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Laserschwert

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Posts posted by Laserschwert

  1. As a huge Uncharted fan, my first thought (and most likely the one of many, many others) playing those games was "imagine an Indiana Jones game like this". But then again, for Indy you would at least have to get rid of all the shooting, because that's not Indiana Jones. He's more like the guy with an empty revolver. And when losing long-range combat like that, it only makes sense to lose the long-range perspective as well. Close combat warrants a close-up perspective, so the first-person view is indeed a better fit.

     

    Granted, I wouldn't have minded a third-person game at all, but then again, Uncharted did it so well (the controls, the procedural animations, character detail), it would have been disappointing to see a franchise that's so dear to my heart (Indy, in this case) not reaching the same heights.

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  2. I like Troy Baker's performance here, although voice-wise I would have preferred A.J. LoCascio. But I guess Baker's motion capture experience (and his physicality fitting Indy better than LoCascio) played a role here.

     

    Also, having Gordy Haab doing the soundtrack (with the London Symphony Orchestra, no less) is fucking amazing! No one does Williams like him - just check out his Star Wars Battlefront and Jedi soundtracks.

  3. The thing is, I wanted to get the intro and end credits out of the way first, as those contain basically the original arrangement of the Raider's March. And since it's so well known, those take the most work, just to make them sound like we are used to. The rest of the soundtrack allows for much more freedom in interpreting them, so it's a lot easier to not make them sound "wrong".

     

    I think besides the Atlantis Presentation track I am really looking forward to doing The Coldest Year of My Life, which is basically the Marion/Leia/Han Solo & The Princess theme of this game.

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  4. Ah, good point, it was a misunderstanding. You've basically posted a "before" version and I assumed it was a quote from his post. But scrolling up, I see that he only included a thumbnail.

     

    The "generative upscale" invented and changed a lot of stuff, hence my assumption, that the source simply wasn't good enough.

    • Like 1
  5. Well, that's not extra detail, that's just making stuff up. That's pretty pointless if you are trying to preserve existing art.

    Edit: To be fair, better sources than the one you've used (for all four covers, no less) can be found via Google in a matter of minutes. Removing the smaller text is a breeze with Photoshop's generative fill (I left the logos in for now), and upscaling it with ESRGAN is a couple of clicks. Using one of those generative "upscalers", which change the image completely, is pretty useless in my opinion, since it doesn't leave much of the actual artwork.
     

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  6. Three amazing contributions, courtesy of Ken Macklin himself:

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    These are scanned from 35mm slides he made prior to sending them off to Lucasfilm, and while the resolution is very high, the quality isn't the best. Still, the Eidolon scan will work as a great source for a complete version of the art.

     

    The Maniac Mansion artworks are so weird, though, especially since Ken stated these were commissioned by Lucasfilm AFTER he had already done the MM key artwork. Why further art uses these strange characters is unclear.

     

    Also in the works: Based on the original oil painting Steve showed in his recent interview with Daniel, I've decided to create a more muted version of his MI2 artwork, trying to emulate the softer look of the original. This still needs some work, especially in the now brighter dark areas, where some of my touch-ups became more apparent.

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  7. pfpjKrE.jpeg

    Moving over from off-topicking my own Sam & Max soundtrack thread, here's the dedicated thread to my remastering project of the Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis soundtrack. To be fair, with several unfinished projects in the works, I can't guarantee anything, though.


    As stated in that other thread, in my opinion, all remasters or re-arrangements of this soundtrack (even the most recent ones, sorry!) fell flat in a big way. Using fancy virtual instruments isn't all there is to it, if you can't even get the performance of the most essential part of any Indy soundtrack right: the brass. Especially the trumpets playing the A and B themes of the Raiders's March (which, as you die-hard fans might know, is the actual name of the Indiana Jones theme). Originally composed by John Williams as two options for the main theme, the B theme turned into the bridge of the track, since Spielberg liked both enough to be used.

    So, to make sure that I could actually do better, I tried my hands on the playable introduction of the game, which opens to the Indiana Jones logo with the A theme, followed by some sneaky underscore while you rummage the Barnett College's attic in search of some unknown artifact. As Indy gets knocked down and comes crashing through the ceiling of another floor, our unconscious hero gets a rest while the B theme accompanies a few more on-screen credits. This back and forth between suspenseful underscore and jump-scare transitions to different versions of the B theme culminates in Indy finding the horned Atlantean statue to a rousing crescendo that fades out while Indy leaves the college's main building to deliver the artifact to his mysterious accent-wielding client in his on-campus office.

     

    Was I actually successful in turning the MT-32 beeps and boops into something properly orchestral? You decide:

     

     

    A bit of tech-talk: For this I didn't use any of the pre-arranged MIDIs that were released over the years, instead I started with clean rips of all the iMUSE snippets of this game (courtesy of @Serge), which I've combined and arranged from scratch. The introduction already consisted of 11 different cues I needed to combine, and VGMRip's AdLib rip of the music (and some Let's Plays on YouTube) provided a great template. As far as software and virtual instruments go, I'm using Reaper as my DAW and mainly East West's Hollywood Orchestra series, Project Sam's LA Scoring Strings and VSL's Fanfare Trumpets, with a few additional instruments here and there.

    Anyway, with the main theme out of the way, my plan is to tackle the end credits suite next, as it lets me get my hands on several different themes from the game in one go (plus another go at the Raider's March, yay!).

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  8. Wow, thanks a lot! I'll check it out in the next few days. As for MT-32 instruments, luckily they are properly documented, so figuring out the right one is just a matter of looking up the patch number. I don't need to exactly match GM instruments anyway, as I am working with my virtual instruments. And I usually pick whatever makes most sense in each case.

     

    There are some weird cases, though, where the AdLib tracks actually offer more content. At least with a quick comparison between the Roland and AdLib End Credits (ripped via ScummRev), I noticed that the short string marcatos during the Raider's March are only present in the AdLib version. So, I guess to get the most out of the files, I'll have to compare both versions to see if anything can be added from the AdLib tracks.

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  9. Not yet worthy of its own thread, I toyed with the idea of remastering (some tracks of) the Fate of Atlantis soundtrack (yay, more projects before finishing others!).

     

    I know, there are several re-arrangements already out there, and no offense to the people involved, but they are all not really good (not the relatively straightforward MIDI-to-audio conversions, those are perfectly fine for what they are). Sure, some of them use nice (and probably expensive) sample libraries, but to me, it sounds like they don't really care how to use them properly. I am not a professional musician or composer, but even I notice when there's not much care put into stuff like instrument articulations. And with especially the brass being THE crucial instrument in John Williams' compositions for Indy (hell, ESPECIALLY the main theme!!), you would think that they'd put extra care into AT LEAST the lead trumpets playing the Raider's March. That, plus drowning everything in reverb that sounds like the whole thing was recorded in a church, I'd say there are at least some reasons to give it another go.

     

    For now, I've only started on the opening theme, to at least get that sound down:

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xLcCnrbfF_LYMCZKSEcTcRuyEkLBDzF2/view?usp=sharing

    Speaking of which, does anybody here have a REALLY complete rip of the FoA MIDIs? The Highland-ones are pre-arranged, and not ideal in some situations (at least, I think the transitions between the different parts of the opening could be synced up better). VGMRips has a complete rip of the Adlib soundtrack, with all the different iMUSE bits as separate tracks, and that's exactly what I'm looking for, only with the MT-32 tracks. Then again, ripping the MT-32 tracks with ScummRevisited gives me tracks with completely wrong instrument mappings, and no tempo markers at all. Stan's Previously Used Soundtracks seems to use different MIDIs, which would be interesting to look at. @Rum Rogers @s-island

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