THENECROMANCER'S PROFILE

Dude, it's pretty well established that midi means a .midi file. You know, beeps and boops. Old obsolete music files from the stone ages that we all used to use in our games. This is an RPGmaker site not AP Music Theory :P

Plus this topic was made in 2012, when midi was still kind of relevant and sometimes a necessary option. In the age of fast computers and even faster internet, better formats are the norm.

This whole discussion is obsolete.

I can't stand the hard stuff. It's beer for me. COLD SHOTS

I remember 2012

Rama is better described as a story about near-present day humans exploring the first alien visitor, which is a dark cold mysterious vessel that is dead and lifeless at first but slowly comes alive with them inside. The reasoning behind everything is very logical and familiar, but still foreign and interesting. It focuses a lot on the science behind things, instead of just doing the thing. For example, they are in low gravity and travelling a long ladder. And a major point of the process is how they have to pace themselves to not get tired, and have their muscles suffer. And it goes into detail about what happens, and how they deal with it. Psychologically too. It's more scientific than most science fiction. Where weird shit happens just because it needs to and it sounds cool. This story happens within our boundaries of what humans can do right now, with a few realistic advancements.

There are some sequels I haven't read yet, but the first book was just so enthralling. I think I heard that the series gets worse, but I want to know more about the alien ship so I will keep reading.

As for Ready Player One, I actually just watched the movie. Finally. As far as book to movie adaptions go, this is the farthest from the source material I've ever seen. You could do the book and have almost noooo idea what is going to happen next haha There is no racing in the book, they don't meet in IRL so early on, the circumstances they all meet and their relationships are 90% different, all the library watching videos of Halliday;s life stuff isn't in the book in any shape or form. It's bonkers. If I had to guess, they couldn't secure the rights for the missing plot points in the book, so they had to make up a bunch of stuff. The movie didn't even feel 80s(besides the soundtrack), where in the book that is a massive in your face fact.

Because there is no racing, that means the way he figures out how to find the first key and how he obtains it is 100% different. Plus, in the book they get the key then have to use it to open a gate, which is a whole other challenge. They took that out completely and it's basically half of the damn contest!

I had to shut off the movie half way through, when H rescues him in the van. Things are happening for no reason. The book slow walks you to each milestone and their relationships form over time. It makes no sense that Z and Art3mis would get close so quickly. Her character in the book is much more resistant to the idea of meeting IRL where in the movie she kidnaps him and brings him to her house. WHAT! Besides, she's supposed to be in Canada and him in the US.

There are endless references to old games, movies, and music in the book but I dunno, I never felt it was "shameless". The whole point of the book is that the way to win the contest is to become familiar with all the things Halliday liked. He grew up in the 80's. So to be a good gunter, Parzival had to become a master in that stuff. So the book takes a while to list all the things he's been researching. That's at the start and sets the context for all the other references. In that they are related to Halliday and the hunt, and a requirement to understanding the clues, and understanding the amazing talent Parzival has for knowledge. Some people seem to think even that is shameless nostalgia on the authors part, but I don't agree with that. I like how it uses existing pop culture in a future setting.

BTW, the clues in the book are clever and actually reference things from the 80s directly. The clues in the movie are so dumb and obscure, some having nothing to do with 80s culture. How they solve them is even more baffling.

Basically, you don't know RP1 at all by watching that crummy movie. It's just like the Death Note netflix movie. They botched it in almost the same way. I enjoyed some parts of the movie, had some laughs at things that weren't in the book, was nice to see some scenes from the book play out exactly right. Plus it's 3D, so that's always a plus for any bad movie. "At least it's got decent 3D effects"

It includes many system sounds from many games. You didn't specify non rips. I can't imagine it's easy to find decent system sounds on free sites.