#but have it they did! all three versions I might add - physical digital and audio

[vivacia-18]

I'm about halfway to two thirds through You Feel It Just Below the Ribs, and asdjasdlkajsadjal

The reveals, the implications, I can't even - mentally I'm rolling on the floor frothing at the mouth. I want to go back and listen to season 3 and season 1 all over again, holy shiiiiit

[cyberloops]

I think it’s not just pandemic fatigue that’s been making it hard for me to work lately. I think I’ve been feeling disconnected from my music. I keep sitting down with a guitar or at my keyboard and noodling around. Lately I just haven’t been able to sit down and open up Acid or any other DAW and start fiddling around in there.

I was thinking about using my stimulus money to finally take the plunge and actually buy some equipment. Up until now the only real equipment I’ve bought are things like keyboards that plug into computers that I already own, and software to do things with it. But there’s a disconnect. There’s a layer of abstraction between me and the sounds I’m making.

I tried to see if I could solve that by making my own digital synths, so I downloaded Synthedit and played around with it a while back... but all it really did was make me want to get into making actual modular synths, not just emulating them. And in the long run, that’s a hell of a deep rabbit hole for me to fall into, both in terms of time, space in my house, and money.

I’ve spent most of my life on the edge of poverty, so the idea of just... spending money on something that I want is completely foreign to me. I know in my head that I have the money. It’s there to be spent. I can afford it. I can’t afford actual vintage synths, of course, those are way too *&%ing expensive. I also don’t have much space in the house, since both my spouse and I had to set up an office in the house during the pandemic. The space on my desk next to my computer keyboard where I was going to put my small MIDI keyboard is now taken up by my work computer. The room that was supposed to become half art studio for my spouse and half recording studio for me is now half office, and the drawing table and the spare desk that were supposed to be for our personal use are shoved in the corners. So whatever I buy will have to be small.

But the last couple of days I’ve been looking at what’s there. Looking at what’s within my price range. I don’t expect to spend thousands on a modular synth right off the bat, hell, I’d barely know what to do with it. But I think I can afford a small setup. Something that I don’t have to boot up and start a program and fight with audio drivers to use. Something that I don’t have to stop playing, go back, listen to the track, and click with a mouse to add points where I want to raise or lower one single attribute at a time.

I think if I start with a couple of cheap Behringer analog clones, I can at least get some bass and drums for pretty cheap, then figure out what else I want from there. It looks like the TR-3 and RD-6 are coming out in new colors, so I can even get them in purple. (which is generally the first question I have when I’m deciding whether to get something. Does it come in purple?) A decent synth that can do polyphony for chords will be a little difficult to find in my price range, I might have to settle for something like the Yamaha CS or DX Reface for that. (Yes, I know that the Korg Volca FM is half the price, and is a great imitation of the DX... but it only has 3 note polyphony. I like having the option to make richer chords, or to have a solo or bass line in the same instrument going while I do chords with the other hand.) And I definitely want at least one decent analog synth, but anything within my price range is only going to be monophonic, or like the Korg Volca line, they won’t have enough polyphony to do more than three note chords. The only decent ones that are polyphonic are generally over 300 dollars, and even with the stimulus money, I’m not sure I can justify spending that much on something that will likely not earn me any real money. And on top of everything else, just getting a decent multi-track recorder will probably cost as much, if not more, than a small synth. Most of the ones that are under 300 dollars will only record two tracks at a time, which won’t work well if I’m trying to hook up 3-4 synths and maybe a microphone. I’ve got a few spare speakers around the house that I could probably use as a monitor, so at least I’ve got that covered. (I hope. I haven’t actually plugged any of those speakers into anything in years, who knows what condition they’re in?)

On top of all of that, my spouse is trying to find an excuse to actually use the art table, and so we’re thinking about also using their half of our stimulus money to get a couple of webcams to stream video of them doing art. So if I do set up a small live synth studio in the desk in that room, we can stream together, with me making music on one screen, and my spouse drawing on another.

Over the last decade or so, I’ve been so afraid to actually spend any money. And for probably 8 out of those last 10 years, for good reason. I genuinely couldn't afford to. I only have an electric guitar because it went on sale and was incredibly cheap. I only have an effects pedal for it because I got lucky and found a halfway decent one that had multiple functions on sale used. I only have a full sized MIDI keyboard because my spouse gave it to me as a combined birthday/christmas present. But not being able to spend money just to survive meant that I couldn’t afford to get the things that I need in order to really live, and not just survive. I need musical instruments that I can touch and feel and use. But I think right now I also need to set up a spreadsheet and figure out what I can actually afford.

... anyway, I realized I got to the end of this huge rant and never mentioned anything about the piece I just uploaded. Short version - I was trying to use digital instruments similar to the sort of things I was looking at buying, and seeing what kind of music I could make by just quickly working up a sound and  a couple simple loops for them. So one of the basses is just a pretty generic synth that happens to have a sequencer that is similar to some of the analog synths I was looking at. The other is a digital clone of the TB-303, which is also similar to one of the synths I was looking at. I only used one drum machine synth on this one, since I can’t justify buying more than one when I start this physical setup. And the solo, chords, and arpeggios were all using similar sorts of synths to the real ones I’ve been looking at and researching online lately. All of the loops that I would have put into a sequencer while using a physical synth setup were the ones that I went into the MIDI files and manually quantized everything to match exactly what I would have done with a sequencer. For the solo lines and a few other sections I only fiddled with the MIDI timing enough to fix any errors due to input lag. And I tried to throw in a few tweaks to the synth settings on the fly like playing with the filter or whatnot, y’know, the kind of thing that I’d literally be able to do with one hand while I’m playing with the other if these synths were actually sitting on the desk in front of me. But of course I had to actually do those afterward with the mouse, since I didn’t have the actual synths in front of me, with actual knobs and sliders that I could touch.

[angrytigertastemaker]

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[n64josh]

Winter Play 2020 Impressions

Hands-on with Indies at Winter Play NYC

It’s not always about the big shows. One of the (often overlooked) pleasures to be found in gaming (when the world is not in quarantine) are the local events featuring indie developers and their creations. While many of these are geared towards the developer community, others, such as Playcrafting’s Winter Play NYC Game Expo, are open to the public and offer the opportunity for players of all ages to get hands-on with video, card and tabletop games from a variety of individuals and teams.

The event, which was held at the Microsoft Technology Center in Times Square early last month, gave me a chance to preview games ranging from Switch-bound multiplayer titles to ones that began as projects from this year’s Global Game Jam and everything in between. And while I didn’t have time to play every game appearing at the expo, I did want to share some impressions of the titles that may be of interest to the Nintendo player- and a few more that further convey the nature of the event.

Kung-Fu Kickball

Blowfish Studios

Everybody was Kung-Fu fightin’! One of the first Switch games I had the chance to try out at Winter Play throws- er, uh, kicks a mash-up of kickball, basketball & Kung-Fu archetypes through the lens of local multiplayer frenzy reminiscent of Smash Bros & Killer Queen Black. In fact, the game’s primary developer, Jonah, mentioned that he was approached by a company to make a physical arcade machine- and that cabinet now stands next to one for Killer Queen Black.

I had a chance to enjoy a couple of rounds- but, then, who wouldn’t have fun playing as an old master kickin’ people around inside a volcano?

Teams of two players face off on large stages attempting to kick the ball up into the opponent’s goal net, using their kung-fury to slow down other players, steal the ball or block shots. A clever teleport dash mechanic, once mastered, helps rapidly navigate back and forth across the court and get ahead of the ball.

Characters have a bit of a floaty feel to them, but in a good way. It helps keep the action frantic and moving while also allowing players to misjudge the angle of a sudden redirection. Those openings can lead to break away moments from the kung-fu hustle and bustle.

It admittedly took me a round to really grasp the controls, through no fault of the game itself. Once I got the hang of the teleport dash and how to kick the ball up into the goal basket, I was quickly kicking the ball free of my opponents and teleporting past them to catch up to it and bring it into the goal area. My efforts were often foiled by static, pinball-like platform placements but I, nonetheless, had a blast leading to my losing-er, uh, unvictorious streak and I’m confident a few more rounds would lead to overcoming those challenges.

Following my less-than-impressive kung-fu career debut, the next group after me was a family with both adults and young children and all four had a good time with energetic enthusiasm during their matches, which bodes well for this title’s family gaming prospects.

After three years of development by primarily one person (with the art and audio contracted out), Kung-Fu Kickball should be hitting the Switch sometime this year.

  Swim Sanity

Decoy Games

One of the last titles I had the opportunity to try out at the event also gave me some Killer Queen Black multiplayer vibes at first glance, but this underwater competitive adventure/shooter hybrid quickly drowned those comparisons.

Up to four players navigate a side-scrolling arena or stage, shooting down various creatures of the sea with primary and secondary weapons while charging a Smash-like meter that can unleash different special “swimsanity” abilities selected prior to the start of the stage. These swimsanities range from transforming into a shark that can dash attack horizontally across the screen to a piranha that lets you go Pac-Man on hostile soon-to-be-sushi. The different abilities help customize team configurations for co-op play and add variety to competitive rounds.

I first played a horde mode that reminded me a little of an underwater (non-Super) Mario Bros. stage, with various waves of critters emerging onto the level. It made for good targeting practice and a chance to acclimate to the controls.

After that, I swam next door to a second room where the developers had the adventure mode set up and it was here that you really started to realize that the game was meatier than just another single-screen, multiplayer versus game. We played a couple of levels- both featuring our team of four fleeing from a giant threat pursuing us from the left of the screen as we swam through levels, collecting weapons and treasure. The first was a giant killer whale, while the second was a sort of crab tank. Turns out, that apparent safe spot above the chest laser cannon by the crab’s eyes? Not so safe when the crab tank also has laser eyes.

The title’s journey began over a decade ago as a student project inspired by the Game and Watch Gallery game Octopus. Now, after many iterations over the years, it is anticipating a Switch release in 2020.

  Slapdash

Tarraske Digital

Combining the rapid, angular redirects of Pinball and obstructed goals of Nok Hockey with the team play of an arcade soccer game (and then throwing cats in for good measure), Slapdash is another promising local co-op title that I’m now looking forward to getting my mittens on.

It made me recall the feel of some of the multiplayer party/mini games found in the Super Monkey Ball series, such as Monkey Fight or Monkey Billiards, with ball-shaped cat players ricocheting a ball (and themselves) back and forth across the playing field trying to score points behind the opponent’s goal wall.

While still in the process of refining its visuals (the white face patterns of the different cats currently all tend to blend together, making it very easy to lose track of which player is yours), the gameplay itself is simple, addictive and fun.

Slapdash is aiming for an eventual release on consoles, but no platforms have been officially announced yet.

  Antipole DX

Saturnine Games

Mega Man-inspired gameplay with an added gravity reversal mechanic? That’s something firmly in my wheelhouse. This remake of the original DSi game features new graphics, sound, music & levels with refinements to the overall gameplay.

The juggling of both your character and enemies with the gravity mechanic is implemented in some tight platforming puzzles and obstacles. The action will definitely scratch an itch for players eager for a game in this genre beyond the Mega Man and Gunvolt series.

While originally announced for 2016 on the Wii U and 3DS (and even included among the 2016 Nindies Summer Jam highlight reel), those versions were never released, despite the game being made with the 3DS in mind. And though a Switch port has become unlikely at this point, players who have been following the game’s development over the past few years can look forward to finally playing it on Steam, PS4 and Xbox One in 2020.

  Lo-Fi Samurai

Pure-238

One of the more unique titles I played was this stylish game that combined rhythmic combat with real-time platforming. You move freely but can only dash or attack enemies to the rhythm beat pattern tracking across the top of the screen. All set against gorgeous retro visuals that are at least partially inspired by Samurai Jack.

I played one of the levels and watched other people play a couple more. It turned out that I am, apparently, really terrible at rhythm games- and it was definitely at no fault to the game’s controls. I found myself trying to overcompensate for missed timings or attempting to spam an attack out of platformer habit, only to extend my cooldown punishment and leading to my inevitable demise. The developer recommended everyone playing play the game with headphones on as the actual music beat helps the player focus on, and attune to, that facet of the game play. I guess I just needed to attune longer.

Despite this newly discovered rhythmic deficiency in my gaming abilities, I found the combination of genres and mechanics really interesting and the overall project to have a lot of promise. It may not have any platform releases scheduled yet, but I think players will want to keep their eye open for it in the event that it achieves one.

  Repear

Fruits & Veggies Games

A Global Game Jam project from this year providing a cute, simple 2D, split-screen, co-op platformer experience. Players must try to reach one another through a series of puzzles solved through triggers on the other player’s screen. By working together they can achieve that goal.

Though intended for 2 players, I actually got a chance to play it by myself, controlling both characters. As I’m a sucker for dual-screen-type experiences, the added level of challenge involved actually enhanced the experience considerably. The game also has some really beautiful music by Axel Kazis-Taylor that might take you off guard. It goes a long way to show the level of talent and creativity that can emerge for even relatively simple projects mostly made over a single weekend (and less than a month of polish).

  Chromavaders

Corundum Games

A fun, retro-NES-styled match-3 puzzle game combined with a Space Invaders-style enemy advancement. It may seem pretty straight forward but the block catching/building mechanic provides some interesting variety to strategies you can employ to play it.

You can play it for yourself on the game’s website.

  Hidden Tunes

Rafael Rodriguez

Navigate across all the spaces of an isometric world by queueing up your movements. The paths you take produce tones. Eventually, you can discover the melody needed to progress. A solid foundation for a musical puzzle game that I could see having a place on platforms like the Switch. No word on a release for this project, yet.

  Radarjam

Hamra Digital

A game in the spirit of Asteroids, but one where the enemies and incoming fire are only seen periodically. I found myself pulling off a lot of aerial drifting and circle-strafing attack patterns, which ended up being pretty fun and helped distinguish the feel of the game from its more familiar progenitor.

  Run & Gun

MHarris Games

The Tron-like aesthetic used by this multiplayer, arena shooter lends it an instant visual appeal. A wall run mechanic helps add some variety that you might not anticipate with a retro-styled shooter like this. Has potential as a fun testbed as the project evolves. Downloadable from the game’s website, where you can also follow its development as future builds are released.

  PathFinder Pro

Peter Trivelli

This physics-based puzzle game has you navigating a ball towards contact with a goal by laying down a path piece of piece. Simple in premise but deceptively challenging. The gameplay could easily become addictive.

Available now via iOS Test Flight

  In Before the Lockdown

While the current health crisis will probably keep Winter Play as one of the last local expo events for some time, they’re definitely worth looking into once we emerge from our lockdowns and social distancing and the world begins to return to normal. In the meantime, we can hopefully look forward to more hands-on time with some of these titles as they release on Switch and other platforms.

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[iexistband-blog]

Spotify meets Augmented Reality - A Five Year Journey

The I-Exist app is available now on the App Store and Google Play!

Thinking about how music might evolve into the future has always been interesting to us, but really, this project started as two guys looking to the past - imagining their younger selves being obsessed with their favorite bands and listening to those albums on repeat.  Back then, we would buy physical cds - with the plastic case and the album artwork and everything. Usually all of the lyrics would be in there too, and if you were really into the music, you could look through the pages and sort of get lost in the whole thing while the music played.

Flash forward to today, and here we are with our smartphones and these unlimited music streaming services.  It’s a pretty amazing thing with all of it at our fingertips, but we felt like there was still something missing.  With all of today’s crazy technology, we imagined what it might be like to take that old school album art of cd’s and vinyl, and somehow wrap it around a listener’s head to transport them into another world.

That was five years ago.

We are I-Exist, two life-long musicians who took the red pill and learned how to program and develop in order to bring this idea to life.  Looking back on things, it was without a doubt the most challenging thing we’ve ever done, but we learned so much and are finally ready to share some of that perspective with you here.

ENTER THE ALBUM

So with our new album Consciousness, we thought of what it might be like to create a world for our songs to live in - and for people to come and experience them in different ways.  We started developing in VR, even though we knew the world wasn’t ready.  There is something so undeniable about its power in completely immersing the listener once they have the headset on, but we also kept mobile in mind, knowing that everyone has a powerful smartphone - and wondered if we could create some kind of window into that same world, so everyone could check it out.

As we built out smartphone functionality, we eventually landed on a camera system that reacts to the way you tilt and move your device, similar to how a lot of augmented reality apps work.  We layered that with a traditional music player UI so that the user can enter and exit the space - and also have access to traditional app buttons and options. 

We thought to ourselves, now that we have these new systems in place, what kind of content is really worth delivering?

IS THIS THE FUTURE?

It’s exciting to come up with something new, but is it what listeners really want?  People already have an established routine for listening to music, whether it’s in the car, at the gym, or maybe multitasking with something else while they have their headphones on.  How are we supposed to compete with that?

And the answer there is that we probably can’t. Spotify and Apple Music have pretty much perfected the modern listening experience, no matter how passive it might be.  But right there is where the key is for us, it’s a PASSIVE experience.  We wondered if we could add something more ACTIVE when you want to dig deeper - or for when you finally become a “super fan” of your new favorite artist.

As it turns out, musicians have been creating content like this for years, it’s just gotten lost a bit here in the streaming age.  Do you remember deluxe cds?  The ones that maybe had a few additional acoustic tracks thrown in at the end?  Or maybe a collectors edition that had a full commentary section from the artist?  We found that kind of content to be the most compelling and ended up mixing it into our interactive 3D scenes.

We were already familiar with the status quo, and wondered which new ideas are actually worth delivering.  Over five years of testing and brainstorming, we landed on three concepts that ended up working best.

EVERY SONG IS A WORLD

We wanted to create an easy and relaxing way to take in the lyrics, so we ended up creating a basic 3D environment for each song - which gives the listener full freedom of movement to walk around in and explore.  We imagined each section of the song being represented as a space on the map, and as they move deeper into that space, lines from the song rise up from the ground as text along with an ambient vocal sample playing in the background.  They can take it as slow or as fast as they want, it’s all happening in real time..

While you could argue that reading lyrics from a random web search gets the job done, for us, that just isn’t very inspiring. Thankfully, bringing people into this surreal type of dimension turned out to be a pretty cool experience.. You could imagine more ways to give the listener freedom, whether that’s interacting with other sounds or manipulating physical objects, but we’re pretty happy with the basic movement and idea.

AMBISONIC CHAMBER

By the time you download the app, you might have already heard the studio recording of the song somewhere else, but what about the live performance?  One thing that traditional music players are stuck with are their static left and right audio channels.  What’s great about AR and VR though, is that you are essentially giving the listener control back of their head and ears, which means they can look around freely in the world.  This opens up a lot of opportunities for a more immersive listening experience.  Audiophiles out there are probably already aware of this stuff, but the way our head and ears move around in a physical space can give our brains cues that they're actually inside a certain type of room.

Anyway, we utilized real-time spatial audio and ambisonics, modeled the room for our private performance, and had a multitrack recording session with acoustic instruments. It ended up being a pretty cool way to give exclusive content to our fans, especially when you consider that we’ll probably never get to play in their living rooms… but now it kind of sounds like we are.

FIRESIDE CHAT

We thought, wouldn’t  it be cool if we could sit down at a fire with our fans and tell them some of the deeper stories of how the songs came to be.  That would be a pretty intimate way to talk and connect.  So that’s what we did.  We created a sandy outdoor area with a fire, took the same spatial audio concept from the acoustic room, and just like that… we’re all sitting next to each other by the fire, talking about each song on our new album.

WHAT ABOUT VR?

So those are the ideas that worked out for both AR and VR, but like we said at the beginning, nothing really beats the immersion of a virtual reality headset.  If you think about it, this is really the only time we’ll ever have someone’s full focus and attention, and that makes every part of the app more effective.  We even made a VR exclusive mode that sort of acts like an interactive visualizer while the original track plays.  When you combine that with something like the SubPac, which is a haptic,  subwoofer backpack... now their whole body is moving and vibrating with the music.  This is pretty much the holy grail, multi-sensory experience that we’d love to give all our listeners, but realize it’s not for most ;-)

WHERE WE ARE TODAY

So after all this time, here we are reporting back to the world with this thing we made.  It’s definitely not perfect and we could write multiple other articles about what it’s missing and how it needs improvement - but we’re glad that we didn’t quit and are curious what people might think.

We’re releasing it today with the intro and first world, but in the coming days and weeks we’ll be unlocking portals inside the app that open up new areas and songs.  With the whole COVID-19 thing, hopefully that can give something for people to look forward to as they’re locked inside.

Since everyone has a phone, we focused on the mobile build first, which is available now. We’re also releasing on SteamVR on May 12th for the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Valve Index, and Windows Mixed Reality. PSVR and Oculus Quest versions are also planned for later in the year, but those are going to take a little more optimization.

So we’ve made it to the end and some things have become clear, but there are still a lot of unknowns.  Like… is this something the world even wants?  Should we open source the project?  If we start getting feedback and decide to continue development, where else could we take it?  Feel free to check out the app and let us know what you think!  We’ll be waiting for you in a digital, alternate dimension.

Brian and Cameron

I-Exist

[entergamingxp]

Halo 2 on PC is the best Master Chief Collection port yet • Eurogamer.net

A mere 13 years on from its initial release, Halo 2 has been re-released on PC as part of The Master Chief Collection – an ongoing enterprise that has attracted as much criticism as praise. So how does this port from the Xbox One conversion of Saber Interactive’s Xbox 360 original fare? What extras does it bring to the table, how well does it run – and does it manage to avoid the problems and issues of some of the other games in the PC collection?

With three games from the whole package now available to PC users, the good news is that in my opinion, this is the best release so far – and I’d also rate is a clear upgrade over the existing PC rendition of the game. Its greatest advantage comes from the inclusion of the remastered assets, kicking off in spectacular style with the replacement of the original’s in-engine cinematics with stunning pre-rendered videos delivered by Blur Studios. Beyond that, there are the graphical and audio engine changes to Halo 2 itself, where nearly every single aspect of the overall presentation has been updated and improved. Just like Halo: Combat Evolved, you can switch between the modern graphical presentation and the old instantaneously with a single keyboard press (TAB on PC). It’s a cute trick, but goes beyond visual flourishes alone – the revised soundtracks is excellent and the revamped audio is especially impressive.

While the first Halo’s Anniversary revamp fell a little flat, the sequel is something else. As I see it, Halo 2 is a game with a slightly awkward audio and visual presentation – the original design for the game aimed for a greater usage of bump mapping, real-time physics, and even more complex level design and it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that the original Xbox couldn’t quite cope. The first Halo still stands up to scrutiny today – its more simplistic geometry is offset by its vibrancy in colour, great usage of tiling textures and some timeless material work. The sequel just doesn’t quite work for me in the same way.

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Halo 2 Anniversary on PC – the Digital Foundry video tech review.

Another reason why Halo 2 has a very particular look is due to a radical change that happened in its development cycle – as you’ll see in the video embedded below, the sequel was originally going to use a Doom 3-style rendering engine, focusing purely on real time lighting with hard stencil shadows. When you look at screenshots from this renderer, you can see how the bump mapping comes to life with real-time lighting and shadows, just as it does in Doom 3. So when this engine – dubbed ‘pstencil’ – was dropped in place for more traditional baked shadow maps, I think there were consequences for the game’s eventual presentation: many of the areas look flatly lit, or even unlit, with barely visible shadows.

This is the key area where the Anniversary revamp make a difference: Saber Interactive give directional lighting a huge push with real-time shadow maps, while generally increasing the contrast across the entire image. Also helping is the use of screen-space ambient occlusion to give shadowed areas more diversity, while the Anniversary graphics also use baked light maps that include global illumination. On top of this, other effects are added – like parallax occlusion mapped textures that give the ground and wall surfaces more detail, or parallax mapped bullet decals when you shoot ballistic weapons at metal walls. On top of the generally more vibrant colours scheme, there are also some really nice lens flares from the sun or plasma effects, along with impressive particle effects that receive lighting and shadowing information. Where the original Halo 2 felt a little flat, the Anniversary edition adds vibrancy and consistency lacking in the original, while not dramatically changing the art style of the game.

Then there is the audio – Halo 2 Anniversary comes furnished with a remade score by Skywalker Sound, adding a much greater dramatic emphasis in many scenes, with a different default music mix. Ambient audio and weapon effects are also radically improved with their greater bass and impact make the basic act of firing a weapon more visceral and enjoyable. When you combine the audio and visual improvements, I think this is easily the best way to experience the game, but how good is the new PC port?

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The Halo 2 that never was – examining the legendary E3 demo based on technology that Bungie would go on to scrap entirely.

High frame-rate gaming is an essential feature, especially for an FPS. Halo: Combat Evolved supported frame-rates above 60fps with some screen elements like screen-shakes, antennae movement and plasma shots only animating at half-rate 30fps. Meanwhile, Halo Reach had a completely broken high frame-rate option where 120fps looked and felt worse than 60fps, with obvious pacing problems in mouse movement and animation. Looking back it really was dreadful. Halo 2 is a big improvement but it isn’t quite perfect. Third person character animation, world physics and screen movements run as they should beyond 60fps, though Covenant plasma projectiles and the main characters’ hand animations only run at 60fps, looking jittery and out of step. This should be fixed and hopefully won’t cause too many problems for the developers.

In general, the games in the Master Chief Collection have suffered from internet connectivity issues in co-op play and unfortunately, this remains the case with this new title, where non-host players are often subject to intense lag that is way more impactful than it should be. Adding to the sense that Halo’s crucial co-op component isn’t where it should be, the new port also omits the split-screen play found in the console versions.

Performance-wise, Halo 2 checks out just fine, as you would hope. Mainstream GPUs like Nvidia’s GTX 1060 and AMD’s RX 580 deliver decent 1440p experiences when the Anniversary graphics are active and by our reckoning, cards like GTX 1660 Super or GTX 1070 would be needed for similar 4K play. In common with prior Master Chief games, PC users can also enjoy enhanced visual settings that go beyond what the title delivers on Xbox One and Xbox One X. That said, I only really noticed two changes when engaging enhanced graphics: the resolution of real-time shadow maps is improved, while there’s also an increase in texture resolution – which requires the entire level to be reloaded. Curiously, Nvidia seems to enjoy a big advantage performance-wise in our testing, with RX 580 lagging quite some way behind.

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Fortunes were mixed with the initial release of the Halo: Combat Evolved on PC. It was indeed good but far from perfect.

One aspect of performance does baffle me though: while playing cooperatively with a friend, I noticed some odd hitching on the Delta Halo level. I had observed one or two hitches prior to that, but here, the game was constantly stuttering for prolonged periods of time, while my co-op partner had the exact same thing happening in their game as well. Thinking it might be a network issue, I double-checked on another PC and the same effect kicked in with a similar level of severity. It’s not a pretty sight – we’re dealing with 100ms, 200ms and even 400ms stutters in relatively rapid succession. The game genuinely felt pretty poor to play in such areas and differences in hardware did not seem to matter: the issue kicked in on Ryzen 9 and Core i5 systems, and I also checked using both NVMe and SATA SSDs which were both equally impacted.

Wondering what was going on here, I gave the Xbox One X version of the game a quick test. On the same Delta Halo level, performance is constantly switching between 60fps and 30fps, feeling extremely inconsistent to play. I honestly do not remember this happening the first time I played the game on the X, so maybe this arrived with the enhanced 4K patch. Whether you’re playing this level on PC or Xbox One, I feel it could really use some work from the developers. And on the console front, perhaps that would help in clearing up performance problems elsewhere within the game. And I think this kind of glitchiness sums up a more global issue surrounding this project – there’s always the lingering sense that while the Master Chief Collection was put together with the best intentions, the component games never feel as polished as they should be.

All told though, I did enjoy returning to Halo 2 and despite the issues, I do feel that it’s best game in The Master Chief Collection for PC so far. The remade graphics scale rather well to 4K, the system requirements are not onerous – and crucially, it is a more than worthy replacement for the 2007 PC release. Let’s hope an even better turn-out from the upcoming Halo 3.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/05/halo-2-on-pc-is-the-best-master-chief-collection-port-yet-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=halo-2-on-pc-is-the-best-master-chief-collection-port-yet-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

[topmixtrends]

THE REPORTERS WHO covered the Beatles’s first press conference in the United States, at JFK Airport on February 7, 1964, had never encountered anything remotely similar — and it showed. They asked the band a string of inane questions — about the accents, the hair, the money. Eventually someone asked what their secret was: what did these four lads have that made teenagers around the world scream at the mere sight of them, and spin their records until the needles were worn to a nub? Paul answered honestly: “We don’t know, really.” John cheekily chimed in: “If we knew, we’d form another group and be managers.”

We can forgive the Beatles for not being able to explain the Beatles — after all, creative types of all kinds have struggled to explain the creative process, and scientists haven’t had much more luck. Even the vocabulary we use is fraught: creativity, insight, talent, genius — these are ill-defined words with overlapping meanings. And yet, we somehow know it when we see it. We admire creativity, of course; but we also want to dissect it, to understand it. Can it be captured in a formula? Is there some magical combination of nature and nurture that produces the Fifth Symphony, or The Last Supper, or the theory of relativity?

Perhaps neuroscience can help. The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World is co-authored by Stanford neuroscientist David Eagleman — you may have seen him on TV, hosting PBS’s The Brain series — and Anthony Brandt, a composer and music professor at Rice University. While they don’t offer a magic formula, Brandt and Eagleman postulate three facets of creativity that might help us understand the nature of creative insight. The first is “bending” — taking existing ideas and materials and bending them into something new. A ballet dancer does this when she literally bends her body into a shape never seen before (the authors cite the late Martha Graham as an example), but so too does an artist when he paints something a little different from what he actually sees (like Claude Monet’s multiple, shimmering takes on Rouen Cathedral). The second is “breaking” — dividing something into its component parts, rearranging them, and throwing away parts if necessary. The invention of digital photography and digital sound recording are two examples — neither would be possible without the recognition that even the most seemingly continuous stimuli can be broken down into discrete “bits” of information. The authors describe the development of the MP3 — a digital audio format in which sounds are further compressed; only the most vital information is preserved (a JPEG does something similar with a photograph). Picasso, one might argue, did something analogous in his cubist portraits, keeping key elements of, say, a face — eyes, nose, mouth — but rearranging them in novel (even shocking) ways. Old rules of portraiture were discarded. The third facet is “blending” — taking two or more good ideas and combining them into an even better idea. An example from our ancient past is the fusing of copper and tin to form bronze — a material much stronger than either ingredient on its own. The blending can be mental rather than physical: novelists and filmmakers blend locations and time periods, and scientists might borrow ideas from one area of research for use in another.

The authors aim to persuade not so much by force of argument as sheer volume of representative cases. We’re confronted with a parade of examples — so many that it’s all a bit dizzying, though the many color images are a help. New topics are introduced and dispatched in no more than a couple of paragraphs. There are, as one might expect, tips for nurturing creativity in the workplace and in the classroom. These seem quite sound, if rather unsurprising — a section in the chapter on creative schooling is titled “Encourage Creative Risk-taking.”

The picture that emerges is one of perpetual tension between the familiar and the novel: if something is too familiar, it’s boring; too unfamiliar, and we dismiss it as crazy or even dangerous. The Beatles, one might argue, found the perfect middle ground — familiar enough to want to sing and dance along; dangerous enough to rattle parents. We also find that the new builds on the old; creativity, after all, doesn’t arise in a vacuum. One might point to Shakespeare: a rudimentary version of Hamlet had existed for centuries as a Scandinavian folk tale, but add a sarcastic gravedigger and a pair of buffoonish courtiers, and you have a play for the ages. And neither Mozart nor Beethoven reinvented the orchestra — they just found new ways to make use of it.

Mind you, not every great idea takes hold; as Brandt and Eagleman remind us, an idea that’s too far “ahead of its time” may simply disappear into the fog of history. Occasionally, with luck, it’s rediscovered. They give the example of Alfred Wegener’s theory of continental drift, first put forward in 1912. It was met with ridicule. A few decades later (sadly, after Wegener’s death) it was accepted as a cornerstone of geological science. Sometimes there are sound reasons for a new idea to be met with skepticism; sometimes it boils down to prejudice, or worse. Some German physicists dismissed Einstein’s theory of relativity as “Jewish science.”

There are a few hiccups along the way. For example, in describing an improvement to Japan’s famous “bullet train,” the authors say that engineer Eiji Nakatsu struggled to make the train quieter: “[T]he flat prow of its locomotive would create ear-shattering noise when moving at high speeds.” Nakatsu, fortunately, was an avid birdwatcher, and solved the problem by modeling the train’s “nose” on the beak of a kingfisher. The authors say that this happened in the 1990s — but Japan has had high-speed rail service on its Tokyo-Osaka corridor since 1964, and those trains were already pretty streamlined; as well, airplanes — and for that matter, bullets — had pretty sharp noses by the ’90s. So it’s not quite clear why a bird was needed for the great moment of insight.

And there’s a small problem with the authors’ treatment of the invention of the marine chronometer back in the 18th century. It was John Harrison, a self-taught clockmaker from Yorkshire, who eventually found a workable design (here the authors cite Dava Sobel’s wonderful book, Longitude). After building a succession of ingenious but bulky clocks (dubbed H-1 through H-3), Harrison finally settled on a much smaller design, known as H-4, which did the trick. The authors write that Harrison’s breakthrough was “to get rid of the pendulum entirely” — but it was already well known that no shipboard clock could use a pendulum; all of Harrison’s timepieces employed a balance wheel and spring (a late 17th-century innovation) rather than a pendulum to regulate the turning of the gears.

Here’s an odder thing: in telling how we gradually adapt to change over time, they write,

When we learn to drive a car, we begin with the small steps: checking the rearview and sideview mirrors, signaling when changing lanes, attending to the traffic around us, watching the speedometer. Later, we can drive with a piping hot coffee in one hand, talking to our spouse and kids, with the radio on and our cellphone ringing, all while speeding along at sixty miles per hour.

I humbly suggest that while we perhaps can do this, we shouldn’t.

A larger issue is the way the authors lump seemingly disparate types of creativity and invention together. They say, for example, that “the final, conclusive mobile phone will never be developed, nor the perfect television show whose appeal doesn’t fade, nor the perfect umbrella, bicycle or pair of shoes.” But isn’t our wish for innovation wildly different in each case? New mobile phone designs seem to appear almost monthly, because there’s money to be made, and more features can always be crammed into them. In contrast, umbrellas, by my estimation, have evolved only imperceptibly in the last 40 years (if it keeps us dry, we’re happy); and while shoe designs reflect changing fashions, their essential properties don’t change much. Bicycles, though a bit more technology-laden, seem to fall in that category as well. TV shows seem quite different. We want each episode to bring something new, and yet to stick within an established framework, but even if a show is successful (The Simpsons is in its 29th year) it surely has a limited lifespan in a way that the umbrella and the shoe do not. A further complication, which the book only briefly addresses, is the question of whether creativity can be objectively measured, or if it is, at least to some extent, a label we bestow on things after-the-fact: a kind of social construct. (Some evidence for the latter view can be found in the way our verdicts evolve over time. There’s a long list of novelties that were initially met with derision, only to be recognized as iconic some years or decades later — think the Eiffel Tower, the Sydney Opera House, The Rite of Spring, and AC/DC’s Back in Black.)

Elkhonon Goldberg’s Creativity: The Human Brain in the Age of Innovation is a markedly different affair. For starters, Goldberg, a neuropsychologist at NYU, goes into much more detail about the actual workings of the human brain. While the ever-confident Brandt and Eagleman keep things moving along like a briskly paced PowerPoint presentation, Goldberg adopts a more scholarly tone; he’s more cautious, more willing to admit that sweeping conclusions may not be warranted. On the issue of whether we can truly nurture creativity, for example, he writes,

[There] will not be a binary “yes or no.” The answer — or rather answers — will have to be more nuanced, taking into account many types of creative accomplishments, their many degrees, and many kinds of creative minds. We will also need better ways of defining and measuring creativity in numerous arenas of human endeavors.

Such caution prevails throughout.

Indeed, the two books are framed quite differently: Brandt and Eagleman believe that humans are driving change, while Goldberg takes it as a given that the world is changing, and that we need to embrace creativity and novelty in order to adapt to it. While Brandt and Eagleman stress the uniqueness of our species, Goldberg explains that at least some nonhuman primates respond to familiarity and novelty in the same way that we do (at least, their brains respond in a similar fashion). And the authors differ starkly on the possibility of computers being creative. Brandt and Eagleman say that “[w]hatever you put in is exactly what you get back out” — but as Goldberg points out, computer algorithms have created art and music “judged by humans as being different and valuable.” Besides, are we humans not in some sense “programmed”? “Since even the most unorthodox creative individual is a product of his time and a beneficiary of the previously accumulated knowledge, insight and tradition,” Goldberg writes, “any creative product generated by that individual, no matter how brilliant, is also in a broad sense derivative.”

As with Brandt and Eagleman’s book, there are a few problems. While Goldberg is clearly in favor of gender equality, his language may trouble some readers. He suggests that the contributions of men and women to creative endeavors “can be addressed constructively and rationally, without hysteria, defensiveness, or the corrosive effects of ‘political correctness.’” A lesser concern is repetition; by my count, we’re introduced to Goldberg’s two dogs — a now-deceased Bullmastiff named Brit, and an English Mastiff puppy, Brutus — at least three times. And the neuroscience is occasionally so dense as to be off-putting, as in: “modulation of the dopaminergic but not noradrenergic systems facilitate performance on lexical tasks which are based on more automatic processing and require the use of well-established semantic relationships.”

Creativity is a fascinating subject, and the human brain — that three-pound lump of exquisitely connected gray matter — is the organ that makes it happen. If you could combine the best of these two books, you’d have an entertaining and scientifically rigorous exploration of that subject.

¤

Dan Falk is a science journalist based in Toronto. His books include The Science of Shakespeare and In Search of Time.

The post The Slippery Search for Creativity appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books http://ift.tt/2oBTEsV

[faeuniblog]

Official Script For Visual Essay

Page 1

Hello there fellow melons, I’m gonna be educating you guys on the joys that are the publishing industry!

So, Melon Sandy, I see you have your book there!

If you’re a writer that’s just written the best story ever, you’ll probably want to share said book with the world so you can make lots of money and be really famous, right?

But almighty voice in the sky who sounds super amazing and cool - like it really sucks that this is a written visual essay and not an audio one - I here you cry!

How do I go about share my creation with the world?!

Well, you have two options little Melon Sandy. You can go to Publishing Company or Self-Publish your work.

Page 2

Now let’s talks about what a Publisher is and does.

Publishing Company – Basics, Pros and Cons.

If you decide to go with the Traditional method and get published by a big publisher, you’ll need to have your work accepted by a literary agent first. Once you get an agent, they will take care of selling your manuscript to the big publishers (2).

Literary agents take 15% of your total income from the first sale. (1)

By going through an agent you’ll be paid an upfront advance for your work. The advance could range from £1,000 to over £100,000 (2).

Having an agent take care of shit is nice, but its damn hard to get an agent to take your work and even then, there’s no reassurance that they’ll even be able to sell your manuscript to a publisher (3).

If you're lucky enough to get a publisher interested.

The publisher will take care of editorial, copyediting, and design work, as well as invest in sales and marketing (3). Depending on whether you’re with a small or large publisher, the budget on these things can range from £15,000 to £50,000 (2).

However, one down side is that Publisher might make you edit you story in ways you don’t agree with. (3).

You probably won’t get a moving or TV deal but you stand a much higher chance by going with the traditional method (2).

Your book will be released both in physical and digital shops (2).

So, you get a load of support from a Publisher and Agent but in return you will have to give up a percentage of your earnings and control (2).

Page 3

Let’s look at J.K. Rowling as an example for publishing with a Company!

The first Harry Potter book was rejected by the first literary agency she applied too, and to add insult to injury, they didn’t give back her folder! (4)

She would luckily be accepted by the next literary agency, Christopher Little. Little sent the manuscript to 12 different publishers (who all rejected it!) before finally ending up with Bloomsbury (4) (5).

As when you go to a publisher, J.K was told to change the title of the US version from ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone’ to ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone’ as they didn’t think America’s would know what a ‘philosopher’ was would think it sounded boring (6) (7).

Hopefully, Melan Sandy, you won’t have a much trouble getting you book published as J.K. Rowling did.

Page 4

Self-Publishing – Basics, Pros and Cons

If you decide to go with Self-Published, there are two types of self-publishing: Digital and Old-fashioned (2) (3).

Anyone can be an artist or writer with the internet around.

Amazon charges nothing for you to upload your work to its worldwide audience, and websites like Tumblr give you a place to post your art and stories for free (2) (3).

By Self-publishing, you have complete creative control over your work, meaning it can be about anything with no one to stop you!

And all the money you make, is your money, no sharing with a big company!

With online shops like Amazon, you won’t get a money advance like you would if you’ll with a publisher (2).

Your book won’t be in bookshops and you’ll still have to face some costs like editorial and copyediting (2).

Remember, Amazon has over 5,000,000 e-books in its store and your book will simply be one of them, so it might be hard to get attention (2).

With free websites like Tumblr, you’re not going to make any money unless you go to separate sources such as Patreon or ko-fi but you have basically no limitation on what your work is about.

Page 5

An example of the Old-fashioned method would be making, printing and selling Zine, at conversions or online.

A zine (short for magazine or fanzine) is a small self-published work made up of text and images and is usually reproduced via photocopier (8).

They can be made by a single person, or a small group. An example of some popular zines are ‘Aint-Bad Magazine’, ‘Home Zine’ and ‘Record Culture Magazine’ (9).

Examples of people who have done shit with Self-Publishing

The Martian is a science fiction novel written by Andy Weir in 2011. Weir started writing the book in 2009, and was rebuffed by literary agents when trying to get prior books published. Weir decided to put the book online on his website in a serial format (10).

Fans of his book later requested him to make an Amazon Kindle version for 99 cents (the minimum allowable price he could set). The Kindle version sold 35,000 copies in three months, quickly rising to the top of Amazon’s best-selling science-fiction list (10).

Podium Publishing an audiobook publisher, signed for the audiobook rights in January 2013 and in March 2013 Weir sold the prints rights to Crown for over US$100,000 (10).

Homestuck is a webcomic written, illustrated and animated by Andrew Hussie and published on MS Paint Adventures. The comic is a combination of static images, animated GIFs, instant message logs and games made with Adobe Flash (11).

Homestuck arguably has the largest fan community out there, which has said to reach in the millions. Unlike the other authors on this list, Homestuck never got involved with publishers, this may be because it’s the only one on my list that’s a comic (11).

If you go almost any conversion, you are likely to find a Homestuck fan there either cosplaying or selling zines or art (11).

Page 6

By going with a publishing house, they will bear the costs, such as editing, marketing and paying advances, but they also take a substantial share of the profits can take control away from you to better suit their ideas of what is best (2) (3).

The changes the published made you do could arguably be for the better, but they could also be for the worst.

While is you self-published, if you want help for advice, you’ve going to have to pay for it with your own money.

With Self-Publishing, the author bears all of these costs but gets the benefit of all profits being exclusively theirs.

I think another one of the appeals of self-publishing is the control you get to keep over entire process. The writer decides the price, distribution, marketing, and public relations, they can also outsource these tasks if they want guidance or support (2) (3).

A lot of people who go for Self-Published end up with a Publisher anyway, but with a lot more control and say over what your product is then you would normally have.

Is this detour into Self-Publishing this just an extra, unnecessary step to get a Publisher?

Page 7

The method you decide to go for should depend on what type of story you are publishing.

For someone like J.K, the internet wasn’t a viable option while she was writing and she wouldn’t be able live off the slow money that comes from publishing on the internet.

She didn’t have the means to advertise her book by herself either, going to a Publisher was the only option.

Andy Weir tried the publishing root first, but they weren’t interested, so he started writing his book in a format that worked well with the internet (10).

Homestuck, could only really be a digital comic, there might be a physical one somewhere down the line but the original could only ever exist on the internet.

Both methods have the negative and positives.

But hey, whatever method you decide.

Good Luck

By Fae-Jinni & Melon Sandy

Ending

Page 8

So Melon Sandy have you decided how you’re going to publish your awesome book?  (I turn to look at Sandy)

(There is a crushed Melon in the floor)

“Melon Sandy?” (Confused)

(It have bow like Melon Sandy)

(I look down to see a knife in my hand with Melon blood on it…)

(Camera movies to show my face. It is coved in Melon juice…)

 References

(1)  Staff, W. (2017). How Literary Agents Get Paid: Standard Commission Practices And Payments For Literary Agents - Writer's Relief, Inc.. [online] Writer's Relief, Inc. Available at: http://writersrelief.com/blog/2014/02/standard-commission-practices-payments-literary-agents/ [Accessed 18 Nov. 2017].

(2)  Writersworkshop.co.uk. (2017). How to publish a book: a guide | Writers' Workshop. [online] Available at: http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/How-To-Get-Published.html [Accessed 21 Nov. 2017].

(3)  Here!, S. (2017). Pros And Cons Of Traditional Publishing vs Self-Publishing. [online] The Creative Penn. Available at: https://www.thecreativepenn.com/self-publishing-vs-traditional/ [Accessed 21 Nov. 2017].

(4)  Flood, A. (2017). JK Rowling says she received ‘loads’ of rejections before Harry Potter success. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/24/jk-rowling-tells-fans-twitter-loads-rejections-before-harry-potter-success [Accessed 21 Nov. 2017].

(5)  Kennedy, M. (2017). JK Rowling posts letters of rejection on Twitter to help budding authors. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/25/jk-rowling-harry-potter-posts-letters-of-rejection-on-twitter [Accessed 21 Nov. 2017].

(6)  En.wikipedia.org. (2017). J. K. Rowling. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._K._Rowling#Subsequent_Harry_Potter_publications [Accessed 21 Nov. 2017].

(7)  Theguardian.com. (2017). Why the name change from "Harry Potter and the Philosopher''s Stone" in the UK to "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer''s Stone" in the United States ? | Notes and Queries | guardian.co.uk. [online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-18387,00.html [Accessed 21 Nov. 2017].

(8)  En.wikipedia.org. (2017). Zine. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zine [Accessed 21 Nov. 2017].

(9)  Format.com. (2017). 11 Cool Artist Zines You Need to Own. [online] Available at: https://www.format.com/magazine/galleries/art/11-cool-artist-zines [Accessed 21 Nov. 2017].

(10)          En.wikipedia.org. (2017). The Martian (Weir novel). [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_(Weir_novel) [Accessed 21 Nov. 2017].

(11)          En.wikipedia.org. (2017). Homestuck. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestuck#frb-inline [Accessed 21 Nov. 2017].

[faeuniblog]

Script for Visual Essay

This is the script for my Visual essay for Overview of the Industry. This version will have my old edits and parts I've had to leave out. Parts that have been left out will look like this.

Hello there fellow melons, hope you’re ready to be entertained cause at least one of us is gonna have fun with this essay! I’m gonna be educating you guys on the joys that are the publishing industry!

Self-Published Vs Published!

 -So, what is it to publishing something?

Publishing is the broadcasting of literature, music, and information and making it available to the general public.

-  “So, Melon Sandy, I see you have your book there!

If you’re a writer that’s just written the best story ever, you’ll probably want to share said book with the world so you can make lots of money and be really famous!”

-“But almighty voice in the sky who sounds super amazing and cool, like it really sucks that this is a written visual essay and not an audio one, I here you cry!”

“How do I go about share my creation with the world?!”

-“Well, you have two options little Melon Sandy. You can go to Publishing Company or Self-Publish your work.”

Now let’s talks about what a Publisher is and does.

(draw like a picture of some cool printing machine or something)

Publishing Company – Basics, Pros and Cons.

If you decide to go with the Traditional method and get published by a big publisher, you’ll need to have your work accepted by a literary agent first. Once you get an agent, they will take care of selling your manuscript to the big publishers. By going through an agent you’ll be paid an upfront advance for your work. The advance could range from £1,000 to over £100,000. You also get royalties at around 3%-6%.

Having an agent take care of shit is nice, but its damn hard to get an agent to take your work and even then, there’s no reassurance that they’ll even be able to sell your manuscript to a publisher.

If you're lucky enough to get a publisher interested.

The publisher will take care of editorial, copyediting, and design work, as well as invest in sales and marketing. Depending on whether you’re with a small or large publisher, the budget on these things can range from £15,000 to £50,000.

-You, as the writer Melon Sandy, will not have to pay anything towards these costs!-

However, one down side is that Publisher might make you edit you story in ways you don’t agree with, so you do lose a bit of control over your work.

Your book will be released both in physical and digital shops (such as Amazon and iTunes)

You probably won’t get a moving or TV deal but you stand a much higher chance by going with the traditional method. So, you get a load of support from a Publisher and Agent but in return you will have to give up a percentage of your earnings and control.

Edit: (The publisher may also tell you to remove, cut down or add content to your story if they see it as unfit, so you do lose a bit of control over your work.

Your book will receive national distribution for its physical version in physical stores while also being distributed digitally in online shops such as amazon and iTunes. )

(It’s unlikely you’ll get a movie or TV deal but they are more frequent for authors you used the traditional method. So, you get a load of support from a Publisher and Agent but in return you will have to give up a percentage of your earnings and control.)

Let’s look at J.K. Rowling as an example for publishing with a Company!

(Drawing of cool witch J.K. Rowling)

J.K. Rowling

J.K was rejected by the first literary agency she applied too, and to add insult to injury, they didn’t give back her folder! She would luckily be accepted by the next literary agency, Christopher Little. Little sent the manuscript to 12 different publishers (who all rejected it!) before finally ending up with Bloomsbury.

As when you go to a publisher, J.K was told to change the title of the US version from ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone’ to ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone’ as they didn’t think America’s would know what a ‘philosopher’ was would think it sounded boring.

Edit: (A notable change that J.K Rowling wasn’t happy about was the changing of the title ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone’ to ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone’ in the US version.

It’s said that the publishers for the US version didn’t think America’s would know what a ‘philosopher’ was and think it’s boring; so they change it to ‘Sorceror’ which sounds much more exciting.)

 -“Hopefully, Melan Sandy, you won’t have a much trouble getting you book published as J.K. Rowling did.”

Self-Publishing – Basics, Pros and Cons

If you decide to go with Self-Published, there are two types of self-publishing: Digital and Old-fashioned.

One of the great things about the modern day, is the internet! (woooop Internet!)

Anyone can be an artist or writer with the internet around. Amazon charges nothing for you to upload your work to its worldwide audience or you can just post your art and stories on websites like Tumblr.

By Self-publishing, you have complete creative control over your work, meaning it can be about anything with no one to stop you! And all the money you make, is your money, no sharing with a big company!

 With online shops like Amazon, you won’t get a money advance like you would if you’ll with a publisher. Your book won’t be in bookshops and you’ll still have to face some costs like editorial and copyediting.

Remember, Amazon has over 5,000,000 e-books in its store and your book will simply be one of them, so it might be hard to get attention.

 If you used Amazon, you will get no money advance like you would do if you’ve with a company but you can still make money, if only a little. Your book will not be in bookshops and you still have to face some costs for stuff such as editorial and copyediting work. Amazon has over 5,000,000 e-books in its store and your book will simply be one of them, so it may be hard to achieve sales.

 With free websites like Tumblr, you’re not going to make any money unless you go to separate sources such as Patreon or ko-fi and you have basically no limitation on what your work is about.

 An example of the Old-fashioned method would be making, printing and selling Zine, at conversions or online. A zine (short for magazine or fanzine) is a small self-published work made up of text and images and is usually reproduced via photocopier. They can be made be a single person, or a small group. An example of some popular zines are ‘Aint-Bad Magazine’, ‘Home Zine’ and ‘Record Culture Magazine’.

 Example of people who have done shit is Self-Publishing

For Self-Published, I’m going to look at The Martian and Homestuck. (awesome drawings).

 The Martian is a science fiction novel written by Andy Weir in 2011. Weir started writing the book in 2009, and was rebuffed by literary agents when trying to get prior books published. Weir decided to put the book online on his website in a serial format.

Fans of his book later requested him to make an Amazon Kindle version for 99 cents (the minimum allowable price he could set). The Kindle version sold 35,000 copies in three months, quickly rising to the top of Amazon’s best-selling science-fiction list.

Podium Publishing an audiobook publisher, signed for the audiobook rights in January 2013 and in March 2013 Weir sold the prints rights to Crown for over US$100,000. In March 2, 2014, the book debuted on the New York Times Best Seller list in twelfth position.

Homestuck is a webcomic written, illustrated and animated by Andrew Hussie and published on MS Paint Adventures. The comic is a combination of static images, animated GIFs, instant message logs and games made with Adobe Flash. Homestuck arguably has the largest fan community out there, which has said to reach in the millions. Unlike the other authors on this list, Homestuck never got involved with publishers, this may be because it’s the only one on my list that’s a comic. If you go almost any conversion, you are likely to find a Homestuck fan there either cosplaying or selling zines or art.

   (gonna have to leave this part out for now)

Example of both publishing with a Publishing Company and Self-Publishing. (we are all in this together)

Introducing hard-core Beatrix Potter, who refused to put up with shit from anyone! (insert badass drawing of Beatrix Potter!!!)

‘Peter Rabbit’ was Self-Published! Beatrix Potter applied to a least six different publishing houses and with her book ‘The Adventures of Peter Rabbit’ but was rejected by all of them. Beatrix Potter then went on to printer 250 copies of her first book herself. It was printed with 41 black and white woodblock engraving and a colour frontispiece (yes I do in fact know what that complicated words mean!). The book was so successful that within the year, it had been picked up by one of the six publisher who had originally rejected it (HA).

Beatrix Potter stuck again with her next book ‘The Tailor of Gloucester’ after failing to reach an agreement with ‘Frederick Warne & Co’. So, Ms Potter got on her broom took the skies again and published 500 copies privately! (I AM thinking of the right person, right??). By the end of the year, Warne had given in, cementing their relationship with Potter, saving the publishing house from bankruptcy and creating the standard for how children’s book were marketed and sold!

(Reading from paper in hand image) Beatrix Potter later went on the serves fanatically loyal to the dark lor- (confused) okay I'm definitely reading into the wrong wiki! (angry! Paper turns over to show picture of Bellatrix Lestrange and Harry Potter)

Just to clarify, apart from her not being a Harry Potter character, she really did all the book stuff. She might have been a witch though, so I don’t wanna rule that out just in case.

 (gonna leave this part out too)

  ~~Tangent Time!~~

You may be wondering why, as a comic’s student, I would be looking authors of written work rather than comic witters. I mean look at Homestuck, as I said before, it arguably has the largest fan community out there, but I don’t think you’ll find a novel version in real life.

This is partly because, for some reason, writers of ‘word’ books generally get more attention and success then comic writers. Other reason for Homestucks lack of physical novel might be the fact that Homestuck has a lot of animations, moving visuals, sounds and music, so I can imagine that might be had to put into a book format. (But it could be done! It just hasn’t.)

I could probably write an entire other essay on these points and I feel the need to acknowledge them, but I have neither the time nor energy to do so effectively (and I’m not a masochist)…so yeah…

~~Tangent Over~~

Both methods have their pros and cons and work.

Going straight for Publishing company can be really difficult, as they may not be interested in your work to begin with and you lose a fair amount of your creative control and profits. But is the support they give worth it?

Going for Self-Published can be cool because of all the control and full profits but you need to gain the attention from the public before a publisher will even look at you. Almost all Self-Published work end up with a publisher so is this just an extra, unnecessary step?

 But hey, whatever way you choose, just go for it man. Should be fun.

Ending

“So Melon Sandy have you decided how you’re going to publish you awesome book?”  (I turn to look at Sandy)

(There is a crushed Melon in the floor)

“Melon Sandy?” (Confused)

(It have bow like Melon Sandy)

(I look down to see a knife in my hand with Melon blood on it…)

(Camera movies to show my face. It is coved in Melon juice…)

References

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/24/jk-rowling-tells-fans-twitter-loads-rejections-before-harry-potter-success

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/25/jk-rowling-harry-potter-posts-letters-of-rejection-on-twitter

http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/How-To-Get-Published.html

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13059054-homestuck-book-one

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestuck#frb-inline

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_(Weir_novel)

https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-18387,00.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._K._Rowling#Subsequent_Harry_Potter_publications

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter

https://www.patreon.com/

https://ko-fi.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrix_Potter

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/dec/17/beatrix-potter-peter-rabbit-self-publishing

https://www.thecreativepenn.com/self-publishing-vs-traditional/

https://www.scribendi.com/advice/traditional_versus_self_publishing.en.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publishing

https://www.format.com/magazine/galleries/art/11-cool-artist-zines

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_press

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zine