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Messages - Ubik

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1
Modding / Re: Aquaria: Lost Treasures Mod
« on: January 13, 2009, 07:08:36 am »
I'd like to get Ubik on board for music, I have already made my own stuff, but it is nowhere near as good in quality as the Emerge Mix that he created and posted in the Fan-Art thread.

My ears are burning! ;) Since we've been discussing the use of "Emerge" in Lost Treasures, I figured I'd take a look for the mod in the forums. If you need other music, I'd be happy to contribute - but I tend not to be that prolific these days, so I'd have to get an idea of your time expectations before promising more soundtrack material. I'll do what I can, though! :)

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General / Re: Aquaria fanart [spoilers]
« on: January 11, 2009, 09:08:18 pm »
Very soothing, and at the same time very upbeat. I really like this song.... can I use it for my mod?? Aquaria: Lost Treasures

Glad you like it! I sent you a PM about your request, so get back to me when you have the opportunity. :)

3
General / Re: Aquaria fanart [spoilers]
« on: September 04, 2008, 03:32:10 am »
Okay, all the fanart has been added to the community page.  It's great to see that section keep growing!  Phenomenal work, guys and gals!

You can add the Aquaria-inspired track I did (found a few pages back) if you're interested in doing so, as well. :)

4
General / Re: Will this run on an Asus EEE
« on: September 04, 2008, 03:30:52 am »
It also runs on the Windows XP/1GB RAM version of the Acer Aspire One. The framerate is slightly reduced, but it looks every bit as gorgeous as it should and I didn't experience any real problems.

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General / Re: Aquaria fanart [spoilers]
« on: July 02, 2008, 08:08:55 am »
Hahaha, I love that she's eating out of a bucket!  Roffle!  ;D

Of course she is, she got it from Kentucky Fried Cuttlefish. :)

6
General / Re: Aquaria fanart [spoilers]
« on: April 28, 2008, 12:46:52 am »
very nice Ubik  :D  I'm trying to wonder where this might be playing in the background and the Energy Temple comes to mind. lovely to see other mediums being expressed via inspiration from the game

Glad you like it! If it were to be an actual Aquaria level, I would think of it as something akin to the Veil, but during dusk or night - with singing humpback whales and schools of bioluminescent fish :)

7
Games / Re: What game made you afraid?
« on: April 25, 2008, 10:19:51 pm »
Count me in among the System Shock 2 adherents. The game really makes an excellent use of audio cues, level design and plot development to create an atmosphere of palpable dread - making you constantly fear what's around the next corner, and playing on your expecations so that you'll still jump out of your chair when you hear that arachnid annelid chittering directly behind you. Doom 3 may be known for its "shock and awe" tactic, but System Shock 2 did it first and did it better.

The old adventure/puzzle game The 7th Guest does a great job of creating atmosphere too, and if you say you didn't jump at the first time you hit a dead end in the labyrinth, you're either lying or inhuman. :) It's one of the downright creepiest areas I've seen in a game to date.

While Doom 3 didn't really frighten me much, I've played so much of the original Doom/Doom II and player-made WADs for it that I react strongly to a lot of the sounds (the stomping of a Cyberdemon, for instance) instinctively and very viscerally. And a number of WADs have great atmosphere as well: the giant pyramid level in "Alien Vendetta" (map20, I think?) and the WAD "Asylum of the Wretched" are both top-notch in terms of atmosphere, including music use and map design.

However, there's one that got to me more than almost anything else I've experienced, and it's a mod. Freespace 2 is pretty much universally acknowledged as the pinnacle of the "space sim" genre, and rightly so - its game design is amazing in every aspect. It still has a lively modding community to this day, and from that community came a campaign called Transcend. Imagine an atmospheric horror game fused with a space sim; a Philip K. Dick plot combined with horror movie dread; the simultaneous claustrophobia of being trapped inside a tiny spaceship, and the sheer immensity and silent power of space; your sense of reality being pulled down around your ears while being murderously, relentlessly hunted across space. It's a truly mindblowing and harrowing experience, and its design is incredibly tight while taking advantage of all the things that made original Freespace 2 amazing. Everything from the visuals to the audio to the setpieces are brilliantly used. It's an experience without peer, and a fusion of genres I have yet to see adequately replicated elsewhere. It has a quasi-prequel called Sync that does some of the same things, but it's not nearly as polished or effective as Transcend.

8
General / Re: I have found a word describing Aquaria's ending
« on: April 25, 2008, 09:02:57 pm »
As much as I love this game, I have to admit that the secret ending hit me like a lead pipe to the stomach. You don't get a whole lot of implications of Mia's true nature before finally meeting her, and after overcoming the epic scale and conflict of the rest of the game it's like a needle pricking a balloon - the exhiliration and accomplishment of the ending just suddenly gets deflated.

HOWEVER, only a game that's engrossing, well-designed and emotionally powerful can instill that kind of reaction in the first place, and it's a testament to Aquaria's quality that the ending instills such passionate reactions in people. I think it's a wonderful accomplishment to be able to do that, and I wouldn't ask the creators to change a thing about it. Hell, it's their creation - who am I to say how their vision should have turned out?

As for the negative feedback mentioned earlier in the thread, there's no way any creator can satisfy every last request and dissatisfaction in the user base: Everybody has different tastes, and looks for different things in their games and other experiences. Looking for general, overall trends in feedback is the best way to gauge people's reactions to the game, and even then I wouldn't ask developers to betray their original vision just because a bunch of 12 year-olds want another Halo or something. As important as it is to create a great experience for the audience, you can't be entirely subordinate to them, and I think that part of indie gaming is to make something that satisfies you just as much as it does your audience.

Some of the feedback listed was pretty egregiously misguided and impolite, as well. One specific one that irritated me was #14, IGN's dismissal of the game's music. As somebody who's part of the game remixing community and knows several musicians within the game industry itself, it's pretty much a universally accepted point that no mainstream video game site knows or cares a damn thing about music within games. It's entirely a peripheral thing to them, and most reviewers only mention the music grudgingly or condescendingly. Except possibly for more indie game sites, I wouldn't take a damn thing they say about video game music seriously. I actually thought Aquaria's soundtrack was a wonderful change of pace from the generic nĂ¼-metal of FPS games and JRPG soundtracks that may as well have been cloned from a vat. Besides, IGN and the like are subordinate to the ad revenue of their sponsors - we're not. :)

9
General / Re: Aquaria fanart [spoilers]
« on: April 24, 2008, 11:19:09 pm »
I'm a sucker for this kind of music! Do you have more tracks? My MP3-player needs food. :)

Sure do! You can find the rest of my music at http://www.ubikmusic.org. :)

10
General / Re: Aquaria fanart [spoilers]
« on: April 24, 2008, 06:18:14 am »
Well, I know this isn't visual art per se, but I'd feel like I'm marketing myself too much with a whole new thread on this. I'm part of the video game remixing community, but instead of doing an arrangement of one of Aquaria's tracks, I wrote an original track inspired by and in the style of the soundtrack:

Emerge

Hope you enjoy! :)

Wow, that's cool. :)

It'd be neat if you wanted to let people making mods use your music. (or even team up with them to help them create new music for their mods)

I have no problem teaming up with people to do music for mods! :) And I'm willing to let them use existing music as long as they contact me for permission first and give me credit.

And I'm glad you enjoy the track! :D

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General / Re: Aquaria fanart [spoilers]
« on: April 24, 2008, 04:54:34 am »
Well, I know this isn't visual art per se, but I'd feel like I'm marketing myself too much with a whole new thread on this. I'm part of the video game remixing community, but instead of doing an arrangement of one of Aquaria's tracks, I wrote an original track inspired by and in the style of the soundtrack:

Emerge

Hope you enjoy! :)

12
General / Re: List your favorite music tracks
« on: April 08, 2008, 08:55:08 am »
I enjoy pretty much the entire Aquaria soundtrack, but the track that most sticks out in my mind is The Veil. With the flute lead, it greatly resembles some of the soundtrack from the anime Haibane Renmei, which is incredibly emotional and well-written, and the theme for The Veil evokes similar feelings in me.

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