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hmxspraynwipe commented on somebody's profile...
hmxspraynwipe said...
Week 3 is here!
* Monday:"Ramblin' Basslines"
* Tuesday: "Blood Sugar Sex Magik Battle" and "Three More Degrees..."
* Wednesday: "Guitarist/Frontman Battle"
* Thursday "Shooting Star Battle"
* Friday: "New Wave-Off"
* Saturday: "History of Metal"
* Sunday: "Tangled Up in Vocals"
Very soon, the new rockband.com will be up, which will contain a swank new interface for viewing upcoming battles! It'll also make these blog posts pretty redundant, so I'll probably change the format of this to a "Dan's Battle Pick of the Week" rather than a directory of upcoming content. It'll probably be more interesting then, too.
As usual, post your battle suggestions below. Next week you'll start to see some of your suggestions go live!
hmxspraynwipe said...
This week in Battle of the Bands:
* Tuesday brings the "This Week in DLC Battle". Play "You're No Rock and Roll Fun", "Shoot the Runner" and "Bandages" in a single setlist!
* "The Hardcore Guitar Battle" lets hard and expert players prove their dominance on "Colony of Birchmen", "Battery", and "Peace Sells".
* "The Literal Battle" is exactly what it sounds like.
* The "Intensive Care Battle" is a touching story about ill people, featuring songs like "Sick, Sick, Sick" and "Vital Signs".
* The "Saturday Rap Battle" is all talkies, all the time. Rap your way to success in "So Watcha Want", "Give it Away" and "Testify".
* On Sunday, drummers get their chance in the spotlight with the "Drum Solo-off!"
hmxspraynwipe said...
Wow, a lot of you really like playing battles! Here's what's coming up for "Launch Week":
* Yesterday, the "Peace Sells... Album Battle" started. Be sure to grab the tracks off the Rock Band Music Store and compete away!
* Interested in learning more about the music you have? Check out the "Three Degrees of Separation" (live Tuesday) battle. How exactly are "Everlong" and Tobi Vail connected?
* Also, the "History of Rock" (live Thursday) battle will take you through a chronological tour of the rock genre.
* It's also streak week on Rock Band 2 this week. Check out both the "Bass Groove Battle" (live Monday) and the "Drum Streak Battle" (live Wednesday) if you want to prove yourself as the master of consecutive note hitting.
For those of you who've submitted ideas, thank you. We've already added some of these, and they'll be showing up in a few weeks time! And, if there's anything you don't like about the current battles, that's valid too - just let us know and we'll keep it in mind when designing new battles.
hmxspraynwipe said...
Well, it's my last blog before Rock Band 2 comes out. It's been a fun ride filled with information, arm wrestling and sandwiches, but I'm glad you all stuck it out.
I realised that during this whole time, I didn't talk about the biggest feature in the game - Battle of the Bands! While we have a bunch of surprises that people will experience when they play a battle for the first time, here's a quick primer:
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I’m really excited about Battle of the Bands because it feels like a real battle of the bands competition – it’s not just four people playing against four other people.
We’re going to be uploading new daily and weekly battles every day, each of which have unique setlists and gameplay conditions. One day you might be playing an Expert Guitar Battle that disables overdrive, the next day it might be a family-friendly band battle that you can’t fail out on.
You have to battle through your friends list first, then once you're the king of your friends list you can battle against everyone in the world for the crown of "best band in the world". When you play the song, you'll be matched up with your nearest competition, and a Tug of War-style meter will show up in the middle to let you know how you're doing in real time.
This is essentially asynchronous multiplayer, kind of like what Spore does with its community aspects, and we think it provides a much more accessible and rewarding band multiplayer experience.
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So, what am I going to be posting about now that the game will be out? This week in Battle of the Bands, that's what! Every week, we'll be posting a "best of the week" guide for the battles that are coming out, so that you can prepare yourself for competition.
This week's pick for battles, Launch Week Edition!
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Between now and the end of the launch week, we have 19 battles opening! My picks are below.
* Did you somehow luck into getting a copy of the game before it launches on the 14th, and want to celebrate? In that case, you should jump into the "Late Night Rock Band Bash" on Friday - a Star battle with Pump it Up, The Middle, and Lump, all with no fail enabled.
* On Sunday from 12am to 9am, the "Break of Dawn Battle" goes live. Compete in the first official Rock Band 2 battle to prove that you're hardcore! The cool thing about this is that every band has a battle history, so by playing this battle you're essentially getting a badge of honor in your "Battle History" list to show that you were there not just on Day 1, but at the midnight launch.
* If you need your beauty sleep, you'll also have the "Launch Day Battle" and the "Rock Band 2 Week Battle" that you can compete in during the day or week, respectively.
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We want to make sure that the Rock Band 2 Live Team is making the battles you want to play, so definitely leave your ideas for cool battles in the comments of these posts. Some cool future battles for inspiration:
- A "Stalker" battle with "One Way Or Another" by Blondie
- A "History of Metal" battle, with one metal song from each decade
- A "Six Degrees of Separation" battle, where we connect one band to another through songs available in Rock Band.
Sparked your interest? Post your battle ideas below!
(and for those of you who've been asking for an RSS feed - these posts are mirrored on my design blog too. RSS is here.)
hmxspraynwipe said...
Edit: First video footage of successful "Cheeseburger in Paradise" challenge
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I recently recieved a request from a Rock Band fan that I'm allowed to anwser without checking with LL Cool Drake or the Viacom Lawyer Squad:
"I hope Rock Band 2 comes with a deli fresh ham sandwich, as I could certainly go for a deli fresh ham sandwich. At the rate you guys are going with feature requests I figure it's worth a shot."
Well, while we won't be including a deli fresh ham sandwich in the Rock Band 2 Special Edition box due to the inability to create sandwiches fresh at our retail partners, I can confirm here first that Rock Band 2 will support players eating their own deli fresh ham sandwiches during all songs on the Rock Band 2 disc, as well as all of the songs available on the Rock Band Music Store and songs that have been exported from the original Rock Band disc.
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Deli Sandwich Q&A:
Q: How will sandwiches work on "missing part" sandwiches such as open-face melts?
A: Extra care will be required in eating to make sure you don't stick your thumb into the sandwich.
Q: So, I can eat a deli sandwich on any song?
A: Technically, yes. Some songs will compliment sandwich eating (Cherry Bomb, Margaritaville), whereas other songs may provide sandwich eating challenges (March of the Pigs). It opens up new emergent eating choices, and we're proud to be pioneering this design ground with Rock Band 2!
Q: How can I trust someone that cheats in an arm wrestle?
A: I totally didn't cheat. Check out that video footage on Destructoid, my elbow is on the table the entire time I am using my crushing weight to win. I will admit, however, that I caught out good sported James Mouat with a thumb-wrestle "fast count". Point is, I'm your hookup for sandwich/rhythm gaming crossover.
Q: Will there be anything that caters to the ScoreHero crowd vis-a-vis sandwiches?
A: I can't talk about anything right now, but I can give you a hint with three words: Cheeseburger in Paradise.
Q: This isn't innovation! TF2 did this already!
A: TF2's implementation is dramatically different to ours - for a start, theirs is a virtual sandwich which doesn't sate any hunger of the player, only that of their character. Sandwiches eaten during Rock Band 2 are as authentic as you can possibly get, and can be eaten at any time. Also, it has a W rather than a V.
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Post your questions below, and I'll do my best to answer them.
(crossposted from my non-rock blog)
hmxspraynwipe said...
So, PAX combined with having to go through a legal pass on this weeks blog means that I probably won't have anything of note this week. I'd post photos of our legal team, but I don't have any, and they scare me a little.
-DanT
hmxspraynwipe said...
Chester and Kohler were arm wrestled into oblivion.
Mouat was thumb wrestled into the ground, but only barely.
No developers accepted the hug-off challenge.
hmxspraynwipe said...
So, after issuing my challenge, I realised that I hadn't thumb or arm wrestled in 10 years.
At the airport, I arm wrestled HMXHenry and thumb wrestled HMXJohnlok to see if I still had skills. Results
* I suck at arm wrestling
* I rule at thumb wrestling
I have just over 30 hours to improve the first one, otherwise it's going to be delighfully awkward when I meet Crecente and Chester.
hmxspraynwipe said...
We'll be at PAX this week! If you're there, be sure to come and say hi to us at the booth, and/or come to our 90 minute panel of awesomeness.
On that topic: It has come to my attention however that "big name" gaming celebrities always make these outrageous claims and stunts in order to get press time from the gaming blogs. Therefore, as a D-list gaming celebrity who's trying to make sure that Team Harmonix isn't talking to an empty room on Saturday, I am making the following proclamations:
* I challenge Kotaku's Mike Fahey, Wired's Chris Kohler, and Destructoid's Nick Chester to an arm wrestle. Mike is allowed to substitute for Crecente if he can't make it, but in that case I'm allowed to take my elbow off the table and Brian isn't - Crecente looks like he works out, so I need any advantage I can get.
* I challenge 2K Boston's Ken Levine, Epic's Cliff Bleszinski, and Hothead Games' James Mouat to a thumb wrestle, to determine once and for all the title "Best Designer with a Right Thumb". If multiple designers accept the challenge, I will do 2v1.
* I challenge any members of the Guitar Hero: World Tour, SingStar, and Rock Revolution development teams to a manly hug/complement off. First person to pull away or stall on a compliment loses.
The only condition - the challenge needs to take place immediately after the "History of Harmonix" panel finishes up. If you don't show up, I win by default. If you've been served and want to bring it, then give me a yell ahead of time so that I can put myself into intensive arm/thumb/hug/compliment training.
And now, your regularly scheduled programming: Tour Challenges
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When we started developing Rock Band 2, we had a bunch of goals for progression:
* We wanted to update Solo Tour. Progression is an important part of playing the on-disc songs, but the whole "play a list of songs" is stale, and World Tour is more focused on exploration than progression.
* We wanted to include DLC into the campaign mode. At the end of the year we'll have over 500 songs for people to play, and we wanted to integrate it properly, not just as a "Downloaded Songs" list.
* We wanted to solve the problem of people getting stuck on one song and not progressing (Freyaism/Reaperism). Just because I suck on one song out of 84 doesn't mean I'm not good enough to play the final songs.
* We also wanted to make sure every song played during the progression was the best for that instrument. Singing "So Watcha Want" is an awesome experience, but playing bass on it isn't as good as playing some of the other bass songs. At the same time, everyone should be able to play every song - mode-exclusive songs suck.
After messing around with different ideas, we came up with Tour Challenges!
In the Tour Challenge mode, players play increasingly difficult sets of songs known as "Challenges", represented as your band's discography.
Unlike Solo Tour in Rock Band, Tour Challenges follow a tree structure rather than a linear path - beating a challenge unlocks multiple other challenges for you to beat. This way, you are never 'stuck' on a song when progressing, since they can jump around between various challenges.
Let's give a quick example. I start up Rock Band 2 for the first time on guitar (and with a friend on drums), and jump straight into tour challenges.
My first choice is to select the difficulty of the challenges that I want to play at. Since it's my first time, I only have the first tier of difficulty available to me: "Local Upstart". Jumping in, I see all of the "Local Upstart" challenges that are unlocked by default
Since I haven't played anything yet, I have four options available to
me:
* "Band Warmups" - which is the 3 best easy band songs in the game
* "Fender Warmups" - which is the 3 best easy guitar songs in the game
* "Drum Warmups" - ...3 best easy drum songs...
* "Vocal Warmups" - ...noticing a pattern here?
There are also some locked ones that we'll see more of in a minute.
Now, since I have a guitar and drum band, it means I can't play the "Vocal Warmups", since I need a vocalist to play those. I can, however, play the guitar, drum, and band challenges. Yes, that means you can have a friend on drums still help you out when you're playing the "guitar-specific" challenges! Let's play the guitar challenge!
Pretty simple, right? Well, if we beat this, we'll get three more challenges! Let's do it!
Like I mentioned in my last blog, you can pause and save your progress any time. So, if you need to leave before "New Kid in School", you can just save your position in the set and come back to it later.
Not this time though - we played through and won!
Note that we unlocked three new challenges that we can play in, just by playing one challenge!
* "The Guitar Apprentice" is the next level up of the "Guitar" challenges.
* "The Bass Apprentice" is the first challenge of the "Bass" campaign! Yep, you can go through and play a full bass campaign!
* "Warmup Marathon Part 1" is the first marathon challenge, and it's for people who want to play the game the old way - if you follow the "Warmup Marathon" path, you'll play all 84 disc songs in a single path. Note that you don't have to play these at all, because Tour Challenges lets you pick and choose the songs and challenges you play to get up to the top.
If I had any easy DLC on my console, these challenges would also show up!
Oh, and hey, I've unlocked another tier! I now have 15 challenges I can choose between to decide how I'm going to progress. They aren't just instrument based, either. Take this screenshot from a few blogs back...
* "'00s Hits" are the 5 best songs from the '00s in one challenge. Playing this unlocks...
* "Infinite '00s Challenge". This is EVERY song that was released this decade, regardless of whether it was on disc or DLC.
The cool thing about this is that it grows and shrinks with your library. If I beat this challenge, then buy "Girls Who Play Guitars" by Maximo Park, the challenge acts as if I saved and resumed just before that song was added. Essentially, I can re-complete this challenge just by playing that song.
This same system also applies for genre - you could have a "New Wave Challenge" that opens up into an "Infinite New Wave Challenge".
* "Touring Harmonix Bands Challenge" is one of the three challenges that the Harmonix Bands are in in Tour Challenges. We've broken them up into three categories: Breaking (which includes bands like Speck), Touring (which includes bands that are on tour right now, like Bang Camaro), and Impossible (which includes the abolutely ridiculous song "Visions" by Abnormality).
* "The Who Challenge" is a DLC artist challenge. This appeared because I have some Who DLC on my Xbox (which, frankly, you all should have).
New DLC challenges show up in this order:
- If you've purchased three or more songs from an album, an album challenge shows up ("Screaming For Vengeance Album Challenge")
- If you've purchased three or more songs from an artist, an artist challenge shows up ("The Nine Inch Nails Challenge")
- If you've purchased a pack of multiple different artists, a pack challenge shows up ("(Arguably) Punk Pack 01 Challenge")
* "Harmonix Rock Band Tracks Challenge" is a challenge comprised of all the Harmonix bands from the Rock Band 1 disc. When you export your Rock Band 1 disc, challenges are added into Rock Band 2 for those songs, based on the groupings that they had in Rock Band 1.
Oh, and one last thing - Tour Challenges give away "Ultimate" outfits if you play a specific path all the way to the end. These outfits are things that are so amazing, that we couldn't attach a price to them or justify selling them in the store.
One that we've talked about is the live snake, which you get for beating one of the Impossible Tour Challenges:
One that we haven't talked about is the assless chaps. I won't spoil what you get this for.
Looking for blog posts? Check out The 'Zine, or dantdesign.blog- spot.com.-
Tuesday, October 7, 2008