In a world of impossibly difficult rogue-likes FTL ups the challenge but dares to be fun and unique. One large element in the mixture of FTL's awesomery is the score. From the opening track of Ben Prunty's "Space Cruise" to the more etherial "Engi," the score is important to building the overall feel of an open and lonely universe. I picked up an FTL bundle on Steam that included the score and was impressed with Ben's work.

I contacted Ben and he was kind enough to answer some questions I had about FTL and the other stuff he is up to right now. He just launched a pre-order for his new album "Curious Merchandise" and has two preview tracks "Fractal Wheel" and "Swamp Witch" available to stream on Bandcamp.

http://benprunty.bandcamp.com/album/curious-merchandise

jdodson: When you look back at your work on FTL now, what comes to mind? Anything you might approach differently?

Ben Prunty: I might not have had so many hi-hats in all the battle tracks. Seriously, they're everywhere! Other than that, I'm pretty satisfied with how it came out.

CapnCurry: The first time I played FTL, I noticed the title music was kind of lonely and maybe a little regretful. I was intrigued, because I was expecting more of a hero's-fanfare, never-tell-me-the-odds kind of overture. Having played through FTL a few (hundred) times, I have to say the music is strikingly appropriate to the tone of the game itself -- when I start a new game, the title music is almost a reminder that I'm almost definitely going to die alone in space. Can you tell us a little about how you came to select that musical direction for the title music?

Ben Prunty: I was asked to have something at least vaguely chiptune-esque and not overly dramatic. I'm a fan of space horror more than space opera, and there's already plenty of bombastic sci-fi music out there. I decided right from the start that FTL would sound cinematic but without an orchestra. I thought this would help make it distinctive. Space is creepy and lonely, and there's nothing particularly bombastic about suffocating to death on your own ship. So I really tried to convey that. I think you can hear that most in Void, Deepspace, Debris, Wasteland, and Engi.

jdodson: The FTL score clocks in at 1.5 hours. When you were talking with Matthew and Justin did they give you an outline of how much music they wanted? Did you get any other cues to work off for the game in terms of direction they wanted you to take?

Ben Prunty: The amount of music needed was more a mutual decision after a lot of discussion. The only other direction I got from them was "We really like the music from Battlestar Galactica."

jdodson: What other composers do you look at as doing great work? Any video game composers come to mind?

Ben Prunty: My favorite game soundtrack is from EarthBound, written by Keiichi Suzuki. For FTL I was listening to funk music, Gustav Holst, and chiptunes. Right now I'm obsessed with Empire of the Sun's new(ish) album and John Williams music for the Indiana Jones movies. He weaves so many different themes together, which is similar to what I tried to do with FTL.

CapnCurry: Did you play the finished game before you wrote the score, or did you have less-complete materials to work with?

Ben Prunty: I had the great privilege of playing a build of the game that was very far along before I had to write anything. I joined the project about a year into its development.

jdodson: One of the unique aspects of the FTL score for me is the battle music. Most battle music is somewhat jarring and fierce. The FTL score battle queues don’t follow this tradition and instead focus more on darker tones and occasionally quicker tempos. When you were creating the battle queues I wonder what your plan was?

Ben Prunty: I just wanted battles to sound exciting. Something to get your pulse going. An extreme generalization would be that the Battle versions of tracks are simply the Explore track with percussion added. The most basic example is Colonial: same track but with drums. On the other end of the spectrum, Cosmos Battle is pretty much an entirely different track from Cosmos Explore. And then throughout the soundtrack there are many shades of difference in between. Try arranging arranging a playlist where the Battle tracks come right after their respective Explore tracks and you'll get a good idea of how it works.

Jarring and fierce works for a 2-hour movie but not for a game that you'll be playing for 30 hours or more.

jdodson: What would you suggest to people that want to break into scoring video game music?

Ben Prunty: Keep making music constantly and go out and meet people! Find where game developers are and where they gather and crash those parties! Also be ready for this to take a long time. I started making music in 2000, when I was 17. Since then it's been 13 years of practice and work and many canceled projects. I made almost no money from my music during that time. It's discouraging when you find that no one cares about your music, but you just need to keep at it.

jdodson: What projects are you working on right now?

Ben Prunty: Here are some soundtracks I'm working on, with links! Gravity Ghost with Erin Robinson. Scale with Steve Swink. A secret project with Robot Invader. Another super secret thing that I can't tell you about. I just put up a new album for pre-order called Curious Merchandise. It's similar to Chromatic T-Rex. Unlike T-Rex though, it has many tracks written specifically for the album.

http://gravityghost.com/
http://www.steveswink.com/news/scale-is-a-game/
http://robotinvader.com/
http://benprunty.bandcamp.com/album/curious-merchandise
http://benprunty.bandcamp.com/album/chromatic-t-rex

jdodson: I just checked out the preview track from Fractal Wheel from Curious Merchandise, I really like it. How did you approach this album and how do you consider it in terms of your other video game scores?

Ben Prunty: Thanks! I had been wanting to make another compilation album like Chromatic T-Rex, but I didn't quite have enough material to make one. I had this other album in mind that didn't quite get off the ground. The individual tracks sounded great, but they weren't forming the cohesive whole that I had in mind when I started. Ghost Jazz, Fractal Wheel, Gleaming Copper, One Lifetime, Canister Perplexing and Tribal Crisis were all reconstituted from this unfinished album and made to fit with the rest of the random stuff I put together for Curious Merchandise. The result, I think, works pretty well.

jdodson: Do the songs Curious Merchandise follow any particular themes or concept?

Ben Prunty: One of my favorite albums of all time is William Orbit's Strange Cargo. In fact, the whole Strange Cargo series is fantastic. They really influenced my style. Those albums are a real eclectic mix of electronic and acoustic instrumentals and ambiances. Every track in each album feels like it is part of something much larger, like it's part of a soundtrack to some forgotten movie. I tried to recreate that feel with Curious Merchandise, and even the title is a reference to Strange Cargo. The title of each track was carefully chosen to evoke imagery and help drive home that feeling of belonging to something big and mysterious. That's why the album cover is a creepy pawnshop. Shout out to Beau Blyth (teknopants.com) for the fantastic art.

jdodson: What was the first album you ever owned?

Ben Prunty: I think that would've been Weird Al's In 3D. On cassette tape. But let's get a little more pertinent. I think the first thing I bought was a 2-disc compilation album of really mediocre German trance called "World of Trance Vol. 2". I loved it and would listen to it every night for 2 or 3 hours before going to sleep. I was probably 14 at the time. It's long out of print now, but if you're really curious, I believe the record label was called ZYX. I also used to hold up a tape recorder to the TV's or PC's speakers and record game music to listen to later. Listening to game music is so much easier now than it was 20 years ago.

jdodson: As video has moved from VHS to DVD to High Definition with BluRay and makes its way to ultra HD 4k I wonder why we don’t see the same movement in music audio? For the most part it seems that music has peaked at CD quality Stereo with the rare album release on 5.1 on DVD or BluRay. There has also been a kind of resurgence in vinyl as a music format as some prefer its analog nature to more modern digital formats. Why do you think video keeps reaching at the higher quality formats while audio seems to have stagnated or regressed somewhat?

Ben Prunty: I honestly don't care much about sound quality, and I don't think I'm alone. CD quality is pretty great. If the music sounds great to you, why should the format matter? Chuck Berry's old recordings are going to sound the same coming from a CD or a Blu-Ray, and so is FTL. The FTL soundtrack on Steam is only available as 256kbps mp3s. I've sold thousands of copies and not one person has complained about it being on an "inferior" format.

jdodson: I honestly can't tell the difference between a 256k mp3 rip myself either and it seems music quality is "good enough." I don't mean that in a negative way, things really do sound great. That said, I do prefer to buy a CD now and then and am curious if you have considered a physical release of your music?

Ben Prunty: I've considered it, but really there's just not enough demand to justify the cost of printing the discs, which would have to come out of my pocket. I've had maybe 5 or 6 requests for a physical copy total. I thought there'd be more, but there you have it. If I could give people a really good reason to buy the physical copy over digital, like extra tracks and cool artwork, then I might do it.

jdodson: When you sit down to score how do you have an idea of the kinds of themes you want to create or is it a somewhat emergent process?

Ben Prunty: For FTL and Gravity Ghost it was definitely an emergent process, but now that I've done more than a few complete soundtracks, I'm pretty good at coming up with at least one theme right from the start, and then working towards adding a second or third later. So I guess that's a combination of directed and emergent.

jdodson: For the new game projects you are working on now how different are they in terms of direction and style?

Ben Prunty: The secret project with Robot Invader is a completely different style. Not a chiptune in sight. It's been really fun and liberating. Scale is actually still really early and I'm not sure how it's going to turn out. And I still don't know how to classify Gravity Ghost.

jdodson: I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me today, is there anything you want to save before we finish up?

Ben Prunty: I want to thank FTL fans for changing my life. I live in financial comfort now thanks to them. You guys are the best!

http://benprunty.com/

How long could peace in Sanctuary last after Diablo III? Apparently not too long as it turns out. Interested in a new D3 expansion but I am somewhat put off by some of the cinematic. To keep this post spoiler free i'll put my thoughts on it in the comments.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/reaper-of-souls/

UPDATE: I am collecting all the news bits of the expansion in the comments section and so far have collected some really interesting information about the new Crusader Class and the new "loot run" game mode. This expansion is starting to shape up to be very interesting.

Plants vs. Zombies 2 is what I have been playing since it was launched last week. It's free to play and available on iPhone and iPad and I seriously recommend you play it.

this game is challenging

One of my biggest complaints with the original Plants vs. Zombies was that it was a bit too easy. If you figured out a pretty good build you could use that all the way to the end without much change required. You would get new plants and often it made sense to chose a new one over an old one, but often times you could use the same build all the way to end.

PvZ 2 is much more challenging and I love it. I've lost a few matches already and have had to adapt my strategy to win. Certain missions have you accomplish certain tasks, like protect a particular plant, only play with a certain plant build or start the game with a fixed amount of sun and stand your ground. I love the new play modes and how hard they are and have spent all my time unlocking each level and beating it one at a time.

free to play isn't annoying or hamfisted

One of the elements of Plants vs. Zombies 2 I was very nervous about was the free to play element. I was worried EA would dump out a stupid Facebook game or game very similar to the mobile free to play crapware. So far, my fears are entirely unfounded as the free to play element is present but not required to win or have fun. If you want, you can buy gold to toss on power ups or boosts and unlock plants. Or you could just go through each mission and unlock them yourself.

crazy dave and time machine are fun

I really like that they brought back Crazy Dave from the first game. They introduced a new character in a sentient time machine that not only serves to take you back in time but also a sort of NPC that propels you through the stories and levels. For some reason the time periods you go back to have Zombie infestations and they game doesn't quite explain why but it doesn't matter, the Zombies need killin'.

I am really interested to how this game evolves over time. It seems EA set up PvZ 2 as a game that can be updated with new levels after launch and I hope this gives PvZ a long life. I happily paid for the original Plants vs. Zombies on my PC and later my iPhone because it was so much fun. I kind of feel bad that I am getting so much enjoyment from PvZ 2 and it hasn't cost me a dime yet. If I make it to the end of the game and haven't purchased anything I may just do it to sort of vote for the game with my wallet.

All that said, Plants vs. Zombies 2 is well worth your time and available for the ridiculously low price of free.

I have been wanting to try Guild Wars 2 for some time and this weekend i'll get my chance. Guild Wars 2 will be free this weekend starting this coming Friday @ 12:01 AM and ending at 11:59 PM PDT on Sunday.

If you are thinking of checking the game out, let me know and we can try and create characters on the same server. I created an event for people to join so if you are thinking about checking it out, join the event and add it to your calendar!

Register for the free here:

https://register.guildwars2.com/trial?cid=7:5:HomepageBanner:Static:1292x444:Global:40:4:

Join the CG event here:

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/events/38

For me Awesomenauts is the perfect MOBA. It's accessible, easy to pick up and fun. It takes the MOBA formula, strips it back to its best elements, tosses in humor and some great art to make a seriously addicting game. After picking it up as part of the Humble Bundle 8 I couldn't put it down. As such I wanted to talk to Ronimo about the game and know a bit more about it from behind the scenes.

As luck would have it Ronimo also just announced a new Kickstarter for the new Awesomenauts: Starstorm. The expansion looks to add 3 new classes, spectator mode, global chat, twin-stick controller support & some new music. The backer levels are pretty intense so if you are an Awesomenauts fan you need to check this out.

As follows is my q & a with Robin Meijer, a producer at Ronimo Games.

jdodson: Awesomenauts has been released for about a year now and has been received well and has a great community behind it. What does the future look like for Awesomenauts and what we can look forward to in regard to it?

Robin Meijer: The future for Awesomenauts is quite open right now – we have no shortage of cool character ideas or wishes for additional features, but how far we take all this really depends on how well the game continues to do. We have also announced a version of Awesomenauts for the Playstation 4 recently, and we definitely hope that that will grow to become a community as a large and vibrant as our current Steam community.

For now, we're just working on Admiral Swiggins, the character that was chosen by our community in our “Design-your-Awesomenauts” competition a couple of months back. There is also something else that will be making its appearance soon enough, but I really can't tell you about that right now. You'll just have to wait and see, but I think it's going to be pretty awesome!

jdodson: Awesomenauts started out on the PSN and XBox Arcade and was later ported to PC, Mac and Linux. I wonder what the tech is behind Awesomenauts that you used to port it to so many systems and how did the porting process go?

Robin Meijer: We used our in-house engine for Awesomenauts, and that allows us to be quite flexible when porting our game to other platforms. Still, it was a lot of work to get the game running smoothly on all platforms, and it was definitely a lot harder than we anticipated in advance. We developed the Playstation 3, Xbox 360, PC, and Mac versions of the game in-house. The Linux version was ported by a third party, and the Playstation 4 version is in development at another studio as well.

jdodson: You were recently part of one of the coolest recent games bundles with The Humble Bundle 8. How was it for you in terms of getting new fans for the game and more exposure?  Would you do it again with another Ronimo game?

Robin Meijer: Being part of Humble Bundle 8 was quite amazing – I think more than 400,000 copies of the bundle were distributed and a lot of those people have logged into game. Many of them probably just played the tutorial or a practice match and never ventured online, but we still did see an increase in the number of active players in the longer term. Growing our community was the most important reason for participating in the Bundle, so I'm pretty happy we succeeded in that regard.

jdodson: Many MOBA games are free to play or at some point after launch switched to that model. Is this something you have considered for Awesomenauts?

Robin Meijer: We did consider it, but we felt like Awesomenauts in its current form just makes a lot of sense as a $9.99 purchase, and it wouldn't make any sense to have the game available as a free-to-play title on PC if it was sold as a $10 purchase on Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network. Switching to Free-to-play further down the life cycle could always be an option I guess, but we have absolutely no intention of doing that right now – the game is doing great as it is.

jdodson: Do you think Gnaw could eat an entire planet if he were motivated to do it? Would covering the planet in BBQ sauce help? Along that note but somewhat unrelated, Skroggle are Omnivores but I am curious if they could be Vegan?

Robin Meijer: A Skroggle could be vegan if all there was to eat were plants, but normally they really eat pretty much anything. The question of whether something was once part of a living being doesn't really come into the equation.

Gnaw would probably be able to eat an entire planet if given enough time, but as he regularly points out during the game: “Gnaw needs to poop.” Eating an entire planet would leave a planet-sized pile of poop, so that technically doesn't remove the planet. Covering the planet in BBQ sauce first just means you end up with a slightly more gooey digested planet.

jdodson: Recently patch 1.21 dropped and it seems to be well received by players. Are there any areas of character or map balance that you are looking at now that people have been asking for?

Robin Meijer: Update 1.21 was an update that didn't include any new characters, so we had a lot of time to really look at where the game stood at that point and make some changes to steer it in a better direction. The next update will bring Admiral Swiggins, so we're focused on getting the balance right for him.

jdodson: Who would win the following matchups and why?

• Lonestar VS Lone Wolf McQuade?

Robin Meijer: That one would probably go to Lone Wolf McQuade. Even though Lonestar is a genetically engineered cowboy that wrangled an entire race of Bovinians, Lone Wolf McQuade is still in fact Chuck Norris. So yeah, McQuade wins.

• The Terminator (Model 101) VS Gnaw?

Robin Meijer: Gnaw would win that one hands down. The Terminator is built to kill human resistance members, while the Skroggles pretty much just eat everything that moves. The fact that the Terminator is made of metal beneath his layer of skin does mean that Gnaw has to chew a bit more to eat him, but he'll get the job done eventually. Then he'll eat the humans that the Terminator was hunting.

• Voltar VS Krang?

Robin Meijer: This would be a really interesting match-up, and could go either way. The two of them can't really do anything to each other without help from their machines, and if those come into play then Krang would probably win if he gets a good hit in. Voltar is quite fast though and he can float around, while his droids fire away at Krang. It really could go either way, but I'd put my money on Voltar... he is the brain of the operation, after all.

jdodson: I have recently seen a few Ronimo developers mention super secret projects in the works and I am wondering if you can give us a bit of taste of what some of this may be? Awesomenauts 2 perhaps?

Robin Meijer: I'm afraid that I can't give you any details about what our super secret project is, but that'll become apparent soon enough. It's not a sequel to Awesomenauts though – we still have way too much stuff that we want to do with the current version before we start thinking about a sequel.

jdodson: I want to thank you for taking the time to talk with me today, is there anything you’d like to say before we wrap things up?

Robin Meijer: No problem, and if there's anything I'd like to add is that it's that Admiral Swiggins, a character that has been thought up and designed by our community, will probably be launching some time next week. We're still working on balancing him and fixing a couple of bugs, but things are looking good and I think we'll be ready next week. Of course, just like all the other characters that we've released until now, Admiral Swiggins will be available for free once he launches!

No too long after the release of Age of Empires II HD we are getting a new official Age of Empires II expansion called "The Forgotten." You might remember a Age of Empires II fan expansion that was released called "Forgotten Empires." Apparently the team that made that is partnering up with SkyBox Labs and Microsoft to incorporate much of that content into the new expansion.

Not only will they be adding 5 civilizations such as the Italians, Indians, Slavs, Magyars & Incas. The expansions will also include new technologies and 4 new in game campaigns as well as integrated Twitch.tv support and multi-player observer mode.

Awesome.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/221380/discussions/1/864976115141842643/

Yes, you heard correctly. Some seriously dedicated fans to the Earthbound/Mother series have taken it upon themselves to create Mother 4. Oh, and it looks awesome too.

"Mother 4 is a traditional RPG set in an idealized vintage America, following the adventures of a young boy and the leader of a biker gang, who get caught up in the whirlwind events surrounding a group calling themselves the Modern Men."

Travis, Meryl, Leo & Floyd are the new characters Mother 4 brings to the forefront and each one has a different backstory. The art style is fresh, yet very reminiscent of the Mother series. They recently launched the above linked trailer and set the release date for Winter of 2014.

Mother 4 will launch on Mac, Linux & Windows.

http://www.mother4game.com/

I read a very good article on Polygon about harassment focused at game developers. The article features a good synopsis of the topic and collects a few interviews with people that have experienced some I call, "The Internet Hate Factory."

I am glad this topic is getting broader coverage and I hope it spurns more dialog in the community and fosters some change.

http://www.polygon.com/2013/8/15/4622252/plague-of-game-dev-harassment-erodes-industry-spurs-support-groups

You should also check out the Cheerful Ghost Roundtable Ep. 2 "The Internet Hate Factory" that covers this topic, Cheerful Ghost Ghost style.

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/1527

Plants vz. Zombies 2 It's About Time has just dropped on iPhone and iPad today and it costs nothing. After playing a few missions I can say that it is quite a bit of fun and well worth downloading. There are a few changes to the game, but it contains the same core PvZ action I have come to love.

Since the game is a free release on iOS it has a built in store to purchase upgrades. With only a few levels under my belt I haven't had to need to purchase anything. The game contains an overworld map similarly to Candy Crush Saga and its a nice touch.

The game starts you out around the house you played the majority of the first game from. Crazy Dave shows up with a time machine and hijinks ensue. He takes you back in time in a mission to get a taco he just ate from himself to eat it again. Due to a mis-calculation you arrive in ancient Egypt and it seems to be over run with Zombies.

The start of ancient Egypt acts like a tutorial acclimating you to the new boosts and upgrades you can use on your plants. I am not sure if everything in the game can be unlocked by playing it or if you have to pay to unlock everything. I'll do a deeper review of the game later to cover all that as I play it more.

The graphics have been updated with the plants and zombie animations. It took a bit of getting used to and I think it is a pretty nice improvement. My only gripe with the first Plants VS Zombies game was that is was way too easy. I imagine they will ramp things up to encourage people to buy boosts and items so I may very well get my wish for a much more challenging game.

If you have an iPhone and some free space for a game no reason not to download it and kill some Zombies with Crazy Dave. Plus, I am dying to know if he can eat his taco again.

Hammerwatch is now available for purchase on Steam for Mac, Windows and Linux. It will do your sould well to play this amazing new Indie Gauntlet styled hack n slash.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/239070
http://cheerfulghost.com/Travis/posts/1039

A game I have been crushing on recently has just come to Steam as pre-purchase. Take a swing at this beautiful new Rogue-like from the awesome dev duo Robot Loves Kitty.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/238280
http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/1215

John Carmack gives a really insightful talk on the physics of light and rendering. More wisdom from the master of Doom himself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG4QuTe8aUw

Sorry Mario Brothers is an interesting concept game where you play the Princess escaping Bowsers castle on your own. Personally I like seeing this sort of thing, she is magical and capable so why not?

http://www.thewildeternal.com/2013/07/30/sorry-mario-bros/