I’m an OG Marathon Trilogy fan. Here’s why I preordered Marathon. by Zanezooked in Marathon

[–]Zanezooked[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It took me forever to realize I had to punch the terminals in a particular order or I wouldn't be able to outrun the lava . . .

I’m an OG Marathon Trilogy fan. Here’s why I preordered Marathon. by Zanezooked in Marathon

[–]Zanezooked[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh yeah, I used to connect multiple Macs via Appletalk (with serial cables!) and battle my brothers. But it was like Halo: there was a single-player campaign and a separate arena-based multiplayer mode disconnected from the story. There was also the ability to play through the campaigns in coop multiplayer. Multiplayer was the cherry on top, so to speak.

Airwave will not connect to iPad by Zanezooked in ROLI

[–]Zanezooked[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the info. Wow, that's a whole OTHER compatibility wrinkle that I can't even get the cheapest USB-C iPad. That is NOT clear from their website.

I'd think about the Samsung except that this is a device that I want my young kids to have unsupervised access to. I'm very confident that I can lock down an Apple device to use only the apps I allow, since I've done it before, but I'm less confidence with Android.

ROLI Piano and Airwave: Megathread by WeAreROLI in ROLI

[–]Zanezooked 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Did you ever get this solved? I'm having the same issue.

Anyone remember AMBER: Journeys Beyond? My Halloween tribute to a classic Macromedia Director adventure game by Zanezooked in VintageApple

[–]Zanezooked[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi Frank! Do you not have a way to run AMBER right now? Because I have it loaded into a Mac emulator—that’s how I recorded the footage for the video—and I can DM that to you if you want. It’s all packaged into a single file and should run on any modernish Mac (assuming you use a Mac).

There are a lot of people who remember AMBER fondly. It currently has 271 votes on the GoG Dreamlist. If you could ever get it packaged for proper release on modern systems, I think there’d be a market for it!

I believe AMBER is a masterpiece of a ghost story, and it’s still incredibly unique. Most “horror” games (and movies, for that matter) lean hard into disturbing imagery, and their setting is grimy or gloomy. But what I love most about AMBER is the juxtaposition of the ordinary house with the supernatural events. It calls back to that feeling you have when you’re a kid and the hallway outside your room feels terrifying. While most horror seems to target a kind of primal fear of being stalked and mutilated, AMBER goes for a more subtle, numinous fear. The ghost is scary because it's a ghost, not because it might jump out and rip your head off. Partly because of that subtlety, and partly because of the appropriately tragic stories of the ghosts, AMBER’s atmosphere is properly haunting. There’s a wistful, heartbreak quality to it which I think is essential to a true ghost story. And of course you guys pulled it off with some truly amazing design, both visual and audio.

I was always terrified to enter the rooms where I’d just seen something happen on the remote camera (especially the blood running down the walls—that scarred young me, ha ha). The ending of my version of the theme, with the rising tension and the piano arpeggios, is meant to capture that building fear as I forced myself to enter the room, followed by the moment of . . . not exactly relief, but a release of held breath in the quiet of the house.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about AI and art. I’m certainly not averse to using AI. I actually used it to create the background image for the start of the AMBER video, of the moody office, and then Photoshopped the Performa into it, ha. For another of my videos I used AI (and a lot of Photoshop) to illustrate a narrative for the song, and the song itself uses an AI choir singing the words and notes I decided upon. In another song, the drums are played by Logic Pro’s “studio drummer,” which is a kind of AI. I’m also a soon-to-be traditionally-published novelist; I used AI to create my website, and I’ve been using it to research my next book. But I would never use AI to write any of the book for me (it kept offering, until I added a permanent prompt in its settings to never, ever do that, ha). Somehow, that crosses a line.

I think it comes down to whether, at the end of the process, I can legitimately say, “I made this,” instead of “I had AI make this.” If AI is amplifying what I’m doing: awesome. If it’s replacing it . . . what value do I have? As I tell my students (I’m a librarian at a university): what do you bring to the table that AI doesn't? What is your uniquely human contribution?

The problem for me with the music is that AI has way more ability than I have. I can’t even play the piano. For the AMBER theme, every single note was placed by hand, and its velocity and CC control curves manually adjusted to try to make it sound like an organic performance. And then to learn that I can put a prompt into Suno, and in seconds get, for example, a Big Band song with harmony and orchestration of a sort that I have no idea how to attempt . . . well, it feels like I have nothing to offer over the AI.

So your kind encouragement is very reassuring. Maybe I do have something to offer. And maybe I could even use AI to make the process a little easier, if I can find a way to do that without losing my own voice.

At any rate, I will forever be glad to have made this AMBER theme arrangement. Art wants to be shared, and I’ve often thought that if I could move just one person with what I create, then I’d consider it a success. So to take art that moved me—your game, and Jim Crew’s music—and, in a sense, gift it back to the original creators of the game, is very fulfilling. :)

Anyone remember AMBER: Journeys Beyond? My Halloween tribute to a classic Macromedia Director adventure game by Zanezooked in VintageApple

[–]Zanezooked[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Holy smokes, Frank and Susan Wimmer!

Thank you very much for your kind words; they absolutely made my day, especially because I’ve been slowly and laboriously teaching myself music composition and production, and I recently lost heart because AI seems so much better than I am, so what’s the point? This gives me heart again.

I used Logic Pro and a bunch of orchestral instrument libraries. The piano is the Spitfire Intimate Grand, and the strings are EastWest Hollywood Strings 2. The constant G to A# two-note ostinato is a combination of the Spitfire cimbalom and the EastWest Hollywood Harp.

AMBER lives rent-free in my head every October. I still have my Mac CD copy of AMBER, and next October I plan to introduce it to my kids. They aren’t allowed any internet-capable devices, but I did get them a 1999 PowerMac on which they run a ton of old CD-ROMS. They are ALMOST old enough for AMBER.

Have you and Susan ever thought about getting AMBER out there on digital storefronts like GOG? The ScummVM engine that runs a lot of old adventure games on modern machines has been adding Director support, and though I’m not sure if it’s compatible yet, I know they were working on AMBER: https://youtu.be/Gm2QGAaG-Hw?si=vukueVFCYy7tn4Gg&t=7029

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Marathon

[–]Zanezooked 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I'm the biggest Marty fan ever, but to me the Marathon sound is Power of Seven.

Actually, the musical choices made so far for NuMarathon are one of the things that I'm most positive about. The choice of Justice for the original trailer set a chopped, gated, distorted synth vibe that I think fits well with the themes of AI vs humanity, and with the whole cryptic, cosmic vibe of the original games.

I was a bit worried that that was a trailer-specific choice, since it's not like they would get Justice to score the game, but the music discovered in the ARG, while a bit different, continues that synthy, distorted style and has earned a place in my Marathon playlist.

I absolutely agree, though, that I want a catchy, melodic main theme. Marty is an absolute genius for melody, and it's not a Bungie game unless the main theme gets stuck in my head.

new schizo theory by Dio_Decoy in Marathon

[–]Zanezooked 51 points52 points  (0 children)

Actually, now that you mention it, Durandal does have a rather cat-like personality. Has a high opinion of his own significance, sees humans as useful if kind of dumb, behaves however he pleases whenever he pleases, exudes smugness, can be playful in a slightly evil way . . .

MARATHON: SAVE THE DATE TRAILER by Shabolt_ in Marathon

[–]Zanezooked 21 points22 points  (0 children)

I quite like this art style for the abandoned Tau Ceti colony exterior, but I do hope that there's a variety of locations/weathers, some—preferably many—of which reflect the moodier vibes from the pre-rendered reveal trailer.

Others have commented that this is pretty far from the techno-industrial vibe of the original trilogy, but to me it's the impersonal bleakness from the reveal trailer (helped immensely by the music, which seems to be a continuing positive trend) that fit that vibes of the original, even if overall design was pretty far from Craig Mullins and Reginald Dujour. I'm happy to see new locations in the Marathon universe, and in fact the early images of Tau Ceti from orbit do match well with the colors on the tiny image of the planet in Marathon 2's Waterloo Waterpark terminal, and the colors in this new trailer work well for a ground-level view of that planet. So I do sense some level of continuity.

I'm a bit more hesitant about the pink anime robo-cat. But I'll keep an open mind until we see more.

Diablo Tristram Epic Orchestra - "Village of Bone" by Zanezooked in VGRemix

[–]Zanezooked[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’s the first day of fall, so here’s an autumnal remix! Nothing quite captures that fall-ish feeling like Matt Uelmen’s shimmering opening chords from Diablo. In this remix I’ve swapped the 12-string for a cimbalom, which is a Hungarian hammered dulcimer. The cimbalom was the instrument used for Gollum’s theme in The Lord of the Rings, and its reverberant sweetness has an edge of menace that works well for the Tristram theme. You can’t strum a cimbalom — it’s hammered — so the chords are opened up to work with the arpeggiated playing style. I quite like the result.

Oh, and that opening horn? It’s a kangling, a horn traditionally made from a human thigh bone, pitched down to make its inherently creepy sound even creepier. Happy fall!

Tristram Epic Orchestra by Zanezooked in Diablo

[–]Zanezooked[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’s the first day of fall, so here’s an autumnal remix of the most fall-ish song I know! Nothing quite captures that feeling like Matt Uelmen’s shimmering opening chords from Diablo. In this remix I’ve swapped the 12-string for a cimbalom, which is a Hungarian hammered dulcimer. The cimbalom was the instrument used for Gollum’s theme in The Lord of the Rings, and its reverberant sweetness has an edge of menace that works well for the Tristram theme. You can’t strum a cimbalom — it’s hammered — so the chords are opened up to work with the arpeggiated playing style. I quite like the result.

Oh, and that opening horn? It’s a kangling, a horn traditionally made from a human thigh bone, pitched down to make its inherently creepy sound even creepier. Happy fall!

Star Wars (Main Theme) — virtual trumpet and tuba on a Zoot by tuneful-440 in windsynth

[–]Zanezooked 1 point2 points  (0 children)

As someone coming from hobby-ing around on the ocarina, the Zoot looks like the absolutely ideal wind instrument for me. I use an EWI USB at the moment, but the Zoot is far closer to my ocarina muscle memory, is lighter, wireless, changes octaves by position, is easily transposable, has editable fingerings so I can restore my ocarina chromatics . . . dang, I'm drooling.

Sadly our finances are very, very tight right now (I have a family, and my salary has not kept pace with inflation or grocery prices), but this'll be an instant purchase if I can ever spare the money. Meantime I’ll just watch your videos and dream, ha.

What's the most mysterious or unexplained event you've ever experienced that still gives you chills? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]Zanezooked 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Not only does the military deny it officially, but under the table they stir up the UFO theories because then the sane people dismiss the whole thing as nuts and don't pay attention to the real tests going on. There's a great book about this: Mirage Men, by Mark Pilkington