Update on the whole website thing

Just wanted to give a tiny update - while I haven't gone through the process of migrating the blog away from Blogger to a new format, this blog, however, is now reachable at patrickmauro.net/blog as well as the usual mauruslair.blogspot.com.

In addition, I've got a slightly more professional-looking temp page up, with links to my SoundCloud and LinkedIn pages and everything. Cool stuff.

That's all for now, carry on!

I now own patrickmauro.net!

Yup, it's true. Check it out for yourself.

As of this post I've only got a temporary "parked" page up (which is really just this image here), but I will begin working on developing a full personal website that will include a general bio, my qualifications (and perhaps my resume), a portfolio of project examples, and links to my SoundCloud and LinkedIn pages.

What I'm also probably going to do is migrate this entire blog over to a private subdomain of this site (when I say "private," I really just mean I won't include a link to it on my home page, but it will probably be accessible at /blog). Since the blog has sometimes dealt with personal issues, I would rather not have it easily available from the same location "official stuff" like my resume and portfolio are at. But, I can at least take advantage of having the domain and move it elsewhere so that I'll no longer have to rely on Blogger/Blogspot, which I've grown kind of tired with (sorry guys, you've been great but it's time for me to move on).

Stay tuned! :)

Kuusisto returns!

Those who follow my blog (does anyone follow my blog? I actually have no idea) will remember my music piece Kuusisto. Working on Kuusisto was kind of a big milestone for me. Believe it or not, it sort of changed the way I thought about music, and it really helped pave the way for the rest of my stuff. Mentally, I even separate my stuff as pre- and post-Kuusisto.

So some might have been surprised when I launched my SoundCloud account and did not feature Kuusisto. Well, the problem is it hadn't aged very gracefully, and I no longer felt like it represented the quality of the music I was working on.

Since then I actually had been tinkering with it in the background, trying to figure out what direction I wanted to go with it, but never actively. I'd been doing the same with a lot of my older pieces, actually. But a big turning point was when I received my brand new Yeti microphone this winter. Having that kind of recording quality meant I could now work with more live elements, and fast-track reworkings of earlier projects.

Of course, I was busy finishing up my senior year, so I didn't have that kind of time - but recently I had the opportunity to participate in a game enthusiasts' music festival called D'nipalooza, which gave me an excuse to brush up some of my music. As a result, I was finally able to put that new coat of paint on Kuusisto - which I've now retitled The Blind Scholar to make it a little more accessible.

I'm still calling it a work in progress, though, because I don't quite consider it done. The new drumkit soundfonts are much better than what I had before, but they still sound pretty terrible in a few spots. I'd really like to replace the drum track, as well as the bass track, with live recordings if at all possible. I also think something seems a little off about the piano part in this version, so I may want to adjust that a little.

The Blind Scholar, as well as new versions of Over the Fence and Bottles, can be seen on my SoundCloud page. Together with The Champion, they make up my set from D'nipalooza - which I'll share below.

I am now on SoundCloud!

My friend and I picked up composer Tarik O'Regan from
the local train station the other day.
It was a good day.

After being strongly urged to join SoundCloud, I finally did it. I think it was a good choice ultimately, because it will allow me to network with other composer friends I know. I hope choosing SC will allow me to expand my horizons a bit composing-wise.

I've changed the Music page on this blog so it now just shows a big ol' SC widget rather than my tracks with the description on them - so it's a lot, lot cleaner looking, actually, However, I realized after I changed the page that I have some explaining to do, because almost All the content I uploaded is brand-new, and most of the content I had on the site is gone.

To clarify: no, I have not reposted Oedipus Rex*, Salley Gardens, Ver Frigidus**, Organized Insanity**, the whole dang Ordo ab Chao suite**, A Distracted Isolation, Ver Calidus*, Kuusisto*, Beyond the Barrier, Over the Fence*, The Beat of my Own Drummer, An Sléibhte na hÉireann, or Searching for Sight.*

Instead, I am happy to first introduce two new revisions of the Over the Fence Theme and Searching for Sight, both featuring actual guitar and stuff. I'm particularly proud of the OTF Theme revision (which is pretty robust), it's a lot of fun and I think you'll enjoy it too.

I'd also like to introduce a bunch of new tracks, some of which I had been intending on posting to this blog: Dragons in the Sky, Seven Billion, Bottles, Battle! Champion Maurus, and Passing on the Right, which as of now is still in the W-I-P phase.

Dragons and Seven Billion are two tracks I had wanted to announce under a "Music 219" post, the reason being that they had both been produced in my class MUSIC-219, Electronic Music. They're both considered "tape music" or "musique concrète," in that they're made with synthesizers and/or synthesized source audio and compiled together. Of the two, Seven Billion is the more "experimental," however; Dragons has a more noticeable groove to it.

Bottles is quite a different piece - I usually do music that's a bit heavier, but instead I just wanted to make more of a "fun" song. And a song in which I sing in. There are some prog elements to be sure, but it's a lot easier on the ears than some of my other work is. I want to make some more songs like this in the future. However, I don't quite consider it done yet, as there's quite a bit of work I still feel needs to get done on this track, not the least of which are recording a live drum track and re-recording the vocals and guitar parts.

Battle! Champion Maurus came about because I was playing Pokémon White over Summer 2012, and I was reminded of an idea I had to create a Pokémon-inspired track. Plus, I was teaching myself guitar, so it was a good outlet. As you can imagine, it is essentially an homage to the music of the Pokémon games, for the most part composed by Junichi Masuda, and there are more than a few nods to some of the music from the games. Like "Bottles" and "OTF," I was really surprised by how fun a track I could make. Hopefully I will make more "fun" music like this in the future.

Finally, "Passing on the Right" is a brand-new track, only a few days old as of this posting. It's based on an idea that has been rattling around in my head for a while now, and while I'm not 100% comfortable with this cut (it is again a work-in-progress), I'm glad to have finally gotten it down. It is inspired by road rage, and is heavily influenced by the King Crimson albums THRAK, The ConstruKction of Light, and The Power to Believe.

So why did I get rid of so much of the music? A few reasons, actually - one being that SoundCloud has an upload limit, so it's in my best interests not to upload all of my music, but the perhaps more important reason being that I simply don't feel a lot of the tracks accurately represent my current skill level, and I don't feel comfortable having them represent me by putting them online, even if I were to label them as only "works in progress."

 That being said, there are a few tracks I hope to make revised versions of, including both of the Ver's, Organized Insanity (and let's be honest, a revision has been a LONG time coming), Kuusisto, The Beat of my Own Drummer, and An Sléibhte na hÉireann. Most of these are just matters of re-arranging, lengthening, and actually recording with live instruments (Sléibhte is an example of a track that just doesn't sound good unless it's live), but I don't want to put them up in their current forms.

As for the rest, well, I'm not re-doing some of the older stuff because I don't think there's a point (though I may post some of my EVEN OLDER tracks), the vocal stuff I don't feel comfortable posting because I've matured so much since then that the tracks sound frankly bad to me now, and the whole Ordo ab Chao situation is... complicated. Pt. 3 is pretty solid, but Pt. 1's a mess, and I've been working on a new Pt. 2 since 2011 and have never produced a result I felt happy with. So we'll see, but don't get your hopes up.

Anyway, that's the situation with my music. I'm fortunate to be in a period of high creative energy right now. Vassar just had its annual ModFest, a celebration of modern art, and I got to speak with many very intelligent contemporary composers whom I have a lot of respect for.

I've also started a new YouTube channel, with the hope of eventually making some new quality content, so stay tuned: Both my new YouTube channel and my SoundCloud page are "MaurusMultimedia," a name I thought much more suitable than my previous internet alias "MaurusRehMahrntahn."

You'll be hearing from me!

RETROACTIVE EDIT:
* - A new version of this track has since been posted.
** - A new version of this track is being worked on.

Love and Latent Cruelty: Looking back at the Met Opera's 1991 "Carmen"

For realzies though, these guys are adorable.

Seemingly out of pure coincidence, various friends of mine have been discussing Carmen recently. I'm writing opera reviews for a music class at school, and though familiar with much of Carmen, I'd never seen it all the way through, so I figured I might as well take this as a sign, and use this opportunity to seek out a recording of the opera, watch it, and write about it for one of my reviews. Then I decided to make it a blog post, because I liked it so why the heck not.

I picked up a DVD of the 1991 Met Opera production, featuring Agnes Baltsa as Carmen, José Carreras as Don José (hah… ), Leona Mitchell as Micaëla, and Samuel Ramey as Escamillo. I was utterly delighted by the opera – I was absolutely blown away by how excellent the music was, and was surprised it wasn’t a product of the early 1900s rather than 1875. Even the text seemed witty and interesting – and that’s based solely on seeing an English translation.

It’s funny how there are so many songs from this opera that have been absorbed into the public consciousness – namely the overture, the habanera and the toreador song (all these links are actually from this production!) – but in my opinion, the music that really makes this opera special isn’t really any one of those three, but elsewhere – one of my favorites being Les tringles des sistres tintaient. The “big three” do get credit from me, though, for being ridiculously catchy and ridiculously fun nevertheless.

...I'm just saying.

Anyway, my job here is not to review the opera itself, but this particular production – I simply couldn’t help but bring it up since I enjoyed it so much – so let’s get started. All in all, the production was extremely impressive and tremendously executed, featured some powerful performances by its talented cast, some excellent singing, an exceptional orchestra, and great overall direction. Of note is the fact that the almost comically animated James Levine gets a consistently robust performance out of the orchestra throughout the entire production. (Not that he doesn’t normally, I’m sure he does, but it was so precise and so “mighty” sounding that it was noticeably excellent.) Even the way the DVD was cut impressed me – the camera angles were effective, the cuts and editing well-timed, creative and informed. One issue I did have though – and I don’t know whether or not this is actually the fault of those who edited the DVD – is that the voices on stage are fairly low down in the overall audio mix. In the DVD at least, the orchestra (and background sound effects, which is weird) are much louder and clearer than the voices of the singers on stage. Had I not had subtitles on (and if I spoke French), I probably wouldn’t have been able to understand what they were saying most of the time – which is a bit of a problem.

One of the interesting things I have taken away from writing these opera reviews so far is not to trust my first impression of a given actor/actress. Often times a particular performer will seem extremely weak to me in their initial appearance, but as the opera progresses I will eventually change my opinion. This was very true of Baltsa and Mitchell in this case, both of whom I severely disliked at first, but grew to love due to the strength of their performances. It was actually how surprising how strong the performances were - I’m fairly certain some real tears were shed during the course of this recording.

My issue with Mitchell was more minor, and was related directly to something more subtle in her first scene. Granted I was also initially fairly unimpressed with her voice, but what bothered me was that she had an odd habit of cheating out only when she had a line. It made for an awkward and stilted performance in her first scene, which involved a dialogue between her and an officer, and it really took me out of the moment. However, as the opera progressed, Mitchell delivered an emotionally-wrought performance backed by a surprisingly rich and skilled voice. She stayed directly in-character the entire time, and let emotion dictate her performance, in a way that made it all the more powerful. This was evident in the strength of her chemistry with Carreras: She seemed to truly love him; with him she seemed happy, thankful, filled with emotion. And the audience noticed – their first duet resulted in the recording’s first really rowdy reaction from the audience. Her brilliant performance of C'est les contrabandiers le refuge ordinaire in Act III also resulted in similarly vocal audience reaction.

Derp.

However, a much more significant cause of initial aggravation for me was Baltsa’s first scene. During the famous L'amour est un oiseaurebelle (AKA "habanera") Baltsa consistently looked as though singing was a challenge for her, making various faces that vaguely resembled those of someone trying to push a heavy object. (Seriously, go click the link, it's from this production.) This is fine, but the habanera is famous for its playfulness and its flirtatiousness, and seeing her make such an effort to sing really took me out of the moment and irked me. To make matters worse, she took many breaths I found questionable, and frankly wasn’t always in key. More generally, I was also was a bit bothered by the fact that she sang it a bit too much “like an opera singer” (that is to say, with tons of rigid vibrato and generally very little shape to the lines; she stayed mostly at mf – f), and not slightly more carefree and playful, as I feel the song almost dictates.

My doubts about her were slightly allayed almost immediately in the following scene, however, when Baltsa made a powerful acting choice in reacting to the entrance of Don José. Simply the way she looked at him suggested a thousand things about Carmen’s character, and about how Baltsa was going to play her – rather than take the hackneyed “love at first sight” approach, she instead dropped her smile and reacted with what can almost be described as a sense of dread - one gets the sense that Carmen is shocked, perhaps even somewhat disturbed, by her own impulsive feelings towards Don José; that she knows her own impulsivity is a flaw, that this has happened before, and she’s not 100% certain how she feels about it happening again. It was a really powerful moment, and made me completely change my opinion of the actress.

Throughout the rest of the opera, I thought her performance improved considerably, and she seemed more and more willing to inject playfulness and emotion into her style of singing. She did, however, retain that weird quirk of looking like she was concentrating on singing rather than acting most of the time, however. If she’s making the choice of playing Carmen as if she’s pissed off at everything at all times, that’s one thing, but I still really don’t think that’s appropriate for the character.

Good... good... I can feel your awe... IT GIVES ME POWER

What was impressive about Samuel Ramey wasn’t so much the strength of his voice – which was very strong; excellent even – but the command of his presence. The moment he stepped onstage he immediately received applause from the audience. And of course, the toreador song was excellent, as it always is, but it was made even more impressive by how engaging his performance was, and, once again, by the strength of the orchestra – it shines particularly well here. The defining moment here wasn’t during the song itself, though, but the moment immediately afterwards – the audience’s reaction was like nothing I’ve heard from an opera performance before. They sounded more like the audience of a rock concert, almost. The camera hung on Ramey, triumphantly posed, the entire time – and I got this magical sense that as this period progressed, his presence on stage was less an embodiment of the character’s pride and arrogance, and increasingly, a reflection of the actor’s own growing sense of glory – he is truly relishing this moment, feeding on the energy from his audience. It truly seemed like a mystical moment. Seriously, watch the scene yourself and try to tell me otherwise!

As for José Carreras – does anything really need to be said? Carreras is the real deal – and it shows in this performance. It is beautifully acted and beautifully sung, if not perhaps a bit over the top in terms of physicality. This is forgivable though – it’s frankly refreshing, compared to Araiza’s dull, flat performance as Tamino in the Magic Flute, which was actually recorded during the same Met Opera season as this. (My review of that production in a nutshell)

The only real problem I think I have with José Carreras’ performance is that Carreras seems like such a likeable guy that his “descent to the dark side,” as it were, seems… wrong. His decision to set Carmen free in Act I seems totally against everything we know about the character thus far in the opera, and while this could very well be a textual problem, it’s one that could have been assuaged by a stronger acting performance. He just didn’t seem really tempted enough to actually change his mind, so when he does, it seems sudden and wrong.

You guys, I'm not saying women are evil...
but women are totally evil.

An important thing to note about the text – or at least, my interpretation of it – is that Carmen’s sudden intrusion into José’s life isn’t “making him bad” per se. Like Walter White in Breaking Bad, it really seems more that the situation and increasing desperation are beginning to bring out nastier elements of his personality that were already there, but repressed, rather than changing him directly. I’m willing to accept the idea that José is flawed as a character, but Carreras’ performance seems to suggest José is a totally nice guy that suddenly, by Act III/IV is a huge jerk. I guess I would have liked to see Carreras give José more of an arc.

I know realistically speaking they were probably all over the biblical idea of “the temptation of woman” when this plot was originally conceived, but I just find the other idea (situational chaos causing latent nastiness to suddenly come into the forefront) so much more interesting as a concept, as it presents a look inward, rather than suggest a more “magical” element (Temptation of woman = “evil”).

Some other more general notes: I thought all of the actors shared tremendous chemistry with each other, and enjoyed their performances down to their core, which made me, as a viewer, appreciate it that much more. Also, as a more minor note, I think this production used the children’s chorus effectively – I generally don’t like children’s choruses as they always sort of sound a bit “angelic” and unnatural to me, in a creepy sort of way. But here they made sure the children sang loudly and without real grace, which normally would be a bad thing, but was effective here because it reflected their status as “street urchins” very well.

All in all, I’m truly surprised by how much I enjoyed this, both as an opera and as a performance. There aren’t many things that can make me willingly write for three pages, single-spaced, and yet here we are. (It totally was in Word.)

Maybe I should make the overture my new ringtone.

So let's talk about the Portal 2 Level Editor.

There's too much JK Simmons in my life right now.
(Stolen from http://thepageofhopes.tumblr.com/)

The Portal 2 DLC "Perpetual Testing Initiative" came out about a week ago, featuring - and sometimes it's easy to forget just how expansive this DLC is, so let's go in order - seamless integration with Steam Workshop that lets players distribute, download and play custom-designed maps and stories *directly in-game* without having to install any executable packages separately - a simple yet comprehensive tool that allows even the least-experienced of players to create custom chambers easily (albeit obviously a good deal simpler than their custom-designed-in-blender counterparts), and almost an hour's worth of new dialogue from JK Simmons as Aperture CEO Cave Johnson. That all would have been fine by itself if they had decided to simply make it all fun and non-canon, but rather than just do that, they decided to go the extra mile and make it as simple as possible by giving the DLC in-universe justification - ie, we technically got new plot/story as well (though not exactly comprehensive).

What makes this DLC *so* cool is that, rather than abandoning the already-existing Portal 2 mapping community, Valve has made it possible for custom chambers built in Hammer (or whatever) to be uploaded to the Workshop's collection as well. They could have just as easily made the entire system just based off of the new level designer Valve built - ie, all chambers are made from it and downloaded, etc - which is what I *thought* was going to happen. It seemed clear that the system they put together seemed to revolve around the new map builder (with it being most relevant to the Cave dialogue, etc) but no, instead they took that extra step and included everybody.

It doesn't even really break from the story of the DLC - your character, a hapless tester - seems to be jumping from universe to universe. It can be justified that occasionally you jump into a universe where Aperture is in disrepair, or GLaDOS is in charge rather than Cave, etc.

It's really the "not knowing what to expect next" aspect of this (plus the ridiculous dialogue) that makes the DLC so enjoyable, which almost makes me wish they had included a system whereby it generates a random testing track by downloading a series of random chambers from the workshop, putting it in your queue and setting you off. (And according to Reddit, I am not alone in this desire.) Obviously, being able to pick and choose chambers or sets of chambers is nice, but that ability would really make it feel like a "perpetual testing initiative -" you go home and say "let me try another testing track" and then you just go ahead, always getting something new.

But going back to before, where we talked about the map-builder maps vs. maps built in hammer, I gotta say there is a certain level of disconnect. The map-builder is great, but it's clear that there are a number of limitations that are preventing it from being as great as it *could* be. Namely, I think the goal should be to, over time of course, narrow that gap between the two kinds of chambers until it is less noticeable. Now I'm not complaining at all, mind - note as I've already said that this DLC is awesome and way more than I was expecting from Valve - but I imagine it would be in their best interest to improve the builder over time. Valve has always been one to tweak. If they do, I hope they keep the following things in mind.

--------------------------------------------------------

I - The builder itself

1. Level Designs - So, I should first say that I don't actually *care* too much about this one - but as long as we're talking about narrowing the gap between Hammer and the Editor, this is probably the more obvious one. Again, this actually doesn't bother me that much - working in those sterile environments is what the Portal world is all about, so the design template being limited to that "normal" style doesn't bother me that much. But obviously an option to swap between design styles would be pretty cool. At least for the 50s Aperture, anyway - I totally get that creating maps in the "ruined" style is a huge issue because recreating that "haphazard destruction" look would be really difficult to pull off in a simple map creator like this. But maybe just the skins and audio. *shrug*

2. Props - I think anyone who has worked with the level creator has noticed that it seems like there aren't that many props - only to be shocked by just how much can be done with the props available. For what's there, it's actually surprisingly comprehensive collection. That being said, I imagine some folks would be interested in populating their maps with stuff that is there "just for show" - especially if someone is trying to create a "behind the scenes" styled map. Again, that actually doesn't bother me too much, but there are other implications of this that really do pique my interest - more testing elements.

That is to say, incorporate testing elements that were cut from the game or are not featured as much in the game, or bring old test elements back, and make them available for use in the map maker - just to create as much diversity as possible. Allowing all kinds of different test elements should always keep custom gameplay feeling fresh. Plus, we haven't seen the high-energy pellet used at all in Portal 2 - I know they essentially replaced it with the laser, but they actually serve very different functions and are used very differently in-context. Plus with all the new gameplay additions in Portal 2, it might be interesting to see how it could work in tandem with newer elements. (Plus, with Portal 2 Valve did a thing where they replaced sfx that were previously borrowed from HL2 and replaced them with new, original sfx. I'd be interested in seeing if they did the same with the pellet.) This includes the pneumatic vents, crushers, perhaps even the cut "futbol" - though I wouldn't lose any sleep over not seeing it, to be honest.

EDIT: Know what I've been realizing is really missing from the editor? Vertical/Horizontal panels. It can move up and/or down, like a victory lift, except it's a panel, and is therefore portal-able. I've found there are many places where this would come in handy, and it's used *ALL the time* in the actual campaign. There's a lot of interesting mechanics including this could bring forth, so I hope this gets added, even moreso than some of these other ones.

In general, it's hard sometimes to get a particular "look" for something when a certain design or prop is only seen in-game. This is particularly noticeable when one tries to recreate existing maps - especially Portal 1 maps (for example, the way floors in pits are slightly grated at the edges - this is seen in the ruined Portal 1 maps as well.) There's also no doors available other than entrance and exit doors - I think we can agree including some more doors could allow for some fun ideas with sub-rooms, etc. But you'll find including this is moot without the following bit as well:

3. Finer editing - Or, more specifically, the ability to edit to 1/2 of a unit. When I originally wrote this, I put it on par with some of my thoughts about the music (as you'll read later) but having played around with it for a week or so more since then, I'm realizing more and more that this can potentially be a serious problem if not addressed.

This is actually a bigger point for me than a lot of the others. It becomes particularly hard to get that exact "look" you want without being able to edit to a slightly finer degree. What I'm talking about is this: The level designer's 1x1 space is equivalent to the width of two of the vertical wall panels - a lot more space than it looks in the editor. As a result it's often hard to get stuff to look balanced, and attempting to recreate elements as they appear in game - for instance, areas of space that *look* 3x3 but are actually equivalent to 1.5x1.5 of the map maker's units, with (for instance) an apparatus vent evenly centered over the space above. That's not possible to do in-game - you can't create space of that size, and even if you could, the vent would just sort of awkwardly sit at one corder or the other, since you can't center it. I think granting players the ability to move/size stuff by half-units could help in this regard, and I can't imagine this is too much of a stretch nor would it be particularly difficult to implement - then again, I don't know as I didn't make the game.

4. RETROACTIVE ADDITION! Test chambers without "building" each time - Having now played around with it for about 2 weeks, I can't tell you how irritating it is to make an adjustment to a chamber, spend half a minute (to a minute) building the darn thing only to find there's an unforeseen problem with it. Then you have to go back to the editor, adjust the problem, and spend another lengthly period of time just letting the thing sit there building the map so I can test it. This continues ad infinitum.

Thing is, if all I'm doing is running through to make sure things work, I really don't need, or want, lighting, detailed textures, background audio, and the like - just the *physics.* If there was a way you could go directly into a simple first-person testing mode using the editor itself, you would save a *lot* of time and irritation. That is to say, "testing" the chamber and "playing" the chamber shouldn't have to be the same thing. But, the way it's currently set up, that's the way it works. This is something that I really hope they consider next time they decide to revisit it, which they have, in fact been doing - a week or so after launching it, they patched it so that when you're building the chamber, you can see what exactly it's doing as it progresses. This is much better than staring at a blank, context-less radial symbol, as it gives context to the time you're spending waiting - but it still doesn't cut down on that time, and it's still longer than I think it needs to be, when all you want to do is test a few things out.


II - Audio and Music. (Yeah, this gets its own section, even.)

1. Background Music - players will notice the music in the chambers cycles between different versions of "Robot Waiting Room" from the soundtrack - even giving us a new one in the style of "You are not part of the control group" (to replace, I assume, the version of "Robot Waiting Room" that was *literally* just that track). It's a cute tune and it works pretty well, but the thing is, it gets repetitive real fast, and it doesn't always seem to fit with the *feeling* the chamber designer was going for.

So yeah, I think we should have a level of control over the music for the custom chambers - at the very least, the ability to turn it off. I often found playing Portal 1 (and 2) that some of the most interesting chambers were the ones that left me completely to my thoughts and the background noises - even though I really enjoy the music in both.

But I think there should be other options too. There's a plethora of music in Portal 2 and a lot of it is very very good - it would be really great to have the opportunity to re-purpose some of those tracks. But allowing for custom music could be really great too - naturally there is the risk of teenagers submitting test chambers that play Nickelback in the background (but I think that's a violation of the Steam Workshop terms *anyway,* so I guess there's that) - but what I envision this would allow (mostly) is the inclusion of Portal 1 tracks (which I love dearly. I've been wanting really badly to see a chamber in the new style but with Portal 1 music. It's great "just sit back and think" music and fits the atmosphere - Portal 2's is kickass and everything, but almost too a fault - it's very sort of "grand and romantic" in its stylings, but there isn't a whole lot of the "moody background-ness" to it that made Portal 1 feel so interesting), and also original tracks. I'd love to see someone design a testing cycle that they developed completely, down to the music.

2. Testing Element sounds / Interactive Music - One of the first things I noticed when I was playing the DLC was that the testing elements didn't have their trademark interactiveness to them. I get that this seems difficult to implement given the changing music. But the thing is, since the only music we have available is 5 (or so) different versions of the same track, you'd think it'd have been pretty easy to do.

Actually, the bizarre thing is that the interactive music is there, but it's not very noticeable. It's most obvious with the funnels, which hum the same way as they do in-game, but following the chord changes of "Robot Waiting Room" (again, since it's all the same). There is something there for repulsion gel, the same counterpoint that was designed for the Co-Op lobby. Thing is, it's kind of subtle (probably not on purpose, but the tones blend into each other such that it's not ver obvious) so you really don't notice it unless you really listen for it - which I think defeats the purpose of having it. The main reason it's subtle is because the counterpoint is in the same range as the melody, while in the game it's usually about an octave or so higher, which makes it stand out and ring. I'm thinking they should do away with the counterpoint they have for the repulsion gel already and replace it with a more obvious one - because it's just too dang fun not to do.

But alas, there's nothing for propulsion gel or, perhaps MOST sadly, the awesome aerial faith plates. The reason I think this is important is because while I would have been fine without it, having played WITH it, it *really* does add a certain aspect to the gameplay that makes it *that* much more fun. Given the additional fact that the current background music IS just variations on the same track, I hope, before they add anything else, that they address this, by making the repulsion gel stuff more obvious as I said earlier, and adding stuff for repulsion gel and the faith plates. Faith plates are already so awesome, but when your trip through the air is accompanied by an awesome techno beat (or whatever) it makes it that much more awesome and thrilling. That being said, I think something subtler would be fine - something akin to the more reserved sounds they make during the campaign's third act.

That all being said, like with background music in general, it's not always appropriate! And again, like I said with the background music, there should probably be a way to turn them off as well. But... maybe instead of dealing with it en masse, there's a more creative way we could go about it. One that would open up even more possibilities.

Perhaps each relevant element should be customizable - you could turn each one on and off individually. But maybe we can go even further! Maybe we could customize each element in terms of what music layers it adds. The obvious ones have always been the gels, the funnel, and the faith plate, but we've seen interactivity with the laser receptacles/bouncers (even quite a few that are designed to create music by themselves in tandem WITHOUT a backing track), turrets (killing them), and even cubes. Plus remember that one level where every plate you bounced off of added a *different* layer? So what if for each relevant item, we could choose what musical layer they contribute in-context (including "nothing").

This could be getting a little far-reaching; really, the ability to turn them on/off is fine, especially if we assume the background music stays as-is. However, assuming we have access to other trakcs, we have other problems to deal with, and the "each item picks its own layer" thing becomes more relevant. Granted we have the ability to choose custom tracks from the game, in order for this to work the game would have to associate tracks that are background tracks WITH relevant sublayers. ie, if you pick a specific track, the testing elements have access to the set of layers designed to go with this track. This means there would have to be some way the game could easily associate a particular track with its sublayers - which I assume isn't easy to do.

However, if they did figure out a standardized way of doing it, that could further open the door to more user-created content. Imagine someone designing a custom background track, and designing their own layers to go with it too. Talk about creativity. Even designing new layers for tracks that previously didn't have one could be neat, too. But again, when you get down to it, it would have to be Dependant on what the background track is. There could be some designed to just work in the silence (I'm thinking of a lot of the laser ones), and then with each track selected, the sublayers for that track in particular are added and become options for the testing elements.

Indeed, this got a bit complicated pretty quickly, but I do think it's important, and what they decide to do with this is intimately linked with what they do for background music - so adjusting one of them is necessarily going to affect the other.

3. Community Dialogue Lines - Or really, the ability to change the announcements at the beginning (or end) of the test in general. At first this might seem a bit contradictory, since the whole DLC focuses on Cave and his craziness - but again, as I mentioned before, since we're universe-hopping anyway, it doesn't really matter that much if we plop into a universe where GLaDOS is in charge, etc.

Of course, the important implication of this is that it would allow for players to create custom stories, similar to what many have done so far (those interested should check out the EXCELLENT "12 Angry Tests" set). Again, like in most Valve games there's PLENTY of unused dialogue just sitting around in the game files that could be taken advantage of (and have been by many, as can be seen in a lot of the Hammer-designed chambers). But again, it would also allow for context-sensitive announcements to be made about chambers, rather than haphazard ones like the default Cave Johnson announcements. Again, not a *huge* concern for me, as the Cave stuff is great, but having that option available could help to level the playing field a bit more between the Hammer folks and the standard folks.

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Okay, well, I've rambled a lot here - a LOT more than I thought I was going to, believe you me - but I think I've brought up some important points about the level editor and how it can be improved. Again my concerns are mostly rooted in a desire to level the playing field between Hammer designers and the rest of us - not just that it seems "unfair" but also because in comparison, the standard chambers begin to look a little lacking or passe.

I personally am most concerned, really, with the music stuff, and finer editing. At the very least I think the conspicuous lack of interactive stuff needs to be addressed, and the background music should be able to be turned off - but again, having other (even custom) tracks available too would be really very great. But again, I'm finding more and more that I really need that half a unit during editing - Valve uses it a LOT in their chambers, if you look at them, and I really think we should be allowed to use the half unit as well.

I think it's also important to note that, even in levels designed in Hammer, I still haven't really seen the interactive music stuff pulled off very well - it never sounds quite as "natural" as it does in-game. So hopefully this will give us the ability to actually do that.

Oh, and new music revisions have been posted. I'll talk more about that in a future post. Sitting on a lot of stuff I'm looking forward to releasing, just waiting for the right time.

Home again

Just got back from a one-week tour through Europe with the lovely Vassar College Choir. I've got one more week before I go back to school, so I may post some stuff here that I've been sitting on for a while.

And no, I don't mean my butt.

Anyway, I've got some lovely photos from the trip, so, if you're a friend of mine on Facebook, do feel free to peruse. Here's one of my favorites from Paris.