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Funcom wants to feature your music in The Secret World
From suspenseful music to creepy background noises to the crackling of tunes on a radio, sound is a key element in the ambiance of The Secret World. And now, players have the chance to add their own music to the atmosphere of the game thanks to a new competition. Folks can get together with friends or record a piece solo and submit it for consideration to be included in TSW. Entries to this music contest will be accepted from today until February 19th, 2013. All submissions must be the entrant's own composition or sent with the consent of the creator. Simon Poole, Funcom's audio director, will evaluate all submissions and choose the winners. For full details on how to submit your musical piece, check out the official guidelines.
Chaos Theory: Sounding off on the influence of ambiance in The Secret World
From chirping birds and swooshing swords to background music for different areas, MMOs are rife with in-game sounds. Yet plenty of folks actually opt out of the original game sounds and music, shutting them off in favor of personal soundtracks. I myself usually turn game sounds down to around 3% because I often find the sounds too overpowering. Doing so never seemed to affect games much -- until now. Sounds make The Secret World. By now, you've all heard me rave about the ambiance in TSW, either in my Why I Play, here in Chaos Theory, or during my livestreams on Massively TV. I've repeatedly said that the spooky atmosphere that pulls you right into the game is one of its greatest features. Yet it actually goes deeper than that: The ambiance is more than just added frosting that can be scraped off without affecting the main treat; it is completely integral to the game. Thanks to an unplanned "opportunity" this past week, I can tell you without a doubt that if you remove or turn the sounds in TSW down too low, you are doing yourself a huge disservice. In fact, you are actually missing out on the game.
MMO Blender: Eliot ponders a fantastical fantasy
Fantasy, at this point, is almost tragically boring. That seems like a contradiction in terms. A fantasy setting is supposed to be fantastic by its very definition; you should be surrounded by neat and astonishing things at every term, immersed in a rich and baffling setting where magic is a valid explanation for almost everything. Unfortunately, we've seen so many versions of the same old fantasy setting that it's become boring. It's another round of the same elements with slightly different names, and while you can give them floppy ears and call them Asurans, they're still just gnomes with better public relations. So let's stick a fork in it and say we're done... or maybe not. There's some fantasy out there that could be collected into an interesting state, I think, something a bit further afield of the bog-standard elves and humans and dwarves dealing with dragons and whatever else. So let's mash this stuff up in a blender and see if we can't come up with some fantastic fantasy again.
Ambiance comes to the desktop
Ambiance from Urban Apps is an "environment enhancer" that supplies a variety of sounds and noises to help you sleep, set a mood and so on. I've been using the iPhone app for years to help me catch some Zs, and now Urban Apps has released Ambiance for the desktop. It's got an iTunes-line interface with a store and support for playlists, mixes and more. Here's our first look at Ambiance for the Mac. Installation Ambiance is an Adobe Air app. When I asked developer Matt Coneybeare why he chose Air instead of the Mac App Store for Ambiance, he said that the goal was to have Ambiance for desktop available to as many systems as possible at launch. If you've installed an Air app in the past, the process should be familiar to you. If not, download Air and then grab Ambiance. You'll be walked through the process. When you're through, launch the app and let's check it out. Ambiance for the desktop starts you off with a 14-day free trial. After that, you'll pay US$9.99 for a license.
City of Heroes Going Rogue soundtrack available on iTunes and Amazon
There's just a little more than a month left until City of Heroes players get to take the new expansion for a spin, and Going Rogue's promotions have been stepped up accordingly. Oddly, while the art direction, storytelling, and mechanical aspects of the expansion have all gotten significant attention, we've heard very little about the music that will be expected to set the mood. But if you really want to know, there's no need to speculate -- the soundtrack is already available for purchase. Available both on iTunes and Amazon (albeit slightly cheaper on Amazon), the soundtrack contains 13 pieces composed by Jason Graves, previously of Dead Space and Command & Conquer 4 fame. The previews available suggest a highly orchestral and high-energy collection of pieces, with each piece giving a distinct and different feel from the familiar melodies of the Rogue Isles and Paragon City. Going Rogue players may well want to pick up the soundtrack, as it's only a few bucks and should conjure some engaging images for future City of Heroes adventures.
Buyer's Guide: 33 things you don't need if you have an iPhone
Every time I walk through Warehouse Stationery (New Zealand's equivalent to Office Depot) or Dick Smith's Electronics (pretty much Best Buy), I'm struck by how probably half the products in each store are pretty much useless to me since I've got an iPhone. Thanks to the apps that come pre-packaged with the iPhone and the more than 100,000 third-party offerings now available in the iTunes Store, the iPhone has gained functionality that might have seemed hard to fathom under three years ago when Steve Jobs first announced the device. "A widescreen iPod with touch controls... a revolutionary mobile phone... a breakthrough internet communications device... these are not three separate devices. This is one device." So Steve Jobs told us all back at Macworld Expo 2007. But since then, the iPhone has grown to be much more than just those three concepts. What follows is a sort of anti-buyer's guide, a list of products and devices that you may never need or even want to buy again (or receive as a gift) if you have an iPhone. Some of these are certainly open for debate, but more than a few of them are products that, for all intents and purposes, are completely unnecessary if you have an iPhone. (Items in bold also apply to the iPod touch).
Free Ambiance Classic available to pacify upset users
Ambiance creator Matt Coneybeare is temporarily offering a free copy of version 1.0 as a gesture of goodwill to the negative backlash to the 2.0 upgrade of the iPhone audio app.When released last summer, Ambiance (link opens iTunes) -- along with aSleep -- introduced "environmental enhancers" to the iPhone. These apps would produce sounds ranging from rain and storms to pieces of technology to white noise. The intended effect is to drown out background noise, such as the annoying leaf blower currently being used outside my window, and let you concentrate on your work or get some sleep.Ambiance 1.0, now renamed to Ambiance Classic, was well-received. In a review done back in August, Brett noted that some of the sounds were surprisingly good and that the application was easy to use. As with aSleep, Ambiance Classic included all of the sounds with the application. Over time, Ambiance gained features and additional sounds, swelling up to a download that was more than 50MB (Ambiance Classic clocks in at 51.1MB).
London restaurant claims fame with touch-sensitive tables, colorful menu projectors
A chic London restaurant and bar called Inamo is making patrons' dining experiences digital by projecting colorful menus and aesthetic patterns onto touch-sensitive tabletops. When browsing, patrons can preview the food as if it were on the plate in front of them -- only flatter, we suppose. They can also order their meals, look up neighborhood services, and select one of seven visual vibes without ever interacting with carbon-based lifeforms. Inamo isn't the first automated establishment we've seen, and this sort of table menu tech isn't new -- but the futuristic panache is hard to beat. Hit the read link for more pics.[Thanks, Nvyseal]
Flow in Games: an interactive thesis on dynamic difficulty
While already a few months old, this project warrants recognition. For his Masters Thesis at the University of Southern California, Jenova Chen explored the concept of Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment. Chen is a proponent of games that adjust their difficulty based on a player's input, so as to not become too anxious or bored. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, an inspiration for Chen's work, defined this as staying within a player's Flow state. His thesis is a fascinating read, although we warn you that much of it is academic. For those of you looking for a fun, atmospheric title, we recommend you try out flOw, a game developed by Chen as an implementation of DDA in a gaming environment. The game's ambiance is enough to recommend a play-through -- you can even download the title for offline play (available for both PC and Mac). We have harped on difficulty and game balance before; it will always be a point of discussion among game theorists and game designers. While DDA theoretically sounds like a great idea (a game that always challenges you? Sign me up!), it becomes increasingly less pliable once you start worrying about implementation. How challenging do we make it? Will the relative difficulty undulate? What variables should one adjust in deciding how to vary the challenge? The answers to those questions, unfortunately, are less clear.See Also:Gamer's Room 101: the argument FOR balanceGamer's Room 101: the argument AGAINST balanceMaking games "universally accessible"[via Ludology.org]
