Participants will privately send me an MP3 version and (optional) a midi version of their submission
-The MP3 versions will be for voting, and (optional) the midi is free to use after the competition is over
You’ll have two weeks to send me your entry, afterwards I’ll start up an anonymous voting thread
BASE RULES:
Only 1 entry per contestant.
No voting for your own entry!
Try your best to create something that follows the theme!
Entries should be limited to 16 tracks / 12 sounds
You are not required to use a FEGBA soundfont
-It is encouraged, you can be creative with limits! Although the midis will be made free to use for ROM hacking purposes, it’s up to the end user to do any instrument swapping. I’ll trust you not to go too overboard.
No posting previous/old works!
This means no edits/remixes of something previously made as well.
-allowing previous/old works would give an unfair advantage to certain entries, two weeks is a good amount of time to work on an entry… how fair would it be to have to go up against something someone spent months or even a year on?
-creating brand new works, encourages creativity and artistic growth and development, kinda what the whole art forums are about… isn’t it? (unlike most of this, since I ripped it from the splice comp)
VOTING:
Voting will be split into two categories: -Poll #1: Single Vote, best in theme (it’s all just for fun, but this one dictates the winner) -Poll #2: Multiple Votes† (this one is for even more fun, pick the ones you like)
Voting will run for 3 days
†Vote count will be total submissions /2 rounded down
The Theme:
Boss Battle! That’s it. Typically, boss themes aren’t that long (you can get away with 20~30 seconds), but they should loop properly so I’ll ask you to loop it once manually so voters can experience the loop.
The Deadline:
Midnight (EST) on Sunday, August 30th
If you need some inspiration, I’ve made like 6 boss themes for Avenir recently, here they are in game:
They result in dummy sounds even with the drumfix patch so it’s one less thing to worry about when it comes to inserting the song.
There was a brief discussion in the discord server about this, turns out there are people in the community who compose music but aren’t familiar with the GBAFE sound engine and I don’t want to alienate them (there are nowhere near as many people interested in making music as there are people interested in spriting).
In the discussion in the discord chat people were okay with it/nobody complained. Seems like FEU’s musicians are just cool like that. However, I will go ahead and make that part optional, thanks for calling me out on that.
I thought about it, but the only other competition that I can think of that ever had a reward was the FEU Discord logo contest; none of the asset creation competitions have had rewards (e.g. Skitty’s map contest, Shep’s splicing contest) and if I offered one it would put pressure on future hosts to do so as well.
I wasn’t asking for compensation (and don’t think there should be) - I just thought it was odd to put in a free-to-use clause when the composers are already doing it for free, so thanks for removing that.
As for this thing, it’s easy enough to make a custom drum set that’s insertable with the buildfile method, especially if you’re already allowing custom pitched instruments, so I feel the drum-range rule is a bit odd. Are we not allowed to use custom multi-instruments either? I’m definitely interested in making an entry but would prefer the freedom to use the GBAFE sound engine to its full capacity. I think it’s the individual modder’s problem if they can’t figure out how to insert a song.
The reason why the drums get weird at high/low notes is the way the voice tables are structured. A table can possibly have 127 entries, but if you don’t need all those you can have your next one start after, say, 80 entries, meaning that note 81 on the first table will correspond to note 1 on the second one. You can actually pull off some neat stuff with this with FE8’s vanilla drum tables, like being able to use the alternate highhats/cymbals by just playing really low/high notes such that you go into range of another table.
I would participate, but I have no skill in composition. By the way, if anyone wants to do a song with a different soundfont, more specifically, with the hiraeth custom soundfont, ask me, and I’ll give you the sf2. Also soon I’ll finally release the buildfile installer (I didn’t release it before because the soundfont needed some tweaks, such as scrapping the golden sun brass section and changing it for one that barely fits).
Edit: There’s an unused drumset in vanilla fe8. It’s the one used in fe7 for Softly with Grace. The drumset 124 covers it. it starts at the note C5. The hi-hats are pretty cool.
Just for clarification: are we coming up with an entirely new composition? Are we allowed to use elements of the original such that it’s somewhat recognisable and pays homage to the original piece?
Anyone else in need of an extension? I could really do with another 48 hours or so to work on this as my composition has ended up being a bit more complex than I had planned. If it’s just me, then I’m happy to suck it up and not submit for the contest in the interest of being fair to everyone else.
We’re up to 4 submissions as of now. I know of at least 2 other people who are still working on their’s, which would bring us up to 7.
I’m all for extending the deadline to midnight (EST) on Sunday.
For those of you who’ve already submitted: I’m sorry if you feel cheated, but for the sake of nearly doubling the amount of submissions I hope you can understand.
