ve only heard like 3 or 4 tracks now  Just the areas I was in.

Anyways, overall, the music works, and it really does fit well with the areas. That\'s what matters the most.  I never meant to say the music \"sucked\" because it doesn\'t.  It\'s pretty good. In fact, it\'s a helluva lot better than the music from DAoC in my opinion.

And the compression is fine. It was wise to go with Vorbis, since overall, Vorbis has a better compression algorythm than mp3...and of course, it\'s free of patents. I\'ve started switching to vorbis myself recently...but I still burn mp3 CDs for my car audio *grin*

Also, I don\'t know if it\'s on people\'s minds or not, but I\'m definitely -not- saying I could do better *lol*  maybe about the same level...eh, it\'s subjective really.  

I\'m still a bit of an amateur, but if you want me to contribute I will.  I could write a \"battle music\" track or two to have some variety. I also write melodic styles, mostly small/chamber group instrumentation. I have a pretty good feeling for celtic styled music as well, since I listen to a lot of it.  Although, I don\'t think full blown celtic would fit that well in the feeling with everything else. Cept maybe in the tavern hehe.

My personal style tends to bend towards the melancholy melodies and feelings, but I also write in more modern, contemporary styles. I just don\'t write very good ...er... \"happy\" or festive music  Well...not -totally- true...I could probably wring out some fairly festive celtic/irish type stuff.

I do a lot of my work in FL Studio, but I also have finale notepad, and cakewalk home studio 9. I have experience working with midi (heck it\'s what I started with back in 1998)  However, if I do contribute, I think I should submit in midi form so the music guys can import, and use their own samples to keep everything sounding consistent. It\'s up to you guys really.

This is my general workflow:  I usually start with finale notepad (since I can\'t yet afford whatever the latest version of finale is) but I\'m not writing concertos here, so I think finale notepad works just fine for the purposes of game music.

Then, I export to midi, and throw that into FL Studio to start touching up volumes, reverb, panning, EQing if needed, etc. etc. And after being satisfied, i\'d either directly render to mp3, or, for the purposes of this project, render to wav, and encode the wav to ogg vorbis.  

Next, take the vorbis, throw it into audacity, and remove any background noise. Sure, it\'s probably not even noticable since nothing is recorded, just sequenced, but still...*shrug* better safe than sorry heh. I think these days, my music is sounding cleaner than it used to though.

The only major problem, is I don\'t have any near-field audio monitors. I\'m just using a basic 4-speaker setup here.  my desktop speakers, and a pair of infinity RS-2 bookshelf speakers. (desktops are the rears) although I do a test-render, and take it out to my car to see how it sounds there. Usually if I can get it to sound decent on a couple different setups, then it\'s probably good to go.

Also, depending on my time constraints (i\'m unemployed right now, but currently job hunting for lab work, also taking Organic chem I),  it might take me awhile to get a track done.  Depending on how busy I am, could take me a couple days...to a week or two, to even a month, depending on the complexity of the music and my time allowance. However a 2-3 minute track shouldn\'t take me a whole month, unless I\'m being stubborn on some part of it *lol* like the remix up on my website. But that has to make it past the infamous OCR judge panel, so i\'m being careful with it

Er, anyways, this topic has gotten a bit off track with all the music talk, which is totally my fault, and i\'m the topic starter *cackle*.  Anyways, how were other people\'s first experiences in the game?

P.S./edit:  I don\'t know if I\'d actually apply though. I mean they\'ve already got 3 guys in music, and a WTB member according to the site. That\'s at least 4 composers, so I\'m sure they\'ll be fine.  .... .... ... and besides i have confidence issues

[Nikodemus]

I agree about the music.
It is good but not great
There are some songs which make my heard beat faster and make me amaized when listening at the first time, but none of the PS music gave me that feeling.

[Vaylos]

actually, the only music that I tend to tone out after awhile is that Hydlaa Plaza one  \"Dark City\" or whatever it\'s called. I went into the music directory and listened to all the other OGG files, and they all sound very good. Although, they seem to be a bit quiet in-game.

*sigh* looks like this thread turned into a music thread *lol* I hijacked my own thread.  Seriously though, post your experiences If ya wanna comment about the music and stuff afterwards, feel free, but I\'d like to stay on topic here.

[zanzibar]

I\'m not a fan of \"the dark city\" (Hydlaa plaza music).  I just find it a bit repetitive... it would be awesome as a metal song though.  Those shots would rip on distorted guitar.

I really like the intro to the magic shop, as well as Akkaio.  My one beaf with Akkaio\'s music is that it goes into this sort of violin chorus, which seems kind of out of place and European.

Ojaveda road (daytime travel) is my absolute favourite however.  It\'s very beautiful.



Edit:  And yeah, the character generation music has some sort of special quality to it.  Maybe it\'s an association thing; it plays when you\'re making a new character, and that\'s a pretty unique part of the game experience.

[Vaylos]

*scraps the first experiences idea and sticks with music talk*

Considering the general layout of Hydlaa Plaza...well...the place seems kinda bright and somewhat peaceful...heck...there\'s even a park with a gazebo lol.  It\'s just that in my humble opinion, the music to Hydlaa Plaza should feel more pastoral...I\'m not talking Beethoven\'s 6th here, since that\'s a little over the top, but it\'d be nice to have something with a modal feeling to it. Like some slow Irish ballad.  Maybe I\'ll write something and submit it and if they like it, send them the midi version so they can use their own instrument samples to keep everything consistent.

*opens FL Studio and Finale between sewer dives*

*edit*  Er, i\'ll submit a link to the OGG version under the fan art gallery when I finish the idea.