IRONHIDE COMMUNITY FORUM

Well, the time and budget bit isn't so bad for this problem, because really, the smaller the update, the less time and money go into it. But, it is sadly true that people will have already moved on and thus will never notice unless they are sincerely dedicated fans.

Manijure wrote:Yeah, I was pretty disappointed that the only boss music was during the Spider Goddess fight. I wanted something godly like the Frontiers boss music (you know it's real when I have this song on my phone), but I guess it didn't happen. I do like the Spider Goddess theme, although it's not really epic as it is weird, menacing, and grotesque (fitting the Spider Goddess herself).

I don't think IH will be focusing on the Origins music for a while, if ever, since they're working on Iron Marines and Kingdom Rush IV. My fingers are crossed, though; as a musician, music is everything to me.

I could be wrong about this, but I am pretty sure IH doesn't do the music, they have someone like Hyperduck Soundworks do it. I don't know how much they communicate with the music makers, but even as much as 5 hours a week for one person, doesn't seem to much. And my guess is they would be talking about 10 minutes a day.
I don't think it would effect IH's progress on the new game at all.

Juice Box wrote:

Ninja wrote:

86er wrote:Other than a few days to weeks of code modification to somehow wriggle the boss music into the bosses' appearances themselves, I see no reason why there shouldn't be a maintenance update with this in the feature.

Agreed.

No, not agreed.

Boss music, if you hadn't noticed, requires a small cutscene to introduce it. You ever notice how all the bosses in Frontiers have a cutscene to introduce them? That isn't just there to add to the coolness factor, it's also so that the game can switch music. Because you can't just shift between normal music and then boss music all of a sudden. If IH is going to incorporate your suggestion, they'll need to add a cutscene to pretty much all the bosses, a major hassle when you think about it.

Don't get me wrong, I want boss music, too, I just wanted to correct what you said up there.

I don't see why we have to stop at boss music, though. Because that isn't just the only problem regarding bosses in Origins: I'm pretty sure most of us thought Bram and Godieth were incredibly unsatisfying, and Baj'Nimen was too much a pain in the ass for your Hero to actually make him fun to fight. Origins bosses just don't bring an oomph factor to them like Umbra and the others do: they're boring, their fights are linear, and most of what they can do, we've seen before.

Agreed. The new bosses and even some old ones need to be redone. I think a slightly (emphasis on the slightly) different path would be nice and more special abilities. Definitely more diverse and random would be best.

Juice Box wrote:

Big Bad Bug wrote:

86er wrote:Regardless of whether or not a cutscene is required, I fail to see how IH couldn't just dedicate about a month more or less to get the boss music to play for all bosses.

Plus, part of what made some of Frontiers' bosses cool is their own unique minions that appear only when their boss does.
Perhaps Bram Could have spawned Greater Blood Gnolls and Godieth could have called Tainted Titans to come from the lava pit.

Making digital music is really hard. I downloaded an app called Nanostudio, and it takes a great deal of dedication to put together all of the sounds and make them sound right. Perhaps it's because I don't play any instruments, so I'm just not musically-inclined, but it seems like a gruelling process to me. While I would prefer music to no music in the games, I just wanted to mention that it would be a lot of work for the already-busy Ironhide, or a lot of money to hire another studio to make the soundtrack.

^^Yes, that. But anyways, when you're in a business, two of the primary things that keep you back are time and budget. Ironhide needs more of both, from what I know.

Especially more so when you consider that you're putting in time and budget on a small update for a game that's been out for more than a year already. Remember that releasing an update for a game that's been out for a year is pretty hard, since people would have moved on already.

On the other hand, when IH release a new update, they have in game purchases. I don't know the profit they get from the updates and how much it costs to make one, but IH has adequate money to lose just a little.
Besides, there main goal should be (if it isn't already) to make good games (and updates) not make money. That is pretty much how the indie gamer world works anyway.

With the way the world is the aim of pretty much everything is to make money.

I play flute, saxophone, piano and sing. I composed two small pieces for my music GCSE, one for a flûte group and one for two flutes and piano. Also on my own I arranged Rey's theme from Star Wars from a piano reduction to a three part flûte choir so me and my friends could play it. Making music is bloody time consuming and hard work. It's one thing to play the music once it is written, but wholly another to make the music itself with nowhere to start. Making the arrangement of Star Wars took me about a month to put the parts into software and another few weeks to move it all around, balance the harmonies and get it how I wanted. The two pieces I made are a minimalist piece where I made one riff and just added fragments to it. More copy and pasting bars than composing. The second was variations on Au Clair De La Lune, which was interesting to put, in say a waltz. And that's with help on a very small scale.

So as much as I would love KRO boss music you can't dismiss it as a simplicity. People moan about some of the music for films but the time and effort that goes into them is massive, to make roughly an hours music for a whole orchestra could easily take a whole year.

The Kingmaker wrote:With the way the world is the aim of pretty much everything is to make money.

What you say here makes me pretty sure your American. The importance of money is really an first world idea, especially in the US. If you travel to third world countries like I have plenty of times, you will find people will do things for you that cost them money and they ask for nothing in return. But they get something in return: happiness. And that's everyone's true goal. Money is simply a way to bring us happiness, even if it only means having food to eat. Strangely, people with less money are happier. But that's unrelated.

And here's proof that the indie world lives on making good games, not money: "Yet, we stand by [game] as a good product. It does make people happy, that is what we set out to do" -Sarah Woodrow, an Indie Developer.

Sinque Productions wrote:

The Kingmaker wrote:With the way the world is the aim of pretty much everything is to make money.

What you say here makes me pretty sure your American. The importance of money is really an first world idea, especially in the US. If you travel to third world countries like I have plenty of times, you will find people will do things for you that cost them money and they ask for nothing in return. But they get something in return: happiness. And that's everyone's true goal. Money is simply a way to bring us happiness, even if it only means having food to eat. Strangely, people with less money are happier. But that's unrelated.

And here's proof that the indie world lives on making good games, not money: "Yet, we stand by [game] as a good product. It does make people happy, that is what we set out to do" -Sarah Woodrow, an Indie Developer.

I... actually disagree? Where I am, less than half of one percent of the population (basically >0.5%) gets maybe somewhere between a third and a half of all the nation's money, and the gap between the rich and the poor is extreme. Yet it's very clear that the richer part of the population is much, much happier.

Maybe it's because it's the way I was raised, but I've been taught that money is extremely important. And the way the world works here, I really can't help but agree. You're right when you say that money is a way to bring happiness, but it's currently the best way.

Also, yeah, money can't buy you happiness, but it can buy you ice cream, and ice cream and happiness are directly correlated.

Sinque Productions wrote:

The Kingmaker wrote:With the way the world is the aim of pretty much everything is to make money.

What you say here makes me pretty sure you're American.

He actually isn't.

You got in there before me Ninja (thanks for remembering)

While I am not American, I am from the UK, so your point largely still stands.

The Kingmaker wrote:While I am not American, I am from the UK, so your point largely still stands.

Though Juice Box's statement refutes his point to some degree.

Really!? Everyone that I've met when I was young told my money isn't very important. It certainly is though.

Just a few thoughts here.

- Ironhide is a game studio. Not so sure about the "indie" label, because honestly, we don't even know what that words means any more. We do things ourselves, we don't outsource development and we don't use publishers. Also, we make our games of our own intellectual properties instead of taking work-for-hire projects. If that makes us an Indie studio, great, if it doesn't, also great.

- Ironhide now employs 27 people. We don't have money to spare. Money invested on things that do not bring returns (to at very least cover our expenses) is a silly risk that jeopardises the jobs of everyone here. I personally think that not adding music to boss levels was a bad decision, but it's done. We can't pay the composer to add soundtracks for a mobile game that was released a year and a half ago. That investment will not pay itself back.

- Following the previous points... we in Ironhide try to do things that we are happy and proud of, but we will not disregard market trends or reasonable business practices. That's the reason why we kept in-app purchases even though many people is very critical of it. Or why we had to make a purely mobile Kingdom Rush Origins instead of investing on a Steam version. Creativity and economical sustainability must be balanced or we: A) Become a soulless company, B) Go broke.

Those are my two cents, from inside the Studio. Carry on.

The_TaTs wrote:- Ironhide is a game studio. Not so sure about the "indie" label, because honestly, we don't even know what that words means any more. We do things ourselves, we don't outsource development and we don't use publishers. Also, we make our games of our own intellectual properties instead of taking work-for-hire projects. If that makes us an Indie studio, great, if it doesn't, also great.

"Indie" just stands for "independent." So yeah, you're an indie game studio.

Bring back the composer in order to make all bosses in origins have the music?

Are you kidding me?! The music used for Spider Goddess would suffice just fine, and if Iron Hide had time to both make Iron Marines and make a Steam version of origins, they definitely have time to spend one day modifying code to incorporate the exact same, archived track on 5 bosses, especially if they are releasing the origins level packs in patches over the next few months for Steam. Heck, when the first level pack for Frontiers was released on Steam, Leviathan didn't have boss music playing, but they certainly fixed that error.

Having watched some steam clips of origins and finding out that Iron Hide STILL refuses to spend up to a couple days tops just to make the single boss track work for all bosses has brought me back here again.

Obviously cut-scenes are not a requirement to make the music work, or there would be a cutscene not just for all of the original bosses, but also for Xyzzy in Frontiers.

If I am factually wrong anywhere in this post, I would be much obliged if you would quote and correct me honestly. Now that this post is over, I have a time to cool down a bit.

86er wrote:Now that this post is over, I have a time to cool down a bit.

Honestly, this post was over two and a half years ago. 95% of the people who replied to the thread are no longer here to offer any kind of rebuttal.

IMO, you're getting far too emotional over a bit of background music. The game isn't ruined because it doesn't change.

If you want to continue discussing this, please make a new thread, Necros get closed.