Music Theme: GarageBand for iPad really rocks!

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I wanted something cyber-punk, post-apocalyptical… a little bit like “BladeRunner”. Hiring Vangelis was kind of “out of my possibilities” (maybe when EA, Zynga or other ultra big company buys our project)… so I composed/performed the songs myself. It turns out it got more “pop” than I wanted… But it is cool.

It is amazing what you can get out of GarageBand in the iPad2 (in Brazil I had a 6 octaves midi keyboard connected to my Mac). Surprisingly, on the iPad it is possible to perform “touch-tricks” impossible to my old keyboard (controlling vibratos, glissandos or modulations directly on the keys; and very convincing guitar performances).

I finished the second part of the song on my flight to Barcelona – on the plane!

Listen:

The song and the instrument channels in GarageBand:

NanoSub Theme on GarageBand for iPad

The Sub and its look

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NanoSub wasn’t my initial idea for the Master. In the future I’ll share about “Botellón – a 3D Pinball” – for now it is enough to say it was not picked to form a group. To make a long story short, after launching iMimic with Fernando (an old friend of mine, not from the master, living in the USA), I felt the urge to combine the time spent on the master’s project with our initiative to make mobile/casual games – it was accepted – but I got very short time to come up with a new game idea…

Anyway, the change was made 3 days before a delivery date – and I needed to present something visual – even before writing the concept document (have I mentioned it shouldn’t be this way?):

the-first-concept

The first visual idea of “NanoSub” and a biologic nano combat

nanosub-concept-the-sub

The real Sub art used to create the sprite-sheets

game-play-actual-size

…and as I imagined playing would be like.

It starts like this: a text document

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Before writing a single line of code or any visual art, games generally start on a “Concept Document”. For me, it is a very interesting matter – not only writing one, but analyzing documents from others.

A good game usually has its birth on a good and clear document – clear enough to define the scope, mechanics and everything that gives the game its identity. It doesn’t guarantee a good game – It is even possible to make a game without it – but the process tends to be unpredictable and harder. Game Publishers and Studios analyze lots of such documents to decide which of them could be candidates for a real project.

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Let me know what you think 🙂