mrkenallen

Answering in the order asked. That's first question answered in the podcast and aswered above, but I'm happy to repeat my response. I'm a producer on one of the world's leading MMORPGs called Rift, about which you can read on riftgame.com. I'm not privy to what the Two Guys have planned, I'm sure it will be magical. And being part of that magic is something I find appealing. You know, Colonel's Bequest was the first game I did for Sierra, and not something I talked about in the podcast, but because it was a Roberta Williams game, I was quite intimidated by what I imagined her music expectations were for the game. And I confessed to Mark Seibert that I had reservations that I was up to the task. Mark was very supportive and expressed complete confidence in me. So I started doing the music. I imagined a gumshoe noir detective style and wrote a piece with that style in mind. Roberta hated it. So I took Mark aside and got permission to spend my workdays during the coming week just researching music from the 20's, the period in which the game takes place. Fresno State had an amazing library of recorded music and there were tons of recordings on hand from the 20's. The first thing I wrote after doing my research was the opening theme that exists in the final game, roaring 20's flapper music. As far as the tools, we used Voyetra MIDI Sequencer Plus Gold for the DOS operating system, and IMHO remains one of the best sequencing packages on any OS. To edit sounds, we used a commercial package called SoundQuest, also for DOS which was a universal editing and sound library management software package. We used it to edit sounds for both the MT-32 Adaptive Synthesis device and the 4 operator FM synthesis sound cards from SoundBlaster and similar manufacturers. The 4 op FM sound cards were basically the innards of the Yamaha FB-01, which SoundQuest supported. Actually the software supported tons of MIDI modules, so when Sierra later began supporting other manufacturers, like Ensonic, IBM's Music Feature, and Roland's SCC-1, we already had the music tools to support them. The Adlib card was a 2 operator FM synthesis card and had its own editor. To process sampled audio, I think we use something called Sample Vision. We also had a Tandy PC in the music department that also had sample editing software built in. Sample Vision was great because you could zoom all the way into a single sample and smooth out a sample curve. When I moved over to Windows, I used Cakewalk and SoundForge. In fact I was a beta tester for SoundForge 2, I think I'm even listed in the credits. No, the music from Battlestar Galactica had no influence on any of the music I did for SQ4 or any other game. Stu Phillips is a fine composer and his TV themes for Buck Rogers, Knight Rider, Quincy and several other TV classics are quite good. But I studied the music and orchestrations of John Williams for the SQ4 opening. I'm going over the music in my head right now and I think I know which musical phrase might make you think the BSG theme is being referenced, but, hand-on-heart, it's an utter coincidence. If it were the case, I would totally admit it. We did spoof battle music from the original Star Trek shows for the hand-to-hand combat scene Roger Wilco has with some sort of alien cave monster, but I'm fairly certain Mark Seibert knocked out that one.

I have no files from my Sierra days. But there were a few tunes that ended up on the cutting room floor for various reasons. I hadn't heard about the unused SQ6 tunes being left on the CD-ROM. Kudos to whomever discovered them.

Yeah, that's not something I'm privy to. Sry

So the two guys are back. I was their music pal. What can I answer for the masses?

I'm a producer on Rift. Come! Play! Spend! Smile! riftgame.com but I still love my SQ roots in this industry!

So I'm doing a podcast for the two guys, Got any questions you want me to answer?

I have heard. I may live on Earth but I'm not disconnected from the universe!

Hi, y'all! What's new?