My first game soundtrack (Bionicle Heroes GBA)
 

Download Link: http://www.sendspace.com/file/uwptfx

My first game just made it to the shelves earlier this week (11/14), so I'm releasing the tracks I made for it. It's done in a sort of electronic style (they were looking for sci-trance, it turned out a bit different but hey), which is not something I'm really used to, but I managed to adapt to it by the time I finished up. I'm more used to writing melodic stuff, so it was a challenge in that way, and I finally blew off some steam at the end of the project by writing "The End Of The Invaders", which is a chiptune containing basically nothing but melody. Amazingly, it got put into the game, as BGM for a minigame.

Also, it should be noted that I upgraded the sample quality to get rid of the infamous "GBA hiss".

Too bad I'm not moderator, but that belongs to My Stuffs forum.

Cool, a new gameripper!

I hope you won't end gameripping right there.

Oh, sorry about the wrong placement, I haven't gone around My Stuff much recently. It's not really a gamerip, I don't really know anything about doing that, I just took my original modules and changed the samples up.

If you read the entire post, you'd see he's a composer, not a gameripper ...

Congrats Toma. I'll post later to let you know what I thought of it. =)

Now that you're talking about it, yeah.... I didn't read the post... ^_^;;

but it doesn't belong here anyway.

There's some really good tracks here, I'm suprised that someone with actual talent would come to this place. My favorites are Liquid Adventures, A Pause In The Action, On The Tracks and Earth Challenge. What software does one use to sequence GBA music?

Make sure to tell us of any future projects :)

For this and the current project I'm working on I used Modplug Tracker, and it was implemented into the game with Krawall (I think that's pretty standard with GBA musics). I've heard other tracker programs, like Impulse Tracker, are easier to use, but I started with Modplug, so it's hard for me to switch since I'm so used to the interface.

I recently found out that I may get hired for a DS game in the near future, in which case it would probably be MIDI + soundfonts, so I'm excited about that.

Oh, and I didn't come up with any of the titles to the songs, just to clear that up. I can't say I really care for a lot of them (A PAUSE in the Action, get it, so like when you PAUSE? Har har har. Josh, if you're reading this, I apologize :)). I did like "Stoned Enemies", though. They actually changed that in the ingame sound test and I was quite disappointed. So I kept it.

Fantastic job, Toma! It's pretty heartwarming to see a VGM enthusiast break into the industry themselves.

The music is very good (not like I doubted that for a second before listening ;)), certainly sounds like tracker music. I especially enjoyed Frozen Arean, Ice Challenge, Fire Challenge, Evil Awakens(both versions), and The End of the Invaders. I might actually play the rom to see where each track plays for certain purposes.

lol earthy delights, can't believe you did that

Heh, neither can I. I was actually behind on a deadline and had just written that for the DoF, finding that it worked really well with the area. But I kinda wish I had taken the time to write a whole new piece. I won't be doing that again.

This is good stuff; great work, Toma!

I'd say more, but I haven't listened to this since Friday (when the forums were down), and I can't take a listen to the music again right now. I'll try to comment further at a later time.

Anyway, to speak on which forum this thread goes in... It's true that a thread which offers a VGM soundtrack normally goes in My Stuff, but also... a thread which has the poster offering their compositions normal goes in The Concert Hall. Since this is a mix of the two, it is a special occasion. In this case, I think I'll just leave the thread here for now.

Good stuff... a lot of it is very catchy and I'm not a big fan of this type of music. But, I like it. :)

I gave the songs a listen, it's some good stuff. Liquid Adventures and Burning Heat were probably my two favorite ones up there. I look forward to hearing more of your work.

Can you tell us a little bit about the composing process? i.e., what guidelines they gave you, how much of the game/story they showed you beforehand, if they forced you to make any revisions or changes, etc?

Toma,
as a professional composer, how does one go about getting these sort of gigs. I am currently a student composer but I'd like to get work when I have finished my studies. I've always wanted to do game sound tracks so talking to a living, breathing professional is a really cool opportunity:)

Hey, sorry it took me so long to respond to this. I was given pretty much all the info I needed. This game has next to no story, but I got storyboards for the one cutscene :) The main guidelines they gave were a) more kick drum and b) less melody. I had started out writing in a more melodic style that I am used to writing in, but they were looking for a more futuristic, trancey sound, so I had to change stuff around. I had a few preliminary attempts that got rejected, but once I got in the groove of things it began falling together pretty well. Also, the project had a change of producers midway through, which helped as the new guy didn't have quite as much of preconceived notion of exactly how it should sound.

As for the composing process itself, I'm guilty of not planning stuff out much beforehand, I basically just open up my tracker and write (which I'm trying to do less of, but I've been composing like that for years and it's a tough habit to break). I get a sheet with all the music they need from me, and I do play the game, but it seems like I write a lot more from how I picture a certain area or from looking at conceptual artwork than from actually playing through it. There were some cool concept sketches that I wish would have gotten included, unfortunately I think I deleted them.

Well, I'd say, and I think most others in the industry would agree, that the most important thing is getting to know people in game audio (or development in general). I was absolutely lucky in getting the position I did, but I recommend you put together a demo of music that you've written in many styles, and maybe in a variety of formats (MIDI, Tracker, live recording if possible), and sending it out to various companies. I'm also lucky because I live in Seattle, which is a great place to be for this kind of work, but except for in-house composers, it's mostly contract work and can be done via correspondance.

I'd like to hear what you've written! I don't really have any power as far as getting anybody hired, but my interest is piqued.

So basically, you get jobs through locale and connections. Do you think it is a good idea to send unsolicited demos to many companies in the hopes of getting work? I've heard that sometimes these companies will just toss these packages without even looking at them.

Also, I PM'd you a link with some music on it.