The Game Developer's Conference

I'm GDC bound

I'll be there this year for the first time since 2006. I look forward to seeing all of the people that I chat with regularly via email in person. Good times!

I'm currently working on setting up my demos on USB flash drives. It seems like it still retains a little bit of that "novel idea" sheen as they are still not that common. I just hope it doesn't backfire. Nothing worse than having someone say that they can't play your demo because of some incompatibility.



I'm also a little frustrated. It looks like Microsoft pushed back it's announcement of the title I'm working on till later in the year. Man is it hard to say : "what am I working on? I’m working on an 11 month contract scoring an Xbox title for Microsoft. It’s a 90 min soundtrack for their next big racing title. It's being created by Turn 10 studios who, if you have a 360, you may know created Forza 1 and 2."

I can say that in my sleep now.

In my spare time I've been doing software updates.

Sonar 8.3.1, PLAY Software Update v1.2.0, Komplete 5 updates, V Collection updates and even more

than that.

The only one that was problematic was the Sonar update. In it's original incarnation (V8.3.0) it offered some great new features including much faster saving with the Quantum Leap Play VST which was of particular interest to me.

Turns out that the update had a little problem. It was a little thing in theory but it was a mess in actual application.

I'll let them describe it.

"WARNING Please Read: Cakewalk has recently discovered that an error was introduced in the SONAR 8.3 update that affected the "Move To" snap mode in the Clips View. Under some circumstances this can move clips into a position with a small error of several ticks. We have addressed the issue internally and are working hard to deliver a hotfix for this issue very quickly.

In the meantime, use caution when dragging clips with Move To snapping enabled. Fortunatley the error tends to be small or non-existant when zoomed in for editing. It may be wise to double check the position of dragged clips with the Clips Properties window. To see this, right-click on the clip and choose "Clip Properties..."

We apologize for the inconvenience and we'll be posting an update in the near future."

Problem was that it was not a small amount as indicated in their warning. It was a noticeable amount and was very problematic in application. If you have ever tried to copy parts between instruments or affect changes to an arrangement in total you can guess this was a pretty messy issue. I was unable to work with Sonar for any elaborate arranging about a week. And if you're familiar with my work you would know that I do pretty intricate work in my sequencers.

Imagine trying to parallel park your car but the breaks don't work so

every time you move you bump the cars around you. In the end you would not try to park or drive. It was a little like that.

Thankfully with the new update this issue was addressed and remedied. I have to hand it to Cakewalk they kept their cools despite the calls for their collective deaths from some less stable members of their user pool on their own forum. They even offered up some new features with the update. Not a bad save Cakewalk, I salute you.

And finally; M-Audio has recently released their Delta 64 bit drivers for Vista. So now I can move forward with my long planned studio upgrade to 64 bit Windows. I have all the hardware RAM and software for this process and have simply been waiting for these drivers so I can avoid buying new sound cards.

Basically this means that this whole process can all start all over again. Wish me luck.

Most soon...

Cheers!

- L