A Musical Performance | We’re Recruiting!

 Beginning to feel festive yet? Me too. No seriously I’ve been doing Christmas stuff for work since mid October, so safe to say I’m already in the holiday spirit. Anyways hey everyone! It’s time once again for a dose of the latest in Desolation development. Before I jump into the bulk of this blog, if you couldn’t tell by the title, we’re once again recruiting for the Desolation team!

 Let me explain, after a discussion with Ruby, I’ve come to realise that with my now much more limited free time due to having a full time position, I need a bit more help in order to get EP7 across the finish line. As a team, over the last year there have been some changes within this cycle and our own personal lives which has ultimately slowed down progress as a whole. With this in mind, we are looking for individuals who have skills in eventing in RPGMaker. All the details will be fully explained in the application form below, if you feel like you are right for the role and want to join us, then please apply below! Applications will close in 2 weeks time on Wednesday 10th December, we will then review and reach out to selected individuals via Discord.

 > Apply Here <

 The last few months have been a bit of a realisation for me, this project means a bucket loads to myself and the rest of the team, however I am just not able to dedicate as much time as I once used to when Caz was at the helm and I was… well essentially an unemployed adult who tried to keep himself busy in order to keep himself sane. We have been looking into ways to improve our processes and this is one of them. And with that said, I look forward to going through your applications! Please share it around if you know anyone who could also fit the criteria!

Anyways, let’s jump into the main portion of this blog shall we?

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 Following our previous development blog, I opened the floor to you, the community, to ask what they would like to see us talk about, as a way to give back a bit due to the state of this development cycle. A good few people wanted to hear more about the music process that our musical duo have in place, and then there was a bit of discussion about megas… which was mainly “add this or that”, but I’m going to take that and look at it as “talk about megas!” so I will do that. But before that, a quick update from my side of things.

 EP7’s story is now fully mapped out. We have a few tidbits to tie up but we have now fully shaped out from start to finish. This also means that we have started looking down the pipeline into future plot points, making notes and coming together to continue the story in our vision, and I'm really happy with what we have come up with. With the main story in mind, development will look to start picking up over the next several months, and I look forward to sharing more tidbits with you all in future updates.

Anyways, let me pass over to the Music Men and they can explain to you all the process behind the new track we are revealing today, Astra Cafe!

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Happy Fall everyone! This Desolation duo has been asked to do a deeper dive into the digital design of Delica's delightful Astra Cafe. It's really touching to hear that people are interested in our work and we've put together a little timeline of our process as musicians while working on this track for you all to enjoy!

Darius here! I always say that there is no such thing as original music. You may think something is original, but there are always references (subconscious or otherwise) to other pieces of media that influence how you compose and write music. I've been open about references in a lot of my music, but for those who don't know, Pokemon Conquest has and always will be my favorite Pokemon spinoff/game due to its story, graphics, and incredible soundtrack. Shinichiro Nakamura, the composer for that game, created 17 themes (one for each pokemon type) that marvelously capture the essence of each type, and his themes are a resource I often refer back to when I need to be reminded of how to incorporate elements of each Pokemon type into a track.

After re-listening to the entire soundtrack for the 100th time, I wrote the Astra Cafe theme with specific reference to the following three themes:

Event Theme 2 - This was the theme that really ironed out how I wanted to arrange Astra Cafe, starting in D minor, a brief Bb Major interlude, and a return to form before repeating.
 

Violight Theme - I had already decided to write in a minor key and Violight's theme does some really interesting things theory-wise, from the jumping electro-synth to the bumpin' bassline. The last major of Astra Cafe is directly inspired by the last sequence of this theme.

Viperia Theme - I like to kind of associate Delica with this kingdom so I used this theme to help figure out what instrumentation would sound the best for her cafe.

That leads us to our first draft of the theme here, take a listen:

You’ll notice this draft is very simple. I write little demos like this for most of my tracks because it allows Rust and the rest of the team to listen in and understand my thought process. In these initial drafts, the melody and bassline are written out in full with little to no harmony. I usually figure out certain themes at my keyboard and then record myself playing those themes. Then, I write each note out individually in MuseScore along with all other musical ornaments.

Once I get the go-ahead from Posty and Ruby, it’s time to think about harmony. I already have a chord progression in mind here, but this is the stage where I make edits and experiment to see what sounds the best. That leaves us with this second draft:

This second draft is what gets sent over to Rust so he can get to work on the mixing. In the file I send him, there are a lot of little notes that explain when to fade certain instruments in or out, where to add some percussion to fill in gaps, and what voices to prioritize so that the listener (you!) hears them more. I’ll now pass it over to him so he can give you guys a better view of his production process.

Rust time!

Hey there, it's Rust. By the time Darius has sent me the file you just heard, I’ve already been thinking of what plugins and samples to use that would be a good fit for what he wrote and what I think might need to be added to fill out the track. Actually, that thought process starts with whatever first version he sends, even if it's an unfinished snippet. I’ll try to explain the music and production jargon when it’s relevant as I talk here.

With the MIDI file (this is just a file that contains instructions on how to play the music, it has no audio), I import that into REAPER, my DAW of choice (DAW being Digital Audio Workstation AKA software I use to put the music together). I then add my plugins to each instrument (a plugin can span from effects like adding reverb/echo to actual instruments like a piano).
 

I actually wanna talk about my thought process for picking these sounds. I try to not choose super new sounds. There are a ton of modern plugins out there that sound amazing and realistic, but I feel there's a certain quality to picking slightly older sounds. Sampletank 4 Max V2 is very new but also not? It's got new stuff, but a nice chuck of presets there are actually old. You can find some classic pokemon sounds in there like the strings and clarinet from HGSS and BW/2. I generally try to pull from sounds that would have been available during the late DS-era of pokemon games. It's not a concrete rule, but it is there. This track actually features a lot of old sound modules from the 90s in the jv-1080 expansion cards (uhh DLC for physical hardware).

O K. Back to this track. Putting sounds to the Instruments is really straightforward. Koto? Find a good koto from one of the many presets of my plugin libraries. In this case I mixed it with roland kotos and a soundfont (a file that holds sample data and instructions for playing them) from one of our composer friends who also works with Darius and I on Azure. He goes by DaforLynx, go check him out sometime. In the photo below you can see the plugin I use to play the soundfont plus a reverb effect to fill out the sound a bit more.
 

I am what you might call a preset hero. I love searching through these plugins and finding what sounds they have. This also somewhat extends to mixing the music, but I modify the setting of those plugins to my taste.

It really is mostly drag and drop here since we’ve done most of the heavy lifting already. The only thing we really added here was percussion. I remember Darius talking about the conquest OST, so I tried adding percussion to it that matched that. I honestly tried writing my own drum part, but I had a writing block for drums at that moment so I opt’ed for drum loops (prerecorded audio file of drums) instead.

The result is what you find below.

When we send these drafts and tracks back and forth, it's not just Darius and I making the decisions here. This is a group effort and the opinions of the whole team matter. They can listen and give us their two cents about the music. Even if they don’t know the music or production term of what they want, we can still parse what they mean. With the cafe theme, Delica is Ruby’s baby, so the final call was up to Ruby. Turns out Ruby thought it was a bit too uhh… adventurous? Outdoors-ey? Post-Mortem, oh yeah, 100% right. The drums just made it too “field theme” vs “cafe vibe.” Darius and I sat in a call for a while until we went “wait, how about Lo-fi?” Now I’d like to point out that I’ve only tried writing Lo-Fi twice about 3 - 4 years ago. Luckily, I only had to do drums for this. I found a Lo-Fi kit and wrote what I thought sounded like Lo-Fi in my head and sent that. Is it Lo-Fi? I dunno, but it sounded good and Ruby was happy that we understood her phrasing. After that it was just a few edits and nitpicks in the strings and koto.

I really feel like the way I do music is a bit out of the norm compared to other composers and producers, but I feel that imbues the music with a uniqueness that gives it charm. Remember, what matters in the end is that you had fun and you think it sounds nice.

Thanks for enduring my rambling, here’s your prize!

This is the final version we settled on. (Lil pic of the project at the end too).

Thanks for tuning in to learn more about the *m u s i c*! Please let us know what other departments you would like to see under the microscope for future updates! The most rewarding part of working on a team like this is getting to see everyone’s reactions as they experience the art you’ve created and Rust and I are forever grateful that you choose to share that with us. See you in the next one!
 

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 How was that music lesson? One of the biggest things for this cycle has been bringing Rust onboard and really diving into an OST for Desolation, and that is something I really want to invest into moving forward. So let us know your thoughts! We love to hear them, anyways, let's talk… Megas.

A Mega Performance

Yes, I couldn’t think of a title for this section, so here we go. Anyways, one of Desolation’s unique selling points has always been the custom Megas we have implemented into the game. Giving some Mons the spotlight in which they would have never been given the chance before… Until Legends ZA finally released and popped out Megas we already have in the game or Megas we have planned on adding… Hi Mega Feraligatr.

 But how do we actually decide upon what Mons we want to give custom Megas to? Well the thought process is simple… There isn’t one. Well that’s not entirely true, at the start of each Episode we sit down as a team and look at the upcoming content, a lot of factors come into play. We look at upcoming characters that are joining the Desolation cast, locations the player will be exploring, and then go through the Dex and think about what we think could be “neat” and “unique” to get a Mega. Mega Noivern fell into this category of “we love Noivern, the Canyon is nearby, this makes sense”, and for those who… are new or missed a previous post, yes we’re adding Mega Noivern. I guess I will also reveal that 2 more Mons will be getting a custom Mega this Episode. Which 2? Well I’ll leave you all to speculate on that one. 

Moving on, once we settle on the Mons, Ruby gets to work with a design. We have a brief discussion regarding stats so the design can be made to look if it’s going to be a bit more of an offensive attacker or a defensive one, on top of whether or not the Mon in question is changing types. For example, Deso’s Mega Feraligatr becoming a Poison type, we had to take into account how to implement a Poison element into its design. Once the design is finalised, I would then get to work on the stat distribution, ability and making a custom move? If it makes sense, for example Cinccino, oh and that includes giving the Mon additional moves if it becomes a new type. This role is now being handed over Omens while I still oversee and have the final say after discussions. But yeah, that’s how we go about the Mega process Basically we throw a dart at a board and whatever it lands on means Ruby goes through spriting hell and I honestly love that for her.

(Ruby’s note: God. Save me.)

Oh and one last thing, I mentioned about Legends ZA, those Megas? Yeah we’ll be adding them. When? Well either this Episode or next, I really haven’t decided yet how to go about it, but they will come at some point. As for the Megas we have created that now have “official” ones? 

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How does one end development blogs again? Uhh, go apply to join the team if you think you have what it takes! Seeing how our team has expanded from the original trio back in EP5 development to now really showcases the scale and level of growth Desolation has undertaken over the last several years, and I look forward to seeing what’s next.

Until next time folks.

Posty