Skale is back? WTF? Oh and here's a song!

After so many years of silence, something weird happened over at Skale.org: somebody resurrected SkaleTracker and made a flash version. Did I just say a _flash_ version of SkaleTracker? Yep, I kid you not! I discovered this whilst looking for the link to a song on modarchive. Speaking of which...

Almost exactly 8 years ago I wrote a song called Space Flight. I've now written a new song with a similar feel, and for the first time I've uploaded it to YouTube. I don't usually write demostyle tunes anymore, but I think this one shows off just what Skale improved upon so long ago.

Trying to get a screen capture video onto YouTube is a nightmare. Camstudio will not record audio, and it will not use any codecs other than the ones it is installed with (oh sure it *lists* them, and then goes "You want me to use that...thing? Forget it. Error.") Furthermore, Sony Vegas will not read the output files of all but one of the codecs available, and then when it does the video runs slower than the audio so they run out of sync. Rendering the final output is a roll of the dice: sometimes I get no sound (WMV), sometimes the video quality is so bad you see nothing more than a blur (AVI), sometimes the video flickers madly for no reason (also AVI), sometimes the output file is 2+ gigs per minute of video (MP2), sometimes YouTube can't read the file either (MP4), and sometimes you upload some random format nobody has ever heard of and get good results (M2T). For a project that should have taken maybe an hour at most, this was a frustrating all-day project. ARGH!!!!!

/rant

Anyways, if you liked the song and want to play around with it in SkaleTracker, you can download it here. Don't forget to get the effects pack which you can find elsewhere on this page or it will not work.

Astaroth rewrite

I have completed a Skale rewrite of the first level music from the Amiga game 'Astaroth, the Angel of Death'. However, I have not actually played the game, instead I heard this music from 'Headquarters', a Mechforce unit manager program which borrowed this tune. I believe at one point I heard a demo as well that used this specific tune, and the original tune can even be found on Aminet.

I intend to submit this one to Overclocked Remix. Their naming policy states that I cannot name my submission after the game, and since this tune reminds me more of futuristic Battletech I've decided to name it "Star League".

You can check out the MP3 version here, or if you want to see it you can download the source SKM here. (See blog description for information about SKM files.)

This is just a taste of what is to come, I'm on the verge of two big project releases sometime this year (I hope). I want each project to have somewhere around an hour's worth of music each before I release them.

Enjoy the music, TTFN!