Sinathor

NEW HAIRCUT AAAAAAAA

The game is finally finished! IXIAS - STELLAR COMPLEX hit 1.0 and is available for download for everyone! Please submit your feedback and possible bugs that got through the testers to this topic! I hope you all enjoy the game!

Mandatory "I got a new phone" selfie. I apologize.

The one thing that I like about composing video game music as opposed to regular songs, is that you can get really far with just one melody. I guess you can get far in regular music as well, but just one catchy melody means almost a finished song. What I also like about video game music is that it has to go straight to the point. Over 2 minutes of different sections is already almost too long for a video game song. The way I compose is that I choose a tempo randomly between 60/90/120 depending a bit if I already have an idea. I make a simple drum loop and just start jamming with the keyboard. If something of value comes up, I record it and try adding something to it. Then if it sounds like something I'd use in a video game, I start refining it. If not, then I just save it and start over, maybe come back for it later. That's pretty much all I can say about that. It isn't that much different from regular composing. You just have to remember that the scale is generally smaller.

(I wrote this in a different blog for school earlier. Decided to copy it here as it's relevant) So I have this video game, called "Ixias - Stellar Complex". First draft of this game was born in summer 2013, and during the next half a year it evolved into a completely different kind of draft, and based on that I started making this game in January 2014. I planned on finishing the game before summer 2014 and it all looked sweet and dandy for a while, until I started to run into development problems. First of all, the game was going to be way too fucking huge. Much bigger than I could ever handle on my own. This is common for game developers, but competent game developers realize this BEFORE the game is in production. So I had to make a decision. Either I cut content out or I never finish the game. So I cut about 80% of planned content out. That was one of the best decisions I've ever made. Rubicon Alleys At first it felt like the game was going to be much smaller than I wanted and maybe even too small. But then I realized that even with the remaining 20% of content, it was going to be huge. Incredibly ambitious and extremely -stupid- to make all by myself. Since it was summer and the game wasn't even close to being finished, I said it would be done in December 2014. When December came, I had a pre-pre-alpha version done and I was struggling with motivation. I decided to have a break and finish the alpha version, and give it to a handful of testers to find motivation and hear what other people would think about it. To my surprise everyone who played it, loved it. It was weird as I hadn't really thought much about what other people will think, as it was my passion project. It was Ixias, it was mine, and it didn't matter what anyone thought about it. But they loved it. Needless to say it's a pretty big boost in motivation. Then the preparations to get into school started. I wanted to make the best pre-task ever so I worked on that full-time and let the game be on the down low. I used Ixias in my portfolio though which was great material. When I heard I got into entrance exams, I started to prepare for them fully and when I heard I got into school, I decided to finish Ixias before school started so I could concentrate on that. Well it didn't happen. Windenfyr District As you can see, Ixias didn't develop a lot between early 2015 and summer 2015. I was so busy and stressed over the school stuff that I just couldn't work on it. Every time I looked at Ixias, I just wanted it to go away. I was getting tired of my own child and I knew something had to be done. So I just let Ixias be, work on it when I felt like it and outside of that, tried not to think about it. School started, and I started to be too busy to work on Ixias. The game still wasn't finished, not even close. I had made so many promises that the game will be done this and then, but I always had to break those promises because I just couldn't work on it. Then, in October, I started a small, very small game that I planned to finish in 3 days, just to get away from Ixias. I finished the game in 3 days and it was a kind of a joke game just for few friends. And holy crap did that motivate me! I finished something! It might've been a tiny game but it was FINISHED. So magic happened. And now it's November, and as I'm writing this, I'm uploading the closed beta version of Ixias onto the internet, soon to arrive in the hands of beta testers. The game is finished. It's finally finished. After almost 2 years of shedding heartblood onto this piece of shit. It's done. If you read this, then I hope it was interesting at least a little. And thank you for reading. Sinathor out.

Revival! After over half a year of hiatus on this site, I return, and with me I bring a game that has just hit closed beta. IXIAS - STELLAR COMPLEX HAS BEEN FINISHED! After the beta is over, I iron out the last of the bugs and release a 1.0 version for everyone to play.