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PixelJunk 4am |OT| - Perform Create Share Live
- Thread starter kassatsu
- Start date
VariantX04
Loser slave of the system :(
Got 9 kudos and 21 spectators on my first run. I've possibly found my new addiction.
heheh
Not only do we make the best application of the Move so far, we make you want two of them
Fans and kudos are surprisingly addictive eh.
Agent X
Member
I was viewing your performance about an hour ago!
This does become quite addictive at times. If I'm getting ready to hang it up, and I see someone new jumps in and starts my session, then I'll sometimes stay on a little bit longer just to ensure that he hasn't wasted his time.
I also love figuring out what combinations of tracks seem to resonate better, and trying to get a positive response from the viewers.
neobiz
Member
It's a shame the giantbomb guys obviously hadn't played it past the first 10 minutes or so because they went on and on about how it "needs a bit more" and didn't mention the dubbing and Move path recording, or the ability to mix and match tracks from different visualisers, which in my mind add quite a bit "more". Ah well! In general the video was positive which is great.
VariantX04
Loser slave of the system :(
How does your wrist feel?Went past 7 hrs performing today, might get to 8 tomorrow
Really enjoying this, but I was confused at first that I only had the one track to select from... I didn't think there would be any unlocking.
I went to a friends house though and saw he had others unlocked, then one time he started a session, like one beat went off, then it went back out to the menu and showed he had unlocked another track (the one with the rainy window)
Can you explain how unlocking works, Dylan?
Thanks again! It's an awesome new toy for Move! Wish Sony would get more stuff like this and Datura out
I went to a friends house though and saw he had others unlocked, then one time he started a session, like one beat went off, then it went back out to the menu and showed he had unlocked another track (the one with the rainy window)
Can you explain how unlocking works, Dylan?
Thanks again! It's an awesome new toy for Move! Wish Sony would get more stuff like this and Datura out
I love Giantbomb, but this kinda thing happens alot.
This is also true
i would think so, the single move is still a lot of fun.
I was going to go out and get a move or two and the game, but retail stores still seem to be selling the things for $50, but only $32 on Amazon. Wish I had just kept the ones I bought at launch, but I didn't enjoy any of the games I thought I would with it. KZ3 in 3D with a move and sharpshooter was a waste.
Not to be a hater, as I want to like this game, but every stream I go into, the music seems so down tempo, slow, spacey, and sounds like every song was recorded in a dungeon. The only songs I've heard that I like so far are in the menu screen where you choose a performer.
How does it work with your own music? It's just a visualizer?
How does it work with your own music? It's just a visualizer?
Yeah its just a visualizer with custom tracks, but a damn good one at that
jetsetfluken
Member
Hello Dylan and Q-Games team, first of all it's really an honour and to be speaking with you here on GAF. I respect what you're done with Nintendo in the past and all your endeavors since. Almost unheard of to have such enthusiasm and relation to developers, I really appreciate your works. I feel my experience with 4am was too strong to just "shelve" the game in a way and move on to the next game like usual, not saying anything about the experience...so I just had to document it in some way.
Note: Questions will be in bold. Feel free to reply, but if not it's OK, my main objective of the post is to share my experience with 4am to you guys.
Anyway, I'll comment on 4am. I haven't completed all the PixelJunk series games, but upon hearing about 4am pre-release, I was instantly interested. I didn't bother with the Live Viewer or beta, I knew I wanted this, and bought it as soon as it went live on the PS Store.
I typically go on a "media blackout" for games I anticipate so that the final product in my hands is almost a total surprise and new experience.
So, I assumed 4am was a way to stream and mix/manipulate music from your PS3 HDD and stream it to the world in the same manor that we have with the built-in songs in 4am.
I of course searched for that feature upon purchasing 4am and did not find it, found it was only the built-in tracks/mixes you could manipulate.
Even though I now know that this was not the product's intention, was this feature ever considered during development? I assume it would be too resource-heavy for both the PS3 and the user's online connections to stream MP3's to an almost limitless "audience".
At first I was disappointed that "feature" was not present, but I went with it, and started learning the ropes and controls of 4am. The first day or so I was very confused by the controls and just couldn't seem to make anything sound interesting.
This is what I call the "4am barrier". After bypassing this "barrier" however, I was not only hooked and my sessions were quickly going from "I'll just sit here and mess around for 10 minutes" to beyond 3 hours, longer sessions around 7 hours, some days all I played was 4am for 10 hours total across multiple sit-downs.
I do believe many of the reviewers (and naysayers of the game) who didn't seem to "get it" did not play for enough time to pass that "barrier". Hell, I was ready to give my full opinion on the game early on claiming it wasn't very intuitive and not dynamic enough to make unique beats/music, but I held my words and continued on and on. I believe the people who will truly enjoy the game will not by swayed by a reviewer's words though and will decide for themselves.
I guess you can say with a mix of the ever-progressing flow and dynamic nature of the mix you can create combined with the fact the game literally kicks you out for idling/not moving your Move after what seemed like a minute or two, I was glued to the seat - the fans and kudos feature helped too.
The first week I was of course on pretty much every day for most of the days, in a mix of trying to get people interested in the game by showing just what this game can do and just progressively creating new sounds! To disprove people like this and to show them what this thing is capable of. It wasn't out of the ordinary to be in a mix for less than an hour and have around 200 kudos and 100+ viewers. I think the max I got in one session was around 600 kudos. Not only is it a cool aspect that you're essentially generating music for most probably multiple people's sound systems at their house blasting, but also the prospect of people in the house music scene (artists, DJs producers, etc) checking out what you're doing too. I've seen a few very interested in the product recently. I really wish I was recording some of the stuff I made. Was a record/save to HDD feature ever an idea during development?
I found my most played mix/track was "One day in Kyoto". Lots of little jazzy/deep house elements to some of the beats as well as the drum loops. I see some in this thread complaining that they see a lot of people performing mixes that are too slow paced or quiet. But with "One day in Kyoto" I really found a sweet spot with constant, house-like thumping beats combined with unique synth beats. The automatic rain/car sound effects of this mix/track complements the under/overpass effect you can produce too. The green (triangle) "tribal drum" mode in the "line background" set I found could really serve as a great base beat, combine that with the constant blue (X) thumping house drum beat and other quirky synths from the other sets would produce great stuff. Another element that I seemed to start others doing as well is the 2x Move controller "DJ scratching". I manipulated the "overpass" effect when putting the Move orbs together quickly to produce a "scratching" effect. When put at different heights and then dropped down to the orb very quickly and then off of it, it even produced previously unheard of custom "beats" at different intervals that I could incorporate between looping beats. Give it a try.
The inspiration behind 4am seems to stem from deep/progressive house music, which I think will get even some artists in that industry interested in this game. The dynamics of what you can do with the pre-loaded mixes/tracks is unbelievable and I believe can be truly seen instantly by these types. If you haven't, check out some mixes/compilations by Nick Warren and Tom Middleton for example. Was the deep house club scene and inspiration for the game, and what is the meaning of the "4am" title? Does it symbolize the "afterhours" where DJ's tend to play what they want and not what a club mandates for that night's scene, where they can experiment freely?
Anyway, there's just some stuff off the top of my head about 4am. I plan to experiment with it more in the future, and would be even more enticed with prospects of future DLC.
Are there any plans or considerations for DLC? I know PixelJunk Monsters and Eden got DLC as well as new Trophies added. Are there any plans for new Trophies to be added with this DLC, if it is indeed a consideration? New tracks and/or combination of existing tracks/mixes already in 4am into new arrangements would be a great addition. It would make me ecstatic to see this game get even more support.
Note: Questions will be in bold. Feel free to reply, but if not it's OK, my main objective of the post is to share my experience with 4am to you guys.
Anyway, I'll comment on 4am. I haven't completed all the PixelJunk series games, but upon hearing about 4am pre-release, I was instantly interested. I didn't bother with the Live Viewer or beta, I knew I wanted this, and bought it as soon as it went live on the PS Store.
I typically go on a "media blackout" for games I anticipate so that the final product in my hands is almost a total surprise and new experience.
So, I assumed 4am was a way to stream and mix/manipulate music from your PS3 HDD and stream it to the world in the same manor that we have with the built-in songs in 4am.
I of course searched for that feature upon purchasing 4am and did not find it, found it was only the built-in tracks/mixes you could manipulate.
Even though I now know that this was not the product's intention, was this feature ever considered during development? I assume it would be too resource-heavy for both the PS3 and the user's online connections to stream MP3's to an almost limitless "audience".
At first I was disappointed that "feature" was not present, but I went with it, and started learning the ropes and controls of 4am. The first day or so I was very confused by the controls and just couldn't seem to make anything sound interesting.
This is what I call the "4am barrier". After bypassing this "barrier" however, I was not only hooked and my sessions were quickly going from "I'll just sit here and mess around for 10 minutes" to beyond 3 hours, longer sessions around 7 hours, some days all I played was 4am for 10 hours total across multiple sit-downs.
I do believe many of the reviewers (and naysayers of the game) who didn't seem to "get it" did not play for enough time to pass that "barrier". Hell, I was ready to give my full opinion on the game early on claiming it wasn't very intuitive and not dynamic enough to make unique beats/music, but I held my words and continued on and on. I believe the people who will truly enjoy the game will not by swayed by a reviewer's words though and will decide for themselves.
I guess you can say with a mix of the ever-progressing flow and dynamic nature of the mix you can create combined with the fact the game literally kicks you out for idling/not moving your Move after what seemed like a minute or two, I was glued to the seat - the fans and kudos feature helped too.
The first week I was of course on pretty much every day for most of the days, in a mix of trying to get people interested in the game by showing just what this game can do and just progressively creating new sounds! To disprove people like this and to show them what this thing is capable of. It wasn't out of the ordinary to be in a mix for less than an hour and have around 200 kudos and 100+ viewers. I think the max I got in one session was around 600 kudos. Not only is it a cool aspect that you're essentially generating music for most probably multiple people's sound systems at their house blasting, but also the prospect of people in the house music scene (artists, DJs producers, etc) checking out what you're doing too. I've seen a few very interested in the product recently. I really wish I was recording some of the stuff I made. Was a record/save to HDD feature ever an idea during development?
I found my most played mix/track was "One day in Kyoto". Lots of little jazzy/deep house elements to some of the beats as well as the drum loops. I see some in this thread complaining that they see a lot of people performing mixes that are too slow paced or quiet. But with "One day in Kyoto" I really found a sweet spot with constant, house-like thumping beats combined with unique synth beats. The automatic rain/car sound effects of this mix/track complements the under/overpass effect you can produce too. The green (triangle) "tribal drum" mode in the "line background" set I found could really serve as a great base beat, combine that with the constant blue (X) thumping house drum beat and other quirky synths from the other sets would produce great stuff. Another element that I seemed to start others doing as well is the 2x Move controller "DJ scratching". I manipulated the "overpass" effect when putting the Move orbs together quickly to produce a "scratching" effect. When put at different heights and then dropped down to the orb very quickly and then off of it, it even produced previously unheard of custom "beats" at different intervals that I could incorporate between looping beats. Give it a try.
The inspiration behind 4am seems to stem from deep/progressive house music, which I think will get even some artists in that industry interested in this game. The dynamics of what you can do with the pre-loaded mixes/tracks is unbelievable and I believe can be truly seen instantly by these types. If you haven't, check out some mixes/compilations by Nick Warren and Tom Middleton for example. Was the deep house club scene and inspiration for the game, and what is the meaning of the "4am" title? Does it symbolize the "afterhours" where DJ's tend to play what they want and not what a club mandates for that night's scene, where they can experiment freely?
Anyway, there's just some stuff off the top of my head about 4am. I plan to experiment with it more in the future, and would be even more enticed with prospects of future DLC.
Are there any plans or considerations for DLC? I know PixelJunk Monsters and Eden got DLC as well as new Trophies added. Are there any plans for new Trophies to be added with this DLC, if it is indeed a consideration? New tracks and/or combination of existing tracks/mixes already in 4am into new arrangements would be a great addition. It would make me ecstatic to see this game get even more support.
Oppo
Member
Posted a "review" of 4am over at our dumb little game blog, for anyone interested:
http://www.perpetualgeekmachine.net/2012/05/review-pixeljunk-4am/
It's a very cool product if you like Baiyon and his style of, well, everything. I think we will see more permutations of this kind of thing for live electronic music. It's just more interesting to look at someone actually performing, actually moving their body to trigger and create sound. Such a nifty idea.
http://www.perpetualgeekmachine.net/2012/05/review-pixeljunk-4am/
It's a very cool product if you like Baiyon and his style of, well, everything. I think we will see more permutations of this kind of thing for live electronic music. It's just more interesting to look at someone actually performing, actually moving their body to trigger and create sound. Such a nifty idea.
hey there jetsetfluken, great post!
Because of the nature of our low bandwidth streaming implementation we could never really consider streaming actual mp3s across the network. There are also copyright issues and because we are in Japan we fall under JASRAC which is an archaic and overbearing music license control organisation more in tune with karaoke systems - ie. if you play even a snippet of a copyrighted song we would get charged. I wish there were ways around this but right now there aren't. Also, prepping and mastering the 16 loops and 16 one shots you need for one "song" is kind of beyond the average user. If we ever did get around the jasrac issue something simple like the user providing one mp3 as "backing" could be a possibility (although it would require the listener to be able to connect to you directly to download it, or for you to put it up on a server somewhere). Oh that might be a loophole - if the user has to put it up on a server somewhere then it isn't being streamed/broadcast by our game..mm.. need expensive lawyers to look into it tho
Record/save was only briefly considered (I'm not sure if the XMB has this functionality anyway? I know it has youtube as we've implemented that in the past but we couldn't afford the gpu/cpu time the youtube facility costs this time because of the extra overheads incurred by streaming/networking). Grab a mic cable for an iphone and hook it up to the headphone jack on your tv, is a simple solution.
Depending on popularity we'll definitely look at DLC. First we need to get some reviews out there! (thanks perpetualgeekmachine)
It seems that all the major review sites are a bit slow to review these days, we only have no-names up on metacritic giving us a bad name.... which is really annoying.
As for the 4am naming question, well you kind of answered it yourself because I presume you've been up that late playing? However, there are some articles on the net from Baiyon explaining the name if you have a look around.
Because of the nature of our low bandwidth streaming implementation we could never really consider streaming actual mp3s across the network. There are also copyright issues and because we are in Japan we fall under JASRAC which is an archaic and overbearing music license control organisation more in tune with karaoke systems - ie. if you play even a snippet of a copyrighted song we would get charged. I wish there were ways around this but right now there aren't. Also, prepping and mastering the 16 loops and 16 one shots you need for one "song" is kind of beyond the average user. If we ever did get around the jasrac issue something simple like the user providing one mp3 as "backing" could be a possibility (although it would require the listener to be able to connect to you directly to download it, or for you to put it up on a server somewhere). Oh that might be a loophole - if the user has to put it up on a server somewhere then it isn't being streamed/broadcast by our game..mm.. need expensive lawyers to look into it tho
Record/save was only briefly considered (I'm not sure if the XMB has this functionality anyway? I know it has youtube as we've implemented that in the past but we couldn't afford the gpu/cpu time the youtube facility costs this time because of the extra overheads incurred by streaming/networking). Grab a mic cable for an iphone and hook it up to the headphone jack on your tv, is a simple solution.
Depending on popularity we'll definitely look at DLC. First we need to get some reviews out there! (thanks perpetualgeekmachine)
It seems that all the major review sites are a bit slow to review these days, we only have no-names up on metacritic giving us a bad name.... which is really annoying.
As for the 4am naming question, well you kind of answered it yourself because I presume you've been up that late playing? However, there are some articles on the net from Baiyon explaining the name if you have a look around.
Great fun experience .. had alot of fun with this "game"..! reviewed it because I thought it was something else..!
http://translate.google.dk/translat...nmeldelser/1-spil/80-anmeldelse-pixeljunk-4am
http://translate.google.dk/translat...nmeldelser/1-spil/80-anmeldelse-pixeljunk-4am
We're still pushing for reviews (the situation is kind of ridiculous), and hopefully over the next week or two we should see some write-ups go out.
The more the loyal core can spread the word the better though... it needs grassroots support because of the original nature. You have to experience that broadcast/kudos feeling to understand what it's all about eh.
The more the loyal core can spread the word the better though... it needs grassroots support because of the original nature. You have to experience that broadcast/kudos feeling to understand what it's all about eh.
Hey all,
This is John, new Community Manager at Q-Games.
Great thread. It's wonderful to see the enthusiasm for 4am here! I just wanted to encourage everyone to continue to share their experiences with 4am, both on GAF and on our 4am Facebook page. As Dylan said, a lot of people and press just don't understand 4am. Anything we can do to help promote it supports indie devs trying new things all over the world.
Like I said, you can reach us here, on Twitter (@PixelJunkNews) and on the 4am Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/PixelJunk4am)
Also, the Indie Royale bundle this month features AUDITORIUM (as well as PJ Eden!) if you're into music games.
http://www.indieroyale.com/
This is John, new Community Manager at Q-Games.
Great thread. It's wonderful to see the enthusiasm for 4am here! I just wanted to encourage everyone to continue to share their experiences with 4am, both on GAF and on our 4am Facebook page. As Dylan said, a lot of people and press just don't understand 4am. Anything we can do to help promote it supports indie devs trying new things all over the world.
Like I said, you can reach us here, on Twitter (@PixelJunkNews) and on the 4am Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/PixelJunk4am)
Also, the Indie Royale bundle this month features AUDITORIUM (as well as PJ Eden!) if you're into music games.
http://www.indieroyale.com/