This is a post from Mikko Tarmia who is the composer for all of Overgrowth's music.

Rise of the Virtual Orchestra

Most of the orchestral music used in games, movies, and advertisements is now created with virtual orchestras -- computers and software samplers have made it possible for anyone to perform and record orchestral music without leaving home. This saves us the time and money we would have spent hiring live players, renting concert halls and using expensive recording services.

However, this also means that composing like Mozart is no longer enough. We also need music production skills -- the software tricks that make it sound real. Our ultimate goal is to fool the audience into thinking that our music was done with live players, and that just isn't easy to do. We can get pretty close, but we can't quite match the sound of live orchestras with today's technology.

My Setup

My home studio is a small, acoustically-treated room (see picture below). I have a Mac running Logic Pro sequencing software and a PC running the Gigastudio sampler -- this helps share the overall processing load (the Mac is running all kinds of other sample libraries as well). There's some external hardware: a few synthesizers and some processing equipment. The Alesis QS8 is my only keyboard at the moment.

One interesting piece of my setup is the Akai EWI wind controller with an analog synth module. It's a bit tricky to play, but it can emulate a wind instrument's playing style. I can hook it up with a sampler and by driving the sound through the module's filter circuitry it makes the playing sound more real. I also have a small arsenal of live instruments, and some equipment to record them.

Orchestral Sample Libraries

Orchestral sample libraries usually have multiple samples for every single note of every instrument, with different dynamic levels and articulations. This is enough for basic orchestration, but I usually find them lacking all kinds of things -- putting some limitations on the music. However, by using samples from a few different orchestral sample libraries I'm able to achieve a richer and more unique sound than if I used just one library. I hope you will hear the difference when you play Overgrowth!

Since there are some music makers among Overgrowth fans, it would be interesting to hear your thoughts about virtual orchestras! Do you know any tricks to help them sound more realistic?

We have some new cursors for Overgrowth courtesy of the awesome Iiro Jppinen. These will show up in Monday's alpha build and will nicely replace the existing cursors.

Our cursors have gone through a few iterations, from the original programmer art, to a few from Phillip, to some from AJS, and one from Silverfish. I am pretty happy with this set, but as always, it is not necessarily final.

There are a couple of things that make a cursor good. First of all, it needs to be visible on all backgrounds. This cursor accomplishes this by being largely white, with a 1px black stroke outline. Additionally, it sports a soft drop shadow to help its contrast. Secondly, a cursor needs to have a clear point. We had a few complaints about some of our previous cursors because it was sometimes ambiguous where the point was. These ones should be very clear, though.

One cool thing about these cursors is that they are vector based. This means that they are resolution independent: they can scale up indefinitely while retaining their quality. Resolution independence is going to be very important in the future -- I think I will save this topic for another post though.

As always, if you are interested in helping us with UI or other stuff, please contact us!

Game developers often talk about balance. Fighting should be balanced. Characters should be balanced. Weapons should be balanced. Balance is definitely important. But I think there's a place for imbalance too. Indeed, I often find imbalanced, David versus Goliath fights to be the most captivating and memorable. Here are four reasons why imbalance is important.

1. Imbalance makes for a good story

Movie and video game characters seem to be getting more and more uniformly powerful these days. I liked Wolverine when he was just a badass fighter, who could heal quickly from flesh wounds and had sharp metal claws. But perhaps that's not cool enough for our era of Abercrombie and Fitch Spartans and Jedi infantry. Now, Wolverine is immune to all damage except decapitation, and his blades repel energy bolts powerful enough to slice through an entire cooling tower of a nuclear power plant. He fights enemies who are just like him, super-powered and more or less invincible.

The heart of any good story is about overcoming adversity. But when every character is equally powerful, there's no real adversity to overcome. Everyone is already at the top. It's only when the hero starts out at the bottom, as the underdog, that we begin to see a meaningful quest. The greater the imbalance at the start, the better we feel when the hero prevails in the end.

The original Star Wars trilogy understood this and used imbalance to great effect. These movies are pretty much one highly imbalanced fight after another: Death Star 1, Vader versus Obi-Wan, Hoth, the asteroid chase, Luke versus Vader, Endor, Death Star 2, Luke versus the Emperor. Interestingly, I can't think of a single fight in the prequel trilogy that is as wonderfully imbalanced as those in the original (the closest is maybe Naboo versus the Trade Federation, but the droid army was too clowny for me to buy it as a convincing threat).

2. Imbalance leads to interesting tactics

Beating a stronger opponent requires clever tactics. You cant just rely on obvious moves. You have to find the enemys few weaknesses and exploit them. Such tactics often lead to interesting fights. For example, in this UFC fight, Royce Gracie, at 180 pounds, manages to submit a 486 pound sumo wrestler champion by using his whole body as a vice on the wrestler's arm.

3. Imbalance is realistic

Character variety is very important in fighting games. This is especially true in competitive games like Soulcalibur. Each player should be able to find a character he or she likes. Some players will want to be the skinny ninja girl. Others will want to be the hulking hammer demon. This sort of variety is great on its own. But it conflicts with another design goal in competitive fighting games: giving each player an equal chance. When game developers try to perfectly equate the fighting ability of such varied characters, ridiculous matchups often ensue:

The unfortunate reality is real fights are rarely fair. The slender youth will never survive a grapple with the towering monster. The sword master ninja won't really stand a chance in a standoff against the guy with a gun.

But, this doesn't mean more powerful opponents can never be bested in realistic ways. The Return of the King pits a hobbit and a princess against a witch king and his dragon mount. Though it does push credulity to some degree, this scene kept me immersed. The enemy remains imposing since he is only defeated when, in his arrogance, he is taken by surprise.

4. Imbalance keeps characters distinct and compelling

The original Star Wars trilogy had imbalance mastered. The prequels pretty much left it out. I wonder how the latest Star Wars games are faring:

I watched this with David, and I think his response was right on: "It's not as cool when everyone's a Jedi." Syndrome, from The Incredibles had a similar insight: "When everyone's super... no one will be." Imbalance keeps things spicy by constantly applying contrast. Clumsy balancing ends up making everything look gray.

So, how can we incorporate the good aspects of imbalance into Overgrowth? Luckily, we already have a great context for imbalanced fights: You are a rabbit who takes on much bigger and more ferocious creatures. I think this premise added a lot of drama to the fights in Lugaru. How can we push this even further? One thing we were thinking about is making the wolves larger and more monstrous than in Lugaru. We have also thought about including enemies that are nearly impossible to beat head on, and but can be defeated with more unusual tactics.

What do you guys think about imbalance in game design? And what about good old balance? How can we, um, balance imbalance and balance?

As some of you know I've been in LA this week hanging out at E3. Having, never attended E3 before, I wasn't sure what to expect. As you may have seen on the Overgrowth Facebook page, I started Tuesday morning by storming in through the front with bagpipes and a Wolfire cape. However, the E3 administrators soon determined that I was not a registered floor model and asked that I put the pipes and cape away. Compared to the real E3 floor models I wasn't much to look at anyway. Below is the proof:

This was the E3 medical staff ready to go with band aid stickers to promote the game Trauma Team:

These two were modeling for the new Ninja Gaiden:

This woman was dressed up like the main character of Bayonetta (and mentioned that she liked my kilt :) ):

This woman was representing Everquest II:

Finally I couldn't help but get my picture taken with the G4 girls because their skirts were a good match with my kilt:

I had a chance to interview some of the E3 models (they wished to remain anonymous) and here's what I learned:

E3 models definitely prefer the term "model" over "booth babe" because it is more accurate and professional sounding. The women work through modeling agencies and the booths at E3 represent just a small fraction of the modeling work they do.

The E3 models tend to like video games but that has no bearing on what characters they decide to represent.

People at E3 are generally very polite and go so far as to ask for permission before taking pictures. However, those "witty" conversation starters we come up with like "How many people have you had to hit with your battle axe today?" get asked hundreds of times over the course of the conference and yet the models are still kind enough to humor everyone as if they've come up with something unique and intelligent to say.

I noticed that standing up all day for three days in a row is pretty tiring. So I asked the models what it was like to spend the whole day not only on their feet, but wearing heels. "It sucks!" they declared without hesitation. Their exhaustion was further emphasized when they said they would not be searching for E3 after-parties once the show was over, but would be going to sleep instead.

Apparently, using scantily clad models at E3 to promote games is a somewhat controversial. Just 3 years ago models were banned altogether. I won't declare myself an expert on the morality of the subject but I will say that I have a lot of respect for the E3 models and found it very interesting to hear their perspective on the show.

What do you guys think about using scantily clad models to promote products?

A couple weeks ago I did a drawing tutorial. A few people mentioned that they would like to see how I do coloring also. It is actually very simple. Below is an animated gif demonstrating each step (click it to download).

Here is an explanation for each step:

1. This is how the image starts -- as a grayscale drawing. I brightened it using a brightness/contrast adjustment layer because my coloring method will make it darker again.

2. Here I applied a gradient map adjustment layer. This is a really important step to make colors look less flat when working from grayscale.

3. Above is the gradient I picked -- each shade of my grayscale image is changed to its corresponding color on this gradient. In this case, black stays black, dark grey becomes dark purple, and white becomes neon green. The colors don't have to be natural yet -- I just pick contrasting colors that will add depth to the final image. If I wanted to be more naturalistic, I would pick dark orange on the left and pale blue on the right. Anime concept artists often use dark purple on the left and light orange on the right. If these colors are too saturated, I just tone down the whole layer later.

4. In this step I pick some new unnatural, contrasting colors and paint them on an 'overlay' layer with a few fat strokes. I then soften them with with gaussian blurs or by smudging them around. This will combine with the gradient map to help add a great sense of warmth and depth later.

5. Finally on a 'multiply' layer I paint in the basic natural colors. Nothing too saturated, but otherwise what you would expect: tan for fur, brown for leather, red/brown for wood. This would look cartoonish by itself, but the contrasting colors I added earlier give them some more complexity and interest.

That's all there is to it. Some people will say you should work in color from the start. That may work great for them, but after trying for many years, I decided that I like working out the basic shapes in grayscale first. It took a lot of tries to find a technique that gave the colors a nice feel, but it's not at all hard to do once you know the basic idea. You can see it in action in all my timelapse concept art videos, like these rat, and dog concept drawing videos.

You can check out my PSD file for this image here!