Happy 2012!
I've been on break from doing music, writing for the blog, and all sorts of work for the past 2 weeks. I had a relaxing break with one of my friends over for one of the week playing League of Legends everyday. I got to hang out with some of my other friends, go out for lunch, and play some games. It felt like forever since I had a real vacation like that. Christmas is over, the new year began, all my friends and family are back in school, work, army, and it's time for me to get back on track. I have one more composition and 4 more arrangements for one of the projects I'm working on before we publish it on Xbox Live Arcade. I'm hoping to get things done this month, I'm really not sure how long this last composition will take me. In other news of music, I seriously need to finish that Street Fighter Mix and move on to new stuff. This year, I hope to accomplish a lot more than I did last year. Here's the resolution I had in 2011 and the one I made for this year in 2012.
Reflection of 2011’s resolutions
1) Land a job in the Interactive Entertainment Industry, or at the very least Editorial relating to the industry
-Worked for an online game company for 8 months before getting laid off. This took up 2/3rd of my year. It was good for work experience and it wasn’t that hard, but it reinforces my desire to work in design and not publishing for the game industry.
2) Produce as much composition/mixes/covers of music as possible
-Meh, I felt like I could’ve done a LOT more than what I did in 2011. I did music for 8 games. 5 of them were for Game Jam competitions, 1 got cancelled (sadly), and 2 I’m still currently working on to have published. Then there are the experimentations I had throughout the year which you can see on my FB profile videos. What probably held me up the most (besides the job I had) was the Street Fighter mix I was working on. I should finish it and not do anything that long again unless needed.
Also, got two games I did music for published on Xbox Live Arcade!
3) Get serious in developing indie games and set up an awesome portal to my work
-I failed hard on this one. I started on one of my games, but I didn’t get to continue since I’ve been mostly working on writing and music. I also didn’t get a site setup and don’t feel like making one until I have at least one of my own games complete to put up on there.
4) Draw a lot! Traditional, digital, anything! I must get back into art again. Video and Photography too.
-Failed miserably on this one too. I did draw a little in the beginning of the year, but I simply didn’t have enough time to draw all the time. It’s saddening…I hope that changes this year since I’m buying a new tablet.
5) Beat as many videogames as possible AND continue to write design analysis for each one. One more step towards becoming a game designer~ (Beat 18 games between graduating and now).
-This is what I possibly excelled at the most in 2011. I completed 66 games and wrote 28 game reviews posted on Metacritic (on the user side of course). I didn’t do those write-ups for each game, but I still plan to. And even though I didn’t, I know I learned a lot because I can point out the many flaws in level designs, programming, mechanics and concepts as well as a game’s strengths that made it so fun or thought provoking. I want to continue this quest, because it’s productive AND fun!
3 out of 5, somewhat good I guess?
New Year’s Resolution for 2012:
1) Seriously this time, I want to draw more
2) Setup those sites and pages (put together portfolio)
3) Produce/Mix more music than I did in 2011 (Did 27 in 2011)
4) Work on those games, I got 4 ideas waiting to be spawned
5) Continue my quests in playing and writing those games!
We'll see how I do this year~
Monday, January 9, 2012
Monday, December 19, 2011
Christmas is here!
Well, almost. It's a week before Christmas, but I don't have the same excited feelings I once had about Christmas. My memories of Christmas past haven't all been great, but they make me appreciate the ones I have every year. Every year, I'd be excited to go to a cousin's house, or a relatives, or family friends and be able to be around so many people close to me. It doesn't seem like we're even doing anything this year, so I'm not as excited about Christmas this year. I am; however, happy in my own way. My sister's home and I get to spend so much time with my immediate family.
Anyways, I've been continuing work for the game projects I've been assigned to doing music for and the latest track I did for Camera Obscura seems to be really liked by the team, a lot. This scares me, because it was a track for the 2nd last area of the game. I still have one more track to do left, and it's for the last area! What am I going to do to top what I did before? Though I can't preview the song or anything yet, I can say that's it's a cross between a Waltz, a baroque period invention, a romantic period melody and play style, and modern electronic music. Yup, I'm strange like that, but it sounded right in my head and turned out great as a result albeit the midi-sounding instruments. I've worked a little on the Street Fighter Mix, but I still have some left mainly because I don't have a structure for the last 3-4 character themes to work with. This means I'll have to do it all by scratch...ugh. But I definitely want to finish before the end of this year. The mix has rendered me unproductive in terms of quantity, and the quality doesn't really make up for it.
I need to improve my blog, create my portfolio site, and start creating those indie games of mine, but I don't think I'll be able to do it before the end of the year. It seems like my New Year's resolution for 2011 has mostly failed aside from completing games which I've been doing very well at, haha. What I haven't done after completing the games is doing the write-ups, which was the whole point of recording the games I've played. I'm planning to focus my last 2 weeks of 2011 to improving my blog and doing those write-ups.
So, continuing from the last post I made, I've bought quite a bit of games. After those purchases, I promised myself I wouldn't buy anymore until I've completed at least half of what I've gotten so far. Well I failed, haha. I went to the newly re-established Roseville Galleria mall this past weekend just to check out what changed and just to go out for a bit of fresh air since I'm always home working. I dropped by GameStop and went through the games and Hyperdimensional Neptunia was there as a new copy for $30!
I'm not crazy about getting the game, but I've been keeping an eye on it throughout the year as the general price online was $70-$90. It's an RPG that makes a lot of references, parodies, and jokes about the game industry. I mean, the world that it's set in is called "Gamindustri". I couldn't help it and bought it, and I'm not sure if it's worth it yet since I haven't played it. I checked up online again and there's stores selling it for $60, but there's another store selling it for $180. Why is it so rare/expensive? When I bought it at GameStop, it was the last copy! Weird. I also bought a used copy of Madworld for the Wii (finally) as it was only $7 and the condition of the disk was pretty good for a used game. I played the first mission last night and "snap" the game is ridiculous. The whole game is black and white so the red blood is VERY noticeable. It's very violent for sure, but I didn't expect the F-bomb being dropped every 5 seconds in the game. For $7, I guess it's a good game to play if you want to release some RAGE!!! Hahaha.
Steam Winter Sales started today, oh dear...That means buying more games, haha. The site was so imploded today that it couldn't even start. The servers are getting raped by millions of patrons buying and downloading games right now. There's also a drawing for an epic giveaway at the end of the event where the grand prize winner wins...ALL GAMES ON STEAM! That's too nuts, not even I'd want that. Still, the objective event thing is back for the winter sales which means I'll be playing Steam games for the next 2 weeks. I beat Crysis 2 last night on PS3 and I have so many games on it that I'm not sure what to play next, but I guess I'll switch around and play a bit each night before fulfilling those objectives on steam each night. I may not be looking forward to Christmas this year, but I look forward to playing games every night for the next two weeks.
Have a Merry Christmas Everyone! And a Happy New Year.
Anyways, I've been continuing work for the game projects I've been assigned to doing music for and the latest track I did for Camera Obscura seems to be really liked by the team, a lot. This scares me, because it was a track for the 2nd last area of the game. I still have one more track to do left, and it's for the last area! What am I going to do to top what I did before? Though I can't preview the song or anything yet, I can say that's it's a cross between a Waltz, a baroque period invention, a romantic period melody and play style, and modern electronic music. Yup, I'm strange like that, but it sounded right in my head and turned out great as a result albeit the midi-sounding instruments. I've worked a little on the Street Fighter Mix, but I still have some left mainly because I don't have a structure for the last 3-4 character themes to work with. This means I'll have to do it all by scratch...ugh. But I definitely want to finish before the end of this year. The mix has rendered me unproductive in terms of quantity, and the quality doesn't really make up for it.
I need to improve my blog, create my portfolio site, and start creating those indie games of mine, but I don't think I'll be able to do it before the end of the year. It seems like my New Year's resolution for 2011 has mostly failed aside from completing games which I've been doing very well at, haha. What I haven't done after completing the games is doing the write-ups, which was the whole point of recording the games I've played. I'm planning to focus my last 2 weeks of 2011 to improving my blog and doing those write-ups.
So, continuing from the last post I made, I've bought quite a bit of games. After those purchases, I promised myself I wouldn't buy anymore until I've completed at least half of what I've gotten so far. Well I failed, haha. I went to the newly re-established Roseville Galleria mall this past weekend just to check out what changed and just to go out for a bit of fresh air since I'm always home working. I dropped by GameStop and went through the games and Hyperdimensional Neptunia was there as a new copy for $30!
I'm not crazy about getting the game, but I've been keeping an eye on it throughout the year as the general price online was $70-$90. It's an RPG that makes a lot of references, parodies, and jokes about the game industry. I mean, the world that it's set in is called "Gamindustri". I couldn't help it and bought it, and I'm not sure if it's worth it yet since I haven't played it. I checked up online again and there's stores selling it for $60, but there's another store selling it for $180. Why is it so rare/expensive? When I bought it at GameStop, it was the last copy! Weird. I also bought a used copy of Madworld for the Wii (finally) as it was only $7 and the condition of the disk was pretty good for a used game. I played the first mission last night and "snap" the game is ridiculous. The whole game is black and white so the red blood is VERY noticeable. It's very violent for sure, but I didn't expect the F-bomb being dropped every 5 seconds in the game. For $7, I guess it's a good game to play if you want to release some RAGE!!! Hahaha.
Steam Winter Sales started today, oh dear...That means buying more games, haha. The site was so imploded today that it couldn't even start. The servers are getting raped by millions of patrons buying and downloading games right now. There's also a drawing for an epic giveaway at the end of the event where the grand prize winner wins...ALL GAMES ON STEAM! That's too nuts, not even I'd want that. Still, the objective event thing is back for the winter sales which means I'll be playing Steam games for the next 2 weeks. I beat Crysis 2 last night on PS3 and I have so many games on it that I'm not sure what to play next, but I guess I'll switch around and play a bit each night before fulfilling those objectives on steam each night. I may not be looking forward to Christmas this year, but I look forward to playing games every night for the next two weeks.
Have a Merry Christmas Everyone! And a Happy New Year.
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