Archive: 3 posts

---

The Melody Maker 2 by livingston_tf, or crazymario here on LBPC, is a level where you (what else?) make music. Melody Maker 2 isn't so much a level as it is a tool. This isn't a necessarily a problem. The real question is how much power does this tool give you. Is its interface easy enough for noobs like me while still offering enough depth to make something cool? Quite frankly, no. While Melody Maker 2 is as user-friendly as it gets, there's no way to make anything complex. You're trapped in the realm of eight notes where chords are inexistant. The beats you can make all sound like they're played by a one-armed paraplegic, as even Def Leppard's one-armed drummer could play more than one drum at a time. Sure, it's incredibly easy to use, but at a price. You don't get better at The Melody Maker. Your first melody won't be any more complex or interesting as your second. Or third. Or fourth. Oh, and there are 24 spaces for notes. Each note takes up an eight note of space. 24/8 is...oh. Three measures. If you're gonna have a loop, please make the number of measures a multiple of two. Thanks. Now let's talk about the sweet interface. I played the first Melody Maker, and it was horribly annoying. You would have to get a jetpack to fly between melody, beat, and background music rooms. Then, you go back downstairs to listen to your song. MM2, on the other hand, has an incredibly nifty interface that's all compressed onto one floor. The background music room is huge and the walk back is long, but I didn't use the background music because I'm a beast. All you have to do if flick a switch to change between beat creation and melody creation. If you mess up the beat section but the melody section is just fine, you can delete the beat section without having to make your melody all over again. There's still no way to delete the last note you created, but I'm not that much of a noob so it didn't give me that much of a problem. There are two tempos, but both are painfully slow. I couldn't find the scoreboard, but, if it's like the first one, you get a miniature version of the melody maker for your levels. Unfortunately, all of these things have to realize that if they are going to work, they'll have to be able to follow you everywhere without being noticed by the player. They'll have to go up, down, left, and right without a problem. Melody Maker 2 is an easy to use tool with no depth. It might entertain you for a few minutes, but I doubt it will be enough for you to take it into create mode to make your own music. The game comes with a bunch of musical sounds. All you have to do is make some magnetic key switches and a block, attach a sound to it, copy paste it and mess with sliders, and then boom. You have a music level. It might sound like ****, but someone somewhere will give you experimentation points, unlike Melody Maker, which will probably just give you one-fingered pianist points. :star::star:

2009-09-26 02:47:00 Author: qrtda235566 Posts: 3664

---

I didn't even realize that it was an odd number of measures, stupid me. I'll definitely fix that next time! I'm not sure how to add chords and more-than-one-handed drum beats without making the interface being annoying. I'll definitely add more notes and sounds if a MM3 ever comes to be. And I'll fix the tempos up next time, as well. Thanks a lot for the review! It was really helpful!

2009-09-26 15:02:00 Author: crazymario Posts: 657

---

I didn't even realize that it was an odd number of measures, stupid me. I'll definitely fix that next time! I'm not sure how to add chords and more-than-one-handed drum beats without making the interface being annoying. I'll definitely add more notes and sounds if a MM3 ever comes to be. And I'll fix the tempos up next time, as well. Thanks a lot for the review! It was really helpful! Well, to make chords and overlapping beats, all you really need to do is make a way to open up additional beat and note sections. Pretty much copy/pasting. And this space could be opened or closed with an easy/advanced switch. This would mean that the people looking just to mess around a little wouldn't feel like they're messing with a tool that's too complex for them, while people like me who have experimented with it and want to do something more won't feel held back. You don't have to sacrifice user-friendliness for complexity or vice versa. The people who want something more complex will forgive an annoying interface, and as long as you don't force something complex on the casual crowd they'll still like the Melody Maker. You've got quite a nice idea here and a real talent for making a simple and easy-to-use interface, now build on that.

2009-09-26 16:37:00 Author: qrtda235566 Posts: 3664

Posts: 1077139    Threads: 69970    Members: 9661    Archive-Date: 2019-01-19

Aus dem Archiv wurden alle persönlichen Daten wie Name, Anschrift, Email etc. - aber auch sämtliche Inhalte wie z.B. persönliche Nachrichten - entfernt.
Die Nutzung dieser Webseite erfolgt ohne Speicherung personenbezogener Daten. Es werden keinerlei Cookies, Logs, 3rd-Party-Plugins etc. verwendet.