art's abode

If you have ever been chez nous, you’ve probably noticed that I’m really into video game music. In particular, the OverClocked Remix project: a gathering of musicians worldwide dedicated to making video game remixes.

OC Remix isn’t new–the community has been releasing content for years now. Did I mention all of this is free? Check out the compilations and albums they’ve got for download (I can get over 1MB/sec downstream via the torrents on their page). Most releases come as MP3s and fully lossless FLAC or WAV for ear-bursting glories.

If you’ve played Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, the soundtrack was created by OC Remix artists (I bought this game for XBox360 Live Arcade and came to the sad realisation that my aged reflexes can no longer pull of Hadoukens with the best of ‘em…).

Here are a few albums and tracks which I have particularly enjoyed in recent years:

Album	Listen!	Released
Kirby’s Adventure: Rise of the Star	Free Breezin’ – Theme of Son of Wind	2005
Final Fantasy VII: Voices of the Lifestream	Full Frontal Assault (Let the Battles Begin!) Nomura Limit (Fight On!)	2007
Super Street Fighter II Turbo: Blood on the Asphalt	Mercenary Boxing (Balrog Stage)	2007
Doom II: Delta-Q-Delta	MAP08: The Duel (The Dave D. Taylor Blues)	2008

Today I ran the Windows binary package of MAngband 0.7.2a. Apart from missing walls and other things, it would consistently crash when I typed ‘:’ to chat. Pretty annoying.

As a result, I’ve compiled a Vista-compatible version of MAngband. You will need at least the Cygwin base set installed, as MAngband requires terminfo definitions. You can check out the project page with all the relevant downloads and information at MAngband-Vista. I hope to release updated versions of MAngband-Vista as new versions of MAngband are made available, and until these issues with Vista are resolved in the official distribution.

… and it looks like MAngband’s site has been completely redone, and the new development team has taken oven. Nice one, as they say. After a few years, I think we’ve all had enough of the good ol’ blackie-reddie theme.

Nothing like a CSS makeover!

Well, after years and years of slow and patient progress from Crimson, he’s made an official post on the official MAngband website stating that he intends to step down from maintaining MAngband, in lieu of the the current developers working hard at pushing out 1.0!

11/27/2007         Moving Day.    

On Tuesday, December 5th, 2007, MAngband begins a new era.

Finally admitting both to myself and the community that I simply no longer have the time to properly support the game,
I have delegated control and stewardship of it to a much more dedicated team of people, who have already started
making massive advances towards getting us up and running on 1.0 stable, as well as a much more structured development cycle.

I have been honored to have sat in stewardship of the game for these many years, and I
deeply appreciate both the trust, patience, and support I have received from the community at large during this time.

I will, of course, continue to participate in the game, and look forward to talking, and playing with the group.

Sincerely,

Robert L. Seifer

–Crimson

I can’t say I disagree with Crimson’s decision. Out with the mold, in with the new. I had a chat with someone on #mang...@irc.mangband.org earlier, and we had a pleasant discussion about some of the things MAngband 1.0 needs most–a code enema and some UI enhancements. While MAngband has always been the multiplayer roguelike, I’m sure few can say it’s been a pleasant multiplayer experience these past years. The interface is truly roguelike, to the extent that multiplayer interactions (like chatting) become awkward.