Robot Cousin Soundworks

An open letter to whomever is involved in Ghostbusters 3

I am a die-hard fan of Ghostbusters. Die-hard. This means that, because of my love for the franchise, I cannot be killed by conventional weaponry.

My pseudo-immortality aside, let’s discuss the goings-on of a possible GB3.

Now, everyone I know has, at one time or another, come up to me and mentioned “Hey, did you know they’re making a Ghostbusters 3?!” or “I heard Bill Murray IS/ISN’T (seriously, pick one) going to be in it!” because, apparently, my undying love for the busting of ghosts is fairly apparent to anyone I cross paths (…or streams?) with. And that’s totally fine! I love being that guy who’s madly in love with the films and cartoons (and novelizations, and toys, and play-doh, and…) based off of a group of scientists and blue-collared workers running a business that’s based on using electrifying science to trap nightmares in a box in their basement. I love it! I have been watching GB1 since I was 4 years old, and I saw GB2 in theatres. That being said, I already know what you’re going to tell me about GB3.

I don’t mean this as a gripe, I really don’t. I’ll just save you some time! Believe me (as “I am ready to believe you”), during my internet surfing, if the G-word pops up ANYWHERE, I click on it. I don’t care if I’ve read it before, I read it again, dammit.

So, with that being said, do I want a 3rd movie? Yes, and no.

Yes. I want more Ghostbusters. Who doesn’t? I want them to be in the public eye again, like Transformers and G.I. Joe are (though I’d rather not go down THOSE routes). I want toys to be sold again, I want new references dealing with spooks, spectres, and ghosts to permeate every facet of media as we all get caught up with ghost-fever once again, 30 years later (holy crap… 30).

But how are ya gonna do that, guys? Aykroyd, Ramis, and Reitman… those are actually the only 3 guys I personally would require to be involved. EVERYONE seems to believe that a 3rd movie hinges on whether or not Bill Murray’s in it. Don’t get me wrong, Peter is very important, but that’s just it… Peter Venkman is important. That levity, that casual, ongoing sarcasm, even the face of the some prehistoric bitch or Carpathian asshole is absolutely necessary, but there ARE others on this planet who can (and should) bring that to a new film.

No, I don’t want Galifinakis in there being all… Galifinakisy (nothing against him, if he can play someone other than all of the characters he’s already played, sure!). I don’t want Seth Rogen spewing loads of inappropriate (for a GB film) language because he’s today’s “it” comedic actor; I want a good mix of horror, special effects, and well-timed comedy. Comedy in the face of danger, comedy that’s not really sure whether or not it WILL “see you on the other side, Ray.” Don’t mix a bunch of sex into the whole thing, like Apatow usually does. Nothing against Judd, that works fine in his movies, but this wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) be “his” movie. Make a film that makes adults laugh in earnest, and makes younger movie-goers desperate for a proton-pack of their own. Give children the IDEA that, somewhere, there are cool guys ready to stand up and laugh in the face of whatever is hiding underneath your bed, and they don’t need to be as afraid anymore.

I don’t want a retread of the first and second films. Even though I love GB2 despite it being a LOT like GB1 (though not as much a carbon copy as Home Alone 2 is of its predecessor… seriously, those are the same movies), it still offered something different. If GB3 can offer something DIFFERENT, in terms of plot, I’m all for it. But holy shit, keep the chemistry the same, even if you get new guys. Yes, Aykroyd and Ramis (and Murray!) are WAY too old to be busting, but that doesn’t mean that no one else can, because I firmly believe that there is a combination of writing, directing, and acting that can truly break out the spirit of the first two films from the containment unit of creativity.

Please do it. Please don’t screw it up. I’m ready to believe it can happen.

So, I’m a huge fan of Minecraft and I was at work today, not doing much during lunch hour. I was checking out the latest version (1.8 prebuild 2) and had encountered the Enderman/Endermen. Without going into too much detail, I found them really freaky, until…. I heard them. They were using the same sounds as the (Minecraft) zombies do. Those sounds aren’t bad, but they’re very much zombie sounds.

I thought to myself “What’s scary and creepy?” There was only one answer…

Baby laughter!

2 of the following 4 sounds (the non-loop ones) are modified versions of a baby laughing. I remember first hearing something like this during The Blair Witch Project, when the three campers are woken up by noises right outside their tent. It was creepy until you hear the baby, and then it’s brought to a whole other level.

I know that they probably already have Enderman sounds ready to go, but I couldn’t help it. Hopefully, someday when there’s proper mod support, I’ll develop a full sound-pack.

Here you go!

Enderman One

Enderman Two

Enderman Chitter Loop

Enderman Whistle Loop

Three things!

1. Our (Phill Spies, Tan Teck Wong, and my) game, Psychopomps, has been noticed by DIYGamer! Check out their write-up here!
2. My good friend Andre has set up his own personal gaming blog, titled ControlPadBlues, and you can find that here! Please note that the design isn’t final; it’s still being worked on.
3. I’ve started down what I hope to be a long, interesting, and potentially exciting road towards developing my own games. Just starting in Flash for now, but it’s something, and it’s fulfilling. Working in film doesn’t do anything for me anymore, so I’ve more-or-less cut that part out of my life, almost entirely. This year’s Silver Wave Film Festival should be the last in which I have any of my work. Not unhappy at all about this.

I’ve been a member of the Something Awful forums for about 4.5 years now. I love it there, and would suggest registering as a member to anyone reading this. It’s $10, but that’s just a one-time fee, not per month, or even per year; once. I have easily gotten my money’s worth and then some. As far as entertainment is concerned, it’s the best investment I’ve ever made.

The reason I bring this up is because recently, in the month of July, I participated in the sixth annual SA Game Dev Challenge. The rules are simple: create a game within the month of July (with June being a general planning month) based on a somewhat-loose theme as suggested by forums mod Shalinor. I don’t know what themes had been for years 1 and 2, but year 3 was ‘Swarms’, year 4 was ‘Dealing with the Devil’ and last year’s theme was ‘You Can’t…’, which obviously allowed the developers/designers to really go nuts with interpreting how they could base a game around such a simple half-premise.

This year’s theme was ‘Death and Taxes‘. The entry I was involved in was titled ‘Psychopomps‘ and is playable here. It was made in Flixel, and only requires that you have Adobe Flash installed, which is, of course, free and compatible with almost every browser out there.

The designer, artist, and myself are VERY pleased with what we were able to put together in just 30 days. Keep in mind, nothing could be coded, drawn, or composed prior to July 1st, and as far as I can tell, we stuck to that (I know I did).

If you’re interested in hearing the music outside of the game, and even a track that wasn’t used, I’ve posted the links to it all below. Enjoy, and tell me what you think!

Psychopomps – Onward

Psychopomps – The New Guy

Psychopomps – Boss Me Around

Psychopomps – Val’s Back

Psychopomps – Your Quest has Ended

Psychopomps – Dirty Little Secret

I just realized that my previous post stated that I’d post the link to ‘Loose Cannons’ when it hit youtube, and then I promptly DID NOT, in fact, post it.

Here ya go, kids.

Our film won…

• Best Editing (Travis Grant)
• Best Sound (though it wasn’t a category, they said had it been, our film would’ve won)
• Best Actor (Ryan Barton)
• Best Picture
• Fan Choice

…and was nominated for:

• Best Supporting Actor (Christopher Hotchkiss)
• Cinematography (Kirk Pennell)
• Best Use of Inspiration Package

A good night, all-in-all. Had a blast and a half. 1.5 blasts.

I’m blown away. I have heard audio heaven, and it is programmed via FMOD. Now, years ago, I heard about FMOD and was immediately interested in it, but didn’t know where to go from there. I’m on a mac, so I don’t have access to UDK/UnrealEd to really test out whatever I could make in it (my Presonus and WinXP don’t play nicely together, so sound design via bootcamp just isn’t happening anytime soon). Plus, it was an extremely complex program. Needless to say, I was disheartened by what seemed like a huge brick wall in front of me, made worse by the fact that I could hear the wonderful, gorgeous, dynamic sounds of Bioshock on the other side of said wall.

Well, today, I’m just checking around online, and I pop over to my new favourite sound blog, Designing Sound. Right there, as the recent update was a post about how the FMOD dev team have begun posting video tutorials of FMOD. I excitedly started watching, and didn’t stop until I had seen them all. I didn’t stop because I couldn’t stop.

I think I’m in love. My heart is pounding, I feel dizzy, all I can think about is our future, myself and FMOD. And I wouldn’t be half as excited if I hadn’t brought it up to a few important people at work, and they genuinely took an interest in perhaps integrating this into our programming and games!

Wow. Wowee wow wow wow! /Walken

Now myself and my fellow sound designer can’t stop imagining all of the possibilities that would be opened up to us, if we start using this. Right now, the programmers take our sounds, just as we make them (music and SFX both) and just place them into the games. There may be some looping, or slight volume adjustments, but nothing truly dynamic. And to be fair, doing that is a TON of work, and it’s not like we just put out one game every 2-3 years.

But if we used FMOD (and I’ll admit, FMOD isn’t the only sound API out there, but it seems to be among the sleekest/most user friendly), then we, the sound designers, can have that much more control over our content, and exactly how it works in our games. Right now, if we have a game that involves tiles being smashed like glass, and they want a random sound, that means that we have to create 3-4 different sounds, and the programmers just set them up to play randomly.

With FMOD, as you’ll see if you check out the videos, I could take those same 3-4 smashing sounds, and put them into one smash ‘event’. I would then tell this event to randomize the pitch by a set number of semitones, randomize the volume from 0 to perhaps -3dbfs, increase the polyphony and timing, and voila! I’ve now created a virtually-endless set of sounds to occur, and all the programmers have to do is call on that one event. FMOD handles the rest.

This is something that I will definitely be pushing for. A lot of people may think of FMOD as something that’s used in most big-budget retail games, but it’s actually applicable to anything you may wish to program, outside of Flash.

Here’s hoping. Either way, I will definitely be spending a fair bit of time outside of work playing around with this, now that I at least know how to get started.

The esteemed Curtis Carey, animation-wonder of The Curtis and Tara Show, has graciously lent his talent and spare time to animate a music video for my 30-second-track, ‘Exuberance’, originally posted here.

Enjoy!

I have been a huge, long-time fan of Tripping Daisy. When Wes Berggren (guitarist) passed away in October of 2000, I felt sad. Both for the loss of Wes, and also for the loss of that beautiful sound.

After TD understandably called it quits, they released one more album, self-titled, and on it held the magificient opus Tragiverse. I believe I’ve already spoken about that.

Anyway, Tim Delaughter (singer and ‘leader’ of Tripping Daisy) went on to form ‘The Polyphonic Spree‘, a 20-or-so member musical troupe that is always uplifting and magical. But despite being a fan, I always thought that the slight ‘edge’ that was in TD’s music was lost when it went in this new direction. So, I kept up with some of the Daisy’s old members, more specifically Ben Curtis.

Curtis, after Tripping Daisy, went on to form The Secret Machines, who are very excellent, and I strongly suggest getting their first 3 albums, September 000, Now here is Nowhere, and Ten Silver Drops.

Curtis left TSM a few years ago, and I’d still be sore about that (he’s just so damn good!) if he wasn’t doing an AMAZING job, along with the Deheza sisters, rocking it out as the School of Seven Bells. I find it really tough to get into new music (crank old man here!) but I just can’t help but love SVIIB.

This is one reason I don’t mind not having him in TSM.

Quick update on the Sesame Street/Aniboom thing: We’re currently standing at #16, which is fine. I’m still excited to be up there as far as we are. We could always use more votes, but then again, I think it’s still totally awesome that NPH could actually see our video. And he might like it!

Onward.

I’ve recently discovered “Sleep is Death” by independant game developer/musician Jason Rorher. Rorher’s focus on emotional gameplay is still here, only it’s not longer up to him to provide it to the player. Instead, SiD tasks Player One with enjoying a storyline, setting and characters completely written and controlled by none other than Player 2.

Yes, that’s right; It’s a point-and-click adventure that’s played different each and every time you play it, because both players are crafting the game as they go. It’s a game-maker, of sorts, with a heavy emphasis on storytelling. Yes, people have been doing this for years with D&D, writing their own campaigns, setting up traps, being absolutely develish or angelic to the unsuspecting player, but to take the idea of that, and apply it to a 2-player-only point-and-click game introduces an element that may be sorely lacking in today’s big budget titles: excitement.

Since learning of SiD’s existence and checking out the card chest of completed stories (these pages are created once a game is finished, and you can sign-up and upload your own to the site), my mind has been aflutter with all of the weird little (or big) stories. Murder mysteries, sci-fi comedies, post-apocalyptic tales of danger and excitement. And yes, I know what the game looks like. Just by looking at it makes me want to recreate some of the amazing adventure games that Sierra used to make (Police Quest, King’s Quest, Space Quest… other quests).

So, if anyone reading this wants to have a go at it, let me know! Leave a comment or email me (jordan _at_ robotcousin.com) and we’ll share a story. It’ll be weird, irreverant, bizarre, and perhaps moving… or I’ll try and kill you with every step you take.

Fun!

So I’ve been notified by Mr Curtis Carey of the Curtis and Tara show that he has entered ‘Today Vs Tomorrow’ in Aniboom.com’s Sesame Street Animation Contest (not the official name, not sure what is.) The thing is, right now, on the leaderboards, we’re #120* (#1 being the top video).

Wanna do something productive and positive today? Vote! Of course, I’d feel horrible if you actually didn’t like the animation but felt the need to vote just because I’m asking you to. So, if you enjoy the short, 2-minute film in the least, please vote appropriately. If you don’t like it, please don’t vote it down.

Link to the video in question (Aniboom.com)

Now, I do realize now that one must sign up (for free!) to be able to vote. This will probably send a lot of people away from it. Stay strong! Sign up, it only takes a second! Please?

*EDIT: Holy Hephaestus, we’re already #42!!!

EDIT #2: Now, as of this typing, the video is ranked #4 overall. Wow.

So I was looking into seeing how other people managed to somehow come close to getting the ever-elusive ‘Pumpkins-tone‘, and I found this, which has to be one of the more musically-inspiring things I’ve read in a while…

Yeah, on a side note: I saw them live at Madison Square Garden in the late 90s. I had tickets to the show that was cancelled because their keyboard player overdosed and they kicked jimmy out of the band. So a few months later they played a makeup show. It was like an out of body experience. I though Id be disappointed because Jimmy Chamberlin is one of my favorite drummers, but the drummer from Tool filled in and rocked it.

Their intro literally brought tears to my eyes. The Garden was pitch black, and this piano loop started to fade in, real gradual for about 5-10 minutes. I forget what song they opened with, but they snuck on stage while it was still pitch black, and then they hit the opening chord and simultaneously these blinding white lights came on from behind the band and I swear it was like seeing God.

On a side-note of my own, the ending piano to ‘Farewell and Goodnight‘ will always ‘get me’. I tried to pay homage to it in my own way, but I don’t think it’s nearly as good.

Moog introduces their newest unit, the Auto De-Tune.

Highly entertaining and very informative, I give you “MARSH: Slipperman’s Recording Distorted Guitars Thread from Hell”

An exerpt:

You gotta start in the room with ‘the sound’. First, Put in some fucking earplugs, so when you go to get sounds on the desk later you’ll actually have an opinion on ANYTHING. Then, get ‘Einstein’ to fiddle with his miserable square wave rectifier/noise generator until he confirms it is indeed producing “his sound”. The incredibly new and amazing sound you haven’t heard from anybody else…. in the last 15 minutes. This is MAJOR, once attained, we now have a starting point. We can now feel free to embark on our hellish voyage into the most fruitless and subjective undertaking ever conceived in the history of man’s sad efforts on this sad and forgotten pebble in space. “A great guitar sound”. Something NOBODY has agreed upon for more than 15 minutes since Ike left the White House.

Just stumbled across a free e-book on sound design/synth programming, titled “How to Make a Noise: A Comprehensive Guide to Synthesizer Programming“. I haven’t read a lot of it yet, but will be poring over it eventually. Even though there’s a more complete retail version of it that comes with patches to download outside of the ones for Chapter 1, I would think that anyone could gain at least something from checking out the free version. Have at it!

Just when I start thinking to myself “As much as I love the M-Tron (G-Force Software), I definitely have little-to-no-use for the M-Tron Pro”, they go and make a new soundbank for the Pro. It now samples the “Optigan”

I have wanted an Optigan ever since I first heard about it. Then again, I’ve also always wanted a Mellotron, and now have the next best thing in the M-Tron. Why must they tempt me? I shouldn’t complain. I’d rather the Optigan be available digitally than not. That means someday, somehow… it will be mine.