PASTY'S PROFILE

author=Feldschlacht IV
I'd like to share with you guys another such album by a different guy; Random and Lost Perception's Black Materia. Shit. Is. Awesome. I already like rap, but even if you don't, I think it's worth a listen to open up your mind a little bit to appreciate his work; not only do the lyrics flow masterfully with the tunes, but the tunes are mixed and the production is real nice, and it all fits. He's also got some Mega Man stuff too on his page. Check it out.

sorry to disappoint you, man. chalk it up to taste or whatever but i consider this to be his weakest work, bar none. i'm a pretty big random fan but it's all over the place. first, there's too much fanfic and not enough relating to the real world: the best parts of a mega ran album are when he takes video game tropes and characters and expands their mythos with real-world what-ifs and analogies (robot city is a great example and i guess cry of the planet is too but i didn't care for it).

second, i think the production is honestly kind of a mess! idk when he worked on it but he had about a six-month timespan between forever famicom and black materia. i don't know if that's enough, because the album feels rushed. people tore this album apart over on reddit back when it came out and i gotta say i kind of agree with them. my biggest problem is that, on quite a few of the songs, the vocal track seems to lag behind the instrumental just long enough to be noticeable. it really defeats me when i'm trying in earnest to enjoy the song. i'm struggling to find a track on black materia that i like. maybe avalanche because it's so cheesy it wraps back around to good again.

that being said he's an excellent performer with a good story and a genuinely great attitude and if you have the chance to see him live, go. his shows are funny and fun and he's second only to peelander-z on my "favorite performances to see live" list.

here's some more stuff:

Dream Master
Shadowman

taking this out to just general remixes and arrangements, i've got the Sonic 3 & Knuckles remix album Project Chaos on my list. it's a great remix of every main track in S3&K and the fact that SEGA surpassed it in Sonic Generations frankly astounds me, because Project Chaos is already great.

Dead Batteries
Malicious Fingers

is there a video page in the works? because i tried to add one and was told the slug was reserved.

ooh, this looks cool. subbed.

sup productions (sup)

cut features, dilute your design

there are no shortcuts here

realanswer: it helps to have a set of versatile and robust tools you can rely on to make things go smoother. the messagebox code i'm running was written almost three years ago but it's very modular, so i was able to add choices and tutorial features to it with almost no trouble. if i had built a total mess that links into like ten different places i guarantee you it would've been awful building anything on top of that.

the problem is that you often have to build those tools yourself, and building robust tools comes with experience, so it's not really a shortcut.

also i was kind of joking at the top of my post but really, the quickest way to cut your game's development time is to cut planned features. i don't know that you should necessarily take a hatchet to your game but you should evaluate each feature and ask yourself things like:

do i really need this feature?
does this feature only exist because i spent a lot of time designing it?
does it only exist to mindlessly meet a genre trope?
does it only exist because i like it too much to let it go?
does it needlessly complicate the experience?

etc.

you may find that you don't need a lot of things, and that can help you proceed. but if you're making any kind of content-intensive game, there aren't really any shortcuts that i've found.