As an audiophile, I explore a lot of genres. One that has become my comfort genre is ambient.
So I’m on a plane, a lot on my mind, and need something to listen to. Welcome the album Confluence by Manual.
This soothing album is filled with dreamscapes with slow, rolling melodies. Calming, peaceful, never jarring. if there is a time signature I can’t feel it. This music sucks you in if you let it. With each phrase another surge of emotion. It’s great for when your mood is lower. Helps me fall asleep, and also focus on my thoughts.
This is not crowd music. It’s personal experience music. Headphones it up, sit down, relax, and let the music become your reality. It’s pretty sweet stuff.
Check it out.
I am a huge Final Fantasy Fan. I’ve played and beaten FFI – FFVII. Also include Tactics, Tactics Adv 2, Mystic Quest, Legends III, Dissidia, Dirge of Cerberus, Crisis Core, and probably a few more. Yes, I have not gone past FFVII except for small bits, but that does not change my understanding of what makes a good RPG.
I did some research, and found out that retail stores still consider this game an RPG.
- Role
- Playing
- Game
Huh. Lets see. Role; In theatre, an actor’s portrayal of someone in a play. In Games, the character(s) you control and follow through out the game. Playing; This requires interaction no? I want to play a game, so let me have some control. Game; games are amusing, entertaining, and normally waste time (as in not productively contributing to your survival).
In FFXIII, you switch characters a lot. Not necessarily a bad thing, but in the first hour of play, didn’t do much. I found out that I can play through the game by trying to avoid confrontations by running around them, and when in battle all I have to do is press ‘accept’ all the time, and the battle system will auto battle for me. Huh, that’s what they call ‘playing.’ Lastly, this is supposed to be a game, but with the constant interruption of storyline cut-scene, this game feels more like an interactive story more than anything else.
When I was playing this game, I had a friend nearby who owns the game. This friend is also an avid FFFan, and I asked questions along the way…
When does something interesting happen (in storyline or game-play)?
- Never
What about the maps you walk along?
- Almost always a long hallway
How many cut-scenes do I have to endure?
- Too many cut-scenes
What’s this point screen after battles?
- Bullshit, don’t pay attention to it
Five star battle rating? Why did I get four stars? because I healed myself?
- Yes. Its dumb
I can only control one character at a time?
- Yes
How can that chick electrify herself and pseudo fly?
- They don’t tell you (at least to where he is in the game)
While I was playing the game, I no problem handling some large slices of buffalo chicken pizza in one hand, and the controller in the other. FFXIII ‘seems’ to be a ONE HANDED GAME. You don’t need more than one hand it is that boring.
- Result: Don’t waste your time. This is not an RPG.
I recognize that I only played for an hour, and my friend was only 50% done with the game, but first impressions are everything. If I have to force myself past the intro of a game it is not worth playing. The director of the game made comments that people are misinterpreting the vision of the game; maybe, but that still doesn’t change the fact that people expect a certain level of ‘game’-'play’ from a Final Fantasy. The story of the game may be great, but it feels like I am watching a movie. I want a game.
And for this reason, along with similar circumstances with FFVIII – FFXII, that I feel like the Final Fantasy series peaked at VII, had a small boost with IX, and has slowly died since. Where is Squaresoft?
I just wanted to share my thoughts on the whole fiasco going on. I’ve read a lot of blogs, and statements from both sides of the story, and here is what I think.
If you like Apple and agree with them good for you. Please though, agree with Apple only after you’ve done your research. Apple is making business decisions. Apple [in my opinion] is only looking out for number one. They know they have their consumers locked in a cell under the mansion with the coffin closed. *cough* They can do whatever they want as long as their products are still killer. I can say this about Apple; Their products are good, well made systems that mold to the general population.
If you side with Adobe, I’m there with you. But I’m on Adobe’s side because I love the Flash platform. I know there are flaws in Flash, but there are flaws in everything. As a community, if we want to see Flash take the next step and continue to be a standard we have to want it. So if you want Flash to stay alive, lets do something about it. The great news is that I’ve already seen plenty of anti-Apple material and Google stepping in to help promote this community backfire to what Apple has done.
I’m generally a pacifist. Apple has made some [poor] business decisions. Adobe is making their decisions. In the end, I think we all need to ‘respect’ each others decisions, and also stand by what we believe.
A final note. Since 2004 or so, I’ve always wanted to see Flash with a better programming language, more of a focus on applications, simpler plugin updates, and better support for cell phones. Flash has come a long way since then and I’ll be damned to let it die out because of a few pompous statements from some unfortunately influential people. Flash is a great concept; be able to deliver rich interactive media content to almost any device. Let’s keep Flash rolling. Don’t forget that your voice matters.
P.S. I don’t even remember which company makes the iFraud, iDrone, iBad, and iGoons anymore. I just don’t seem to care.
It’s amazing how we work. The mind going through such changes all the time while each of us is subject to the challenges of accepting how we are changing. There are people who are not in my life that I want to be in my life. Some used to be, and now are as distant as the setting sun. Then there are others that I’ve only been able to watch from the side lines. Over time, I’ve seen myself go from intense dissatisfaction that there is no relationship, to an acceptance that it may never happen, and every where in between. One thing never seems to change; I wish we were friends. But how I am viewing the current status of this non existent relationship changes all the time.
I think about doing something to change my wish into a reality a lot. Sometimes I come up with good ideas, and sometimes they are just bizarre. I just think about it all too much.
I guess no one ever really knows what the right choice is, but you’ve got to choose something.
I’ve been messing around with sound lately because of a project I am working on and I ended up making a class that holds raw sound data taken from Sound.extract() and allows you to play that sound. The idea behind the class was to allow you to load an mp3, then take a portion of it, and trash the rest of the mp3 file so you are not holding on to all that extra data, but as you’ll see explained below, this is not that useful for that function. One way I do envision this class being helpful could be in asset loading. Say for a game, or application you have a large number of sound effects. You could potentially put all of your sound effects in one .mp3 and have a table somewhere that explains which sound effects are located at which point in the .mp3. In your application, you load one .mp3 for all sound effects. During the application, you extract the sound you need, play it, then trash the SoundSelection when its done. Just an idea though.
import com.crp.media.SoundSelection;
var mySoundSelection:SoundSelection;
var soundChannel:SoundChannel;
var sound:Sound = new Sound ();
sound.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, onSoundLoadComplete);
sound.load(new URLRequest("audio.mp3"));
function onSoundLoadComplete (e:Event):void {
mySoundSelection = new SoundSelection (SoundSelection.extractSelection(151900, 161500, sound));
soundChannel = mySoundSelection.playSelection (2, new SoundTransform(.6));
}
A note about using this class and the Sound.extract()
When using the Sound.extract() method, the Flash Player always exposes the raw sound data at 44100 hz in a 32 bit floating point interleaved. At this setting, the raw sound data is going to take up significantly more memory than mp3 data. Use this class wisely. A 10 second segment of a song could take up about 4MB of memory…
