the fat lady has sung

Mortal Kombat: Armegeddon is done. DONE DONE DONE.

As in THE END. Ain't gonna work no mo'. Hit the road, Jack. Hasta la vista, baby. Finito de la musica.

Wrenched from my unrelenting, perpetually-unsatisfied hands -- they told me to stand down, no more sound tweaks allowed.

It's a real bittersweet feeling. On one hand, I knew this day would come. On the other hand, I just want the game to sound as good as it possibly can.

I guess I'm just not quite ready to let go...

Oh well.

You know what I always say:

QQQ HHHH.

schooled

Hey yeah, sorry -- been awfully busy putting out fires on Mortal Kombat Armageddon. It's getting really close now...

Now that most of the content is finished, part of my job is play-testing the game to find bugs, ommissions, minor errors, etc. I'm gradually getting pretty good at this game -- or at least, I thought I was... I went to play-test it online the other day and ended up squared off against one of the guys from the Quality Assurance department. These are the guys who play Mortal Kombat 9-to-5. These are the guys who get PAID to play.

To say I got my ass handed to me would be an understatement. By the end of the second match, it was tied with pink ribbons, set on fire, and served from a silver chafing dish by a host of scantily-clad virgins. Yes, it was that bad.

To make matters worse, when we got back to the main screen, QA the Conquerer types in:

QQQ
HHHH

I have no idea what this means, but it had to have been insulting.

If anyone reading this is fluent in Geekinese and knows what this means, let me know. In the meantime, I'll be training for my rematch...

they keep pulling me back IN!

Remember when I said that I thought I was done with Mortal Kombat:Armegeddon? Ummm, yeah -- I was wrong.

Today I was back on it -- they're continuing to polish it for a few more days. The main task of the day was rewriting the super-duper uber-fanfare for when you flawlessly finish Konquest mode. Only about 3 people will ever hear this (the one goober who finally pulls it off, and his mom and dad, upstairs having dinner, wondering why their middle-aged son still hasn't moved out of their basement), but it's 16 seconds of pure orchestral-goth grandeur, nonetheless.

I started it in the morning, and by about 3 PM, I had it in good order. It took a long time to get my bionic orchestra to sound realistic... creating orchestral music with MIDI is like painting a house with Q-tips. I played it for the team, and they liked it a lot, but wanted it to be even longer and BIGGER. So I added an even longer cadence to it -- not quite Sibelius-esque, but definitely very, very Beethoven. Sent them an mp3 and they LOVED it.

One step closer to the end... again...

out of the frying pan...

... and back into the fire.

Today I started in writing music for Stranglehold, the next video game designed by John Woo. I did two cut scenes that kick off these killer special moves...

MK update

on friday, i gave them the last assets for the game. that means no new music or dialogue or sound effects.

today, i gave them the last volume tweaks. that means i can no longer change the mix of the music, dialogue, or sound effects, ever again.

unless some exectutive high-falootin' VIP hoo-haw suddenly has a major problem with something, i think i'm done...

so if you'll excuse me, i'm going to go sleep for a week.

Ian ink

Ian Simmons, the artist who created the cover for BCM's Men of Industry CD, has a new art blog. CLICK HERE to check out his recent work -- the man is a mad genius.

a thousand words - I

Yes, I am still very busy with Mortal Kombat, but I wanted to get back to the blog... as a change of pace, here's a snapshot I took this morning of a parked car.

I may try this non-verbal communication for a while... we'll see how long it keeps you (and me) entertained...