A Theme for Vertigo Games
So, a long time ago when working on a now canceled game before my move to pay for the ship a car cost for my truck, and I paid for some music to be composed. Just one track, to see how it went.
It was a great track, but the project fell through and I decided not to finish up the music. A year later or so, I came across this piece, and realized…you know, this is pretty much the theme for Vertigo Games as a company. It was composed by Jonathan Geer.
http://www.vertigogaming.net/blog/musics/vertigotheme.mp3
I dunno, I think it fits VG quite well, don’t you? It will be available to play in the Puzzle section of Spirits of Metropolis, and a small portion has been cut to play over our logo for all of our future games. Woo! (fun fact: I told him to go with the March of the Penguins like-style, and boy did he pull through big time!)
For my next two games I’m tapping into some commercial licensing for music, but if Spirits and UNANNOUNCED BLOCKBUSTER 2009 GAME OF AWESOME is successful, I’d love to get some original music composed. It’s not cheap, and I’m a bit broke, so…commercial licensing it is! (and there’s quite a few good songs out there).
Anyways, I’m happy to say that I’ve gotten the horrible technical glitch I ran into last month (delaying Spirits of Metropolis) and the game is finished. More good news: I’ve found out from some publishers that I’m OK to go as far as posting the game for sale on the VG website…the only publisher I’m not sure about in that regard is Steam. My goal: get the game out on my site within the next two weeks, and go live on publishers next month. If I can’t get any publishers, then that’s ok too.
I’ll be back later this week to wrap up the final specs on Spirits of Metropolis. It’s stuff not even the beta testers know about, muhahah. (Oh, and beta testers: get ready for the final version of the game this Tuesday to hit the forums).
That theme is beautiful. March of the Penguins was great.
Congratulations with fixing that horrid bug. What part of the game was causing the music to go ‘blargh’ again? Also, what was the deal with Steam? Was it the developer API or something else.
(Also, I understand this was a quick reply, I don’t actually sit around refreshing VG all day. I just use RSS feeds)
Lost, I probably beat you here. When I first loaded the page, the song wasn’t even there yet.
Anyway, I really like the theme.
I was overloading Game Maker’s resources by maxing out the memory with huge backgrounds…and then loading sounds on top of that caused the game to crash. So I programmed in a load-on-the-fly background engine that decreased the resources used by about 35%, giving me ample memory to keep the game running healthy. Plus it puts less strain on people’s computers and loads a second or two faster. Woo!
As far as Steam goes, the only thing I’m unsure of is how they handle multi-publisher releases (that is, if there’s a window of exclusivity they get). Both Greenhouse and Steam are very much against DRM protection, which is awesome news since Spirits is not very wrapper friendly with DRM encryption. Or I should say, Game Maker isn’t wrapper friendly.
w00t! Finally found my password.
Anyways, great music ya got there. Really catchy. And the fact you’re trying to get on Steam is awesome.
But about that UNANNOUNCED BLOCKBUSTER 2009 GAME OF AWESOME…any hints as to the game type?
And when will the Spirits website be complete?
Sorry for double, but I just noticed that apparently during the host change you forgot to transfer yms.vertigogaming.net
Whoa, great theme! I especially like the beginning, it reminds me of all great games of epic proportions (including VG games!) that I’ve ever played.
Oh and I’m afraid my composing skills are nowhere near that level, otherwise I would make some tunes for you. :p
That is a nice song.
I’m almost certain there’s no exclusivity deal with Steam. 2D-Boy, the two independent game developers who made World of Goo have published their game through Steam, themselves and Nintendo’s Wii-Ware.
Man, that theme is fantastic! I can has mp3? Also, just out of curiousity, how much did that run you?
I can only assume that UB2009GOA=ONR3.
Also times two, it’s great that you fixed that glitch! I look forward to actually beta testing the final version! 😀
Yet another also: I like how the theme seems to realistically represent the expansion of Vertigo Games. In the beginning it’s really quiet, representing the early periods of Vertigo Games, where you were pretty much unheard of, and then it gradually gets louder and more exciting, showing Vertigo Gaming getting a nice fanbase, and making more and more quality games. = ]
Very win. I am also curious as to how much that cost you, and wants mp3.
It cost me about $120 or so for just the one song. Here be the MP3: http://www.vertigogaming.net/blog/musics/vertigotheme.mp3
Blueflare, that’s an awesome analysis there. Whoa.
Also, I’ll see whats up with the subdomains. Thanks Ultimate! (Spirits site will go up next weekend hopefully)
You’re welcome. And thanks for that mp3 link, but what’s this song?
http://www.vertigogaming.net/blog/musics/song.mp3
Thanks for the link there! 🙂
Ah, thats just an example MP3 for the flash player. :p
Thanks for the mp3, and for saying my analysis is awesome. =D
Today I was filling up my SD card so I could play some custom music in various Wii Games so I put this on there too, and oh boy, you have no idea how awesome this theme sounds in Excite Truck as you’re smashing up cars. It makes the process seem very beautiful.
Yeah, that’s a great theme. I hope you find a use for that other music.
This is actually super-ma-dooper awesome!
>Today I was filling up my SD card so I could play some custom music in various Wii Games so I put this on there too, and oh boy, you have no idea how awesome this theme sounds in Excite Truck as you’re smashing up cars. It makes the process seem very beautiful.>
Indeed. I actually put the original Mario theme on my friend’s GTA San Andreas. You cannot imagine how hilarious it is to be smashing stuff up with the Mario theme in the background.