A tale: music gone wrong. It keeps getting better!

[trisk]

I have to question the point of this port, to be honest. (stay with me for a moment. You'll understand why I start like this in a moment.)

Tyrian has long been freeware and readily available in many places throughout the web. Furthermore, with Dosbox, one can easily run the game on a modern system, and hear the music in "glorious" General Midi, which is a far sight better than the crappy fm synthesis OpenTyrian plays.

Then there is the amazingly undocumented "Enhanced" version. Enhanced how, it doesn't say. There is nothing in the wiki about how it is enhanced, other than I can glean from it that means it supports play over internet...? Whoopie. Hardly what I would call "Enhanced."

So, having some spare time on my hands (thank you bad economy. Lost my job 9_9) I decided to work on a music enhancing project to try and improve the game in SOME way at least. Tyrian has been my favorite shooter and one of my MOST favorite DOS games since it came out. What could be more fun than visiting each of the songs and learning to play them, and make it better? Improve everyone's enjoyment of this great title as the same time, too!

So with that in mind, I contacted Carl Reinke, aka Mindless (Apt name.) and suggested it. He mentioned that there was an ongoing "remix" project, but that it had been dead for some time, so go ahead. What fun! I couldn't wait to get started.

So for the next two days, I slaved over borg's midi captures, separating out each track, figuring out how to play it, and then recording it in Reason. (My music studio of choice. Far more powerful than Cakewalk, or any other digital studio, in my opinion. As in any field of artistic expression, however, you'll find that opinions on this vary greatly and VIOLENTLY. So don't flame me, they are all good, K?)

The result: a 1 to 1, note for note reproduction of the original song, with VASTLY superior sound. Added instruments including arpeggiators, some heavy metal guitar riffs, and plenty of sub base thump. Don't take my word for it...check out the .ogg of it here:

www.aedmark.com/prodigal/doomstuff/rockgarden.ogg

Edit: Link now working perfectly.

Compare that to the original song "Rock Garden" in either version of Tyrian. (you'll need an OGG player of some kind. If you don't have one, I recommend VLC for all your music and video needs. Google it, it's great.)

The song is a) completely true to the source in length, tempo, and feel, b) way more fun to listen to than fm synthesis, and c) one HECK of an improvement over even the CD soundtrack from the registered version of Tyrian, if I do say so myself.

I should note, I don't believe in "remixes" in the sense of taking the song and making it "heavy metal" or some techno-dance thing. Is that true to the original game? no. Does it make the music somehow better than the original composer's vision? Heck no. Does it fit the game? No, what could fit better in Tyrian than the original songs? But, whatever, if you like that stuff, go for it...it just isn't my cup of tea, and I feel it does a disservice to the original composer.

Anyway, so I post this thing, and send the link to "Mindless" and wait for over a week for a response. Fine, he might be busy, no worries. I've got plenty to do, so figuring I'll get at LEAST a "sounds good, if you can get 'em all done and packed up, we'll post it." or something of that nature...

But then I get his response, one line, as follows: "Honestly, it sounds a lot like you just stuck instruments on a MIDI."

Wow. That's what you love to hear after spending 2 days dawn to dusk slaving on a song...some ignorant twit being sarcastic and saying it sounds like...wait...what did hey say? a MIDI? What is a MIDI? A midi keyboard? A midi synthesizer on a soundcard like a SoundBlaster XFi? a midi interface box? Or is he lumping programs like Reason and Wusikstation into the same category as tinny sounding daugterboards we used to stick on our Soundblaster 16s in the 90s?

Whatever, I find it pretty danged incredible. Not only does it show a stunning ignorance of music terminology in general, but an arrogant and dismissive "your music sucks" kind of attitude from "Mindless." I guess my guitar playing on the track isn't spectacular ...but geeze, we're talking about music for an opensource game port for pete's sake, not auditions for a Queen reunion tour! I'll admit my pride is hurt, but please people, listen to the track! Does it not sound good?

(BTW, I did the metal guitar palm muting you hear...I can't claim to be good enough to do the soloing on the track. That's easier to do on a keyboard, where I can work the pitch bend until I get it JUST right, an exact replica of the original. Maybe that's the elusive a MIDI he's talking about? If it is, he's got a better ear than most people. While I applaud him if that is the case, to dismiss the whole song because of it is just plain ridiculous.)

C'mon people, this has to be alot better than the FM synthesis, isn't it? Even if a 1 to 1 reproduction isn't your thing and you'd like the songs done in a different style or something, there are other ongoing music projects, right? And isn't this WAY better in the meantime than lousy FM to actually make the "enhanced" port sound *gasp* enhanced?

Whatever, "Mindless" (like I said, SUCH a fitting name) shot me down. So now I've wasted a week of time on four reproductions for the game that'll never see the light of day. This makes for a really rotten day. I'm going back to play some Tyrian 2000 in DosBox. At least that has General Midi. -_-

Gimme your thoughts,
Ben

[bb1]

I do hate it when I slave over something and it gets bashed?

I worked one week on an 8 panel comic strip and it went up on some guys site with the description "some weird thing 'bb1' [not my name on that] drew" almost like a big middle finger.

To be fair, though, some people have strong feelings about the original tracks and think they are integral to the game's success. That, and the list of Rock Garden remixes is longer than the list of failed/incomplete Tyrian flash remakes (a very long list).

[montycarlo]

I've just listened to it, but I don't have the original to compare it with, where can I grab that? Found them. Listening.

It sounds pretty nifty, if it's as good in comparability with the original as you said I'll use it in my current project.

[trisk]

A fair point. Rock Garden is the "single" of the game, so I'm not surprised that it has been covered frequently, a fact I was unaware of...So perhaps I shouldn't have started with it, but it is also MY favorite too, so it was the one I wanted to cut my teeth on as a "proof that I can do it track."

Regardless of that, the track should be considered on its own merits as a cover, not on its originality in the field of Tyrian covers, right? If anything, that should make my quality easier to compare to others...which I still feel stands up strong. Even if he feels that "Rock Garden" has been done to death (again, I wasn't aware of that,) why not just ask me to "redo song X so I can see how it sounds." Wouldn't that also gauge my seriousness about helping as well? Easy to do, too...since I already did three others: "Tyrian, The Level," "Asteroid Dance Part 1" and...umm..."A Field for Mag." Eh, whatever.

On the point that the original tracks are integral to the games success, I couldn't agree more, but we are talking music for the so-called "enhanced" version, so I don't think that applies. Someone who wants the real thing will get Tyrian2k and Dosbox, and someone who wants to revisit Tyrian with enhancements will download the questionably named "enhanced" port. I was trying to help that.

But I appreciate that you can appreciate how I feel. So thanks for the shoulder to cry on. ^_^ I do art work too, so I know getting that ripped apart by a know-nothing twit is just as painful, sorry to hear it happened.

laters,
Ben

...dang I get verbose when I'm mad...

[yuriks]

I'll start by saying I'm obviously biased, being a dev.

That bad midi response was probably mine, Mindless said you were asking us what we though, I gave it a listen (with shitty headphones, which is what I had at the time) and answered: "it sounds like a crappy MIDI synth". I just listened to it again, this time with better headphones and it sounds pretty good, except for one vital thing: (I won't save on criticism) the guitar tone sucks, really. Compare to orbik's remake, which I consider the superior version of Rock Garden, capturing the feel of the original while adding a really amazing improv. section. Regardless, post your other remakes, I'd like to hear them, since, apart from the guitar, your remake sounds fine.

And before you go complaining that others don't know shit about music, I'm pretty sure Reason doesn't have a midi synth, since it's a sequencer/sample tracker.

With that out of the way, onto your other points.

OpenTyrian Enhanced. Yes, it's buggy. It is not that undocumented, it has an actual readme I wrote because I though people would probably complain if I didn't document anything, guess it wasn't enough. I'll be honest, it exists mainly because I was bored with working on classic and wanted to use the things I was learning at the time on OpenTyrian: C++, OOP (even though I'm kind of horrible at it. =P), templates. Since then our goals have changed, and I could probably make a bunch of my less-horribly-misguided changes in classic instead, without a separate branch. I was actually thinking of having the salvageable parts of enhanced merged into classic into a single branch and managing only that. But I'm not sure if that would fly well. The branch is buggy right now mostly because I dropped the ball and got bored of working on it. Me and Mindless being the two sole developers of the main project (Discounting the 2000 devs, and the other two devs which havn't been around in a while.) those kinds of things are bound to happen and the project stagnates. I'm sorry for that, and yeah, I can't sleep well at night because of that. Though. (On a side note, Classic supports netplay, Enhanced doesn't.) I updated the description on the main page, is it better now?

When we were integrating music on the game, we decided on FM synthesis instead of MIDI, for several reasons: AFAIK, everyone considered it the superior option; it is the source of the music, the midi version is converted on the fly by the game; we didn't have the code for the aformentioned on the fly converter, so we didn't add a MIDI option because it wouldn't sound right anyway. (I personally think the MIDI version sounds worse than the FM, I know that many disagree, too.)

(P.S.: afaik, I'm more of a jerk than Mindless, you shouldn't go attacking people because they don't like your stuff.)

In sum, I think you're butthurt.

[trisk]

"In sum, I think you're butthurt."

Oh, wow. What are you, about 5 years old? Schoolyard insults? Really? That's REALLY how you end your post? You are a really, really impressive person, aren't you?

Makes me understand why OpenTyrian is what it is, why it is in the state it is in, and also why you have such overwhelming support from the community.

So somebody offers to help you on your project. They offer music help. So instead of actually TAKING the time to check it out fairly, you listen on a pair of "shitty headphones" and instantly dismiss it? That is how you audition offers for help on your project? What a gloriously intelligent way of doing things!

And now you actually take the time to listen and admit it sounds "pretty good." Like I'm actually going to support you after this, and that makes your lack of having given me a fair chance any better!

As for my tone, It is a TRUE Les Paul Guitar (Not Chinese Epiphone garbage) played through a Marshall JCM800 in a sound studio, recorded with a Shure SM57 microphone. As this is the guitar setup of choice for COUNTLESS numbers of the best metal bands in the world, from Zakk Wylde to Motorhead, I tend to think this is your childish, half baked way of trying to come up with a justification for your statement about the song so you don't have to admit to NOT having given it a proper listen, and to try to make it sound like you aren't a total know-nothing when it comes to music.

So, to recap: You don't take any time to give reasonable consideration to offers for assistance on creating your so called "enhanced" Tyrian port, basically making some sarcastic attempt to sound like you know something OR took the time to consider said offer. When called on the carpet about it, rather than apologizing and manning up to having made a mistake, you ADMIT you didn't take the time to listen to it, then proceed to use NAMECALLING like some kind of spoiled child! And you have the unmitigated GALL to ask me to send you MORE music?

Folks, this is incredible.

Ben

[yuriks]

Aug 4, 2009 5:43:21 GMT trisk said:

"In sum, I think you're butthurt."

Oh, wow. What are you, about 5 years old? Schoolyard insults? Really? That's REALLY how you end your post? You are a really, really impressive person, aren't you?

No sir, you are a really, really impressive person. After all, your music is perfect in every way, and any criticism directed at it is obviously misguided, retarded or childish. Not.

You asked us for our honest opinion, I gave mine. I don't care that you used a good guitar, the tone is, in my opinion, wrong the for the song. The lead guitar is just weak and does not have much power.

Makes me understand why OpenTyrian is what it is, why it is in the state it is in, and also why you have such overwhelming support from the community.

We have pretty good support from the community, as far as it's size goes, not everyone is a programmer, you know, and otherwise, I don't really see what kind of support you talk about.

So somebody offers to help you on your project. They offer music help. So instead of actually TAKING the time to check it out fairly, you listen on a pair of "shitty headphones" and instantly dismiss it? That is how you audition offers for help on your project? What a gloriously intelligent way of doing things!

Lesson taken. Next time I will listen to it at least 100 times beforehand on a top-grade 9.2 system using Denon-link cables before giving out my opinion.

And now you actually take the time to listen and admit it sounds "pretty good." Like I'm actually going to support you after this, and that makes your lack of having given me a fair chance any better!

What was that if not a "second chance", as if you need blessing from us to work on your music? I changed my opinion, if you want to continue whining that your music isn't loved even after I did that, then it's your choice.

As for my tone, It is a TRUE Les Paul Guitar (Not Chinese Epiphone garbage) played through a Marshall JCM800 in a sound studio, recorded with a Shure SM57 microphone. As this is the guitar setup of choice for COUNTLESS numbers of the best metal bands in the world, from Zakk Wylde to Motorhead, I tend to think this is your childish, half baked way of trying to come up with a justification for your statement about the song so you don't have to admit to NOT having given it a proper listen, and to try to make it sound like you aren't a total know-nothing when it comes to music.

Blablablabla. See second paragraph.

So, to recap: You don't take any time to give reasonable consideration to offers for assistance on creating your so called "enhanced" Tyrian port, basically making some sarcastic attempt to sound like you know something OR took the time to consider said offer. When called on the carpet about it, rather than apologizing and manning up to having made a mistake, you ADMIT you didn't take the time to listen to it, then proceed to use NAMECALLING like some kind of spoiled child! And you have the unmitigated GALL to ask me to send you MORE music?

I'm taking my time to write this post, when I could be wasting my time listening to music or watching anime or playing Tyrian or doing any other number of fun things instead. I don't see what's your point here. I listened to it quickly once, and said what I though. Then you posted this here, fine, maybe I'll give the guy another try. Yeah, this sound better than I remember before, but something's missing, better let the guy know what I think, right? Well, apparently that wasn't what you wanted. If you don't want commentary on the rest of your stuff then, hey, it's your call.

Folks, this is incredible.

Yes it is.


If you think this is somehow impeding you of doing a good job in your eyes, please say so, because I don't see how. I could care less about official support, you can do whatever your want and we'll probably link it on the page, or better yet, people will see it here on the forums.

[Mindless]

Aug 3, 2009 4:02:34 GMT trisk said:

Gimme your thoughts,
Ben

It is unfortunate that you don't appreciate the work that has been put into OpenTyrian; however, if you don't like it, don't use it. Honestly, I love the way the FM synth sounds.

I'll still be able to sleep at night. I can deal with you being unhappy that I criticized your music. I can deal with not being able to use correct music terminology. But you seem to let one person's opinion make your day "rotten."

[hurleybird]

The rock garden track was ok but not great. Definitely an improvement over the original (despite the occasional out of place sound), but not nearly as good some other remixes floating around out there. Sorry to say but the guitar sounds kind of dead. Having all of the right equipment does not guarantee that your recording is going to come out great....and the sm57 is overrated. Before you ask I did my listening on a pair of Sennheiser HD650's.

You need to chill, man. It would be great to have another guy on board with the music project, but a big man is able to take criticism. Music is hugely subjective, and no matter what you do, there is always going to be someone out there that dislikes your music. Any musician not living in a bubble will quickly come to realize this! You don't want to fly off the handle like this whenever anyone says something bad about your work, or you'll be off the handle A LOT.

As for me, I do intend to restart work on remixes, mine stopped when I moved for a new job. I'm a drummer by trade, and I'd like to experiment with recording my own drum tracks for the remixes. Just need to pick up some mics (thinking sennheiser 900 series) when I go to the city next time, I have everything else I need.

[trisk]

I'm in need of chilling out? Am I the one calling people names like a little kid? ^_^ I think posting any more responses to these two is just a waste of time. Their answers are ridiculous and make no sense, as can be clearly seen. So my previous post stands as written.

As for OpenTyrian, I wouldn't have even have given it a second glance if I hadn't gotten a GP2X Wiz and found it for that device. When playing on a PC, it is a pointless program which in no way improves Tyrian over the original game, even downgrading the midi music to FM synthesis and dropping the 5th chapter. Basically just a recompiling of the code so it runs natively in XP.

Even SOUNDS like something a couple of little kids would do. Then when they dish out criticism they find they can't take it and resort to namecalling. What fun!

Keep playing Tyrian all!
Ben

[hurleybird]

Sorry you feel that way, bye.

[bb1]

Yuriks, what card were you using with the midi option? As far as I know, that option offloaded it to your sound device, nowadays to the sound device of your choosing.

I was fooling around with some options in the jukebox with my SB16AWE freshly installed, when I accidentally hit MIDI333. It was so incredible, it was like playing a new game. Creative Soundfont (or wavetable I believe) has since been dramatically improved and has woken the tired FM to sounding just like that... FM coming in on a bad station during a rainstorm in the garage. I blame this on the built-in soundfont rather than the composer, as the compositions utterly shine otherwise.

If you are trying to play midi through Microsoft soundfont...then that would be the source of distaste!

[galaxieretter]

Aug 4, 2009 5:43:21 GMT trisk said:

"In sum, I think you're butthurt."

Oh, wow. What are you, about 5 years old? Schoolyard insults? Really? That's REALLY how you end your post? You are a really, really impressive person, aren't you?

Makes me understand why OpenTyrian is what it is, why it is in the state it is in, and also why you have such overwhelming support from the community.

No... this guy is on a fucking POWER TRIP dude. Don't even bother. He runs people off of the forums. No you want to know why Tyrian is dead?

It's because people like YURIKS are trying to set up this "leet" community of people who are "OMG WE= Tyrian god lol / Zinglon. U=noob"

No, honestly, LOOK at what this guy said to me in this topic. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about my video. He's a rude, disrespectful power-trip fucktard who likes Deceased Crab. WOW dude. AND he's in charge of OPEN TYRIAN. WOW DUDE! No wonder it didn't go anywhere!

This community is in a sorry state. No wonder it's practically dead. YURKIS, YOU ARE COMPLETELY UNSUPPORTIVE OF NEW MEMBERS. You are so 1337 it went RIGHT to your head. No, you are so hardcore because you are a DEV. Good JOB!

You know what? I'm probably going to be banned for this. Wow. Isn't that awesome. Speaking my mind against "t3h awexome l33t tyrin haxtoz global forum mods lol."

Dude... I like your song. I think the guitar sound could be a little better but the rest is pretty good. Also the string squelch could be tweaked a bit more to make it sound like the sliding of strings. I don't know, I know that's where they are in the song, but they need tweaked to make them fit in with higher quality. Not too bad though.

Although, there were, and I could be wrong, some people who ACTUALLY PLAYED Rock Garden back in the day. It was really crazy. I don't know where I found that MP3 and that was a LONG time ago.
Also in the "Solo" part of the song, that comes in at 1:28, the guitar needs to come in HEAVY! Like all hardcore grinding out high pitched squeal like the guy playing it is SWEATING.

Or not.

The song sounds like it would be played during I don't know, a 1970's concert showing off the band's new synth keyboard. Groovy! OH! And please make it loop so you know... it just won't DIE at the end.

Aug 4, 2009 15:52:44 GMT yuriks said:

Blablablabla. See second paragraph.

Blablablabla. See middle finger.

EDIT:
Alright so I started messing around with the song and I found something out about it.

This song does not use the full range of sound afforded to the file.
This is possibly why it doesn't sound good and ESPECIALLY sounds "like shit" on "shitty headphones." This video demonstrates what's missing from this song in terms of frequency range.

I remixed the song using WinAmp's equalizer function and did the best that I could at making the song sound better without it peaking out. I did this as a demonstration, I don't want to be "Fucking with your shit" or anything.
Also, this is no longer 1995, you can save your files at a higher bitrate than 68 Kbps.
You have the frequency there but not the bitrate to take advantage of the range. In other words think about it like this. You have a video file running at 1024 x 768 but it's running at 10 frames per second. In this day and age there is no reason NOT to have your bitrate be 128 or even possible 360+. In fact it's getting to the point where we should start making sound files with an even higher frequency than 44khz maybe like 88khz.

[hurleybird]

[quote author=galaxieretter board=opentyriangeneral thread=266 post=2936 time=1249472779It's because people like YURIKS are trying to set up this "leet" community of people who are "OMG WE= Tyrian god lol / Zinglon. U=noob"

No, honestly, LOOK at what this guy said to me in this topic. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about my video. He's a rude, disrespectful power-trip fucktard who likes Deceased Crab. WOW dude. AND he's in charge of OPEN TYRIAN. WOW DUDE! No wonder it didn't go anywhere![/quote]

Looked into that thread, saw you come out and call a poster douche bag for no reason. Your video was really entertaining, I wouldn't be surprised if Yurik's also thought so, but no mod in his right mind would say "Yeah, great job man" to anyone who behaved himself like you did in that post. That hint about the first ship is really well known too by the way.

[galaxieretter]

Whatever dude.

I have better things to do than to argue with everyone on the forum that hates me. Like trying to help Trisk mix better songs instead of bashing him?

Yeah. But you know what? Maybe I didn't act right. My bad. I'll try to be nicer to people.
And I'll try to avoid complete noobery by getting that power up the next time then. Eh?