LyCH_OS SubNet

I started making music when I was around 17 or 18. I started with general MIDI using Aria Maestosa, learning how to use piano rolls n shit. Then I experimented with Caustic (when it was actually good...and free) and learned by re-creating songs I liked. I also messed with Budgerigar for a bit but then (again) that became a paid app apparently it's either completely different or gone now. I then discovered trackers - namely FamiTracker, then the GSS Nintendo tracker, and Open ModPlug Tracker (MPT) - and fell in love with making chiptunes.

Fast-forward a few years and I found an app called SunVox. It has everything I'd been looking for for years, all in one. It's a tracker but with a modern interface, it's a sequencer but without the annoying fluff, and it's a modular system that isn't DRAMATICALLY over-complicated. It's byotiful, it's easy (for me) to use... and it's FREE, with a BSD license (at least for the underlying engine).

"How do you write your mu-"

I don't write it. I also can't cause I can't read sheetmusic, or German notation (it's at least MUCH LESS confusing), etc. I can understand(ish) Letter notation, but if you tell me "Play from X note" or something, I can't, I get lost.

What I can do is just listen to the sound and perfectly or near-perfectly mimic it. That's how I figure things out in most of my covers - I listen to the song in question, and just go find the correct notes. It's easier on a midi keyboard of course but at the time of writing I don't have space to use mine, so I have to hunt for it on my pc keyboard. Usually I hit the right general area that the note's at and then find the right one. Sometimes I just know which key to press. It all depends on how my muscle memory associates to a specific sound. TL;DR if you can hum a tune, I can re-hum it in the same way.

It's a bit different when composing OG songs cause... they don't exist yet; there's nothing to mimic. I have a general idea of the sound in my head, and from the very small amount of personal OG stuff I've worked on it's not too different I guess. At the very least I can whistle what's in my head and I'm fairly accurate with it, so eh. I don't need a confusing paper with confusing incantation symbols lol.

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I was introduced to games through my siblings' SNES with Mario Kart. My memory with that is vague, but I remember playing Yoshi or Toad a lot. I then remember watching my brother play Dark Cloud on PS2. We were in a different city at the time, and I was only around 3-4 years old I think.

When I reached 1st grade in elementary/primary school, I finally had my own system, which was a PSOne (yes spelled like that; specifically the tiny round-cornered white one). My very first personally owned games were Disney's The Emperor's New Groove (one of the ONLY GOOD Disney games holy shit), Spyro the Dragon, and Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back (thank fuck i skipped 1, that one was horrible). Eventually I also had Resident Evil: DX and SPAWN™ (granted they were meant to be my sister's but that changed), CTR: Crash Team Racing, and Syphon Filter 2 & 3.

When I was 10 I was introduced to a lot of games and systems back-to-back, so my memory is cloudy; I had TLoZelda: Twilight Princess on Wii, I played gamecube stuff, I played Xbox360...there was a lot. You do not recognize the bodies in the water. What really shaped my game preferences though is very very bizarre, cause there's no way this would've happened to a normal 10-year old. My brother - who I lived with for a couple years - had a niche friend group. They were into anime and more obscure games, but also happened to sail the seven seas (kudos to them, the seas are lovely ouo). I was introduced to stuff I didn't know could exist, like a JP copy of a sort of open-area third person shooter Gundam game (which was fucking cool).

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They also played a lot of FPS games, so I got to try that out very early... and it definitely stuck with me. The weird thing though is that I didn't get into FPS games cause of PC - my first FPS was played on Dreamcast with Southpaw controls, and it was Half-Life: Blue Shift... I know, VERY weird, but it was good ouo. I then also played Unreal Tournament on the same system. At some point I was allowed to play stuff on PC, like Medal of Honor, Battlefield 2142, etc.

A couple years later, I had a PS2 Slim. I had SSX Tricky, Choro Q, Dark Cloud 2 (much better than 1 imo), and a bunch of others that I don't remember off the top of my head. While it wasn't as influencial a time for me, it still shaped my love for early 2000s gaming. Fast-forward some time and I eventually have my own Steam account, Half-Life 2, Portal... you get the idea. All the good shit. Garry's Mod also helped with my creative side.

what i like / am good at

While almost every game can be fully figured out in about a minute or two of fucking around, I do process things a certain way & certain things are much more natural for me, so I lean towards games like these more:

• Rhythm - Osu!Mania (previously Standard), Clone Hero, BPM: Bullets Per Minute
• Deduction - Phasmophobia, Shadows of Doubt
• Speed/Reaction
• Racing - BallisticNG, MK8, CTR, NFS (Manual only)
• Boomer Shooters - TF2 (technically), Doom, Quake, Wrath:AoR
• Immersive Sim (i would die without this genre) - Voices of the Void, S.T.A.L.K.E.R, Deus Ex, System Shock, Tunnet, Thief, Postal 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Arx Fatalis, Brush Burial: Gutter World, Devil Spire FaIIs, Pigface
• Roguelikes/lites (would also die) - The Binding of Isaac, Risk of Rain 2, White Knuckle, Nuclear Throne, SWAP MEAT, Pathogenic, Phantom Abyss, Cruel, Spelunky
• Survival - Minecraft (duh), Vintage Story (should be a duh)

It's not meant to be an exhaustive list, though I did put a lot lol.

I also very often tend to play on the hardest difficulty unless I'm absolutely certain that it would be too much. On Phasmo, I play 0-evidence (all 3 ghost evidences turned off) and solely rely on their traits. For VotV, Hard++ gives me something to do during downtime. On STALKER, harder = a reason to STALK the zone, and not just bum-rush into open areas or dark corners. Racing games that aren't on hard are (usually) fucking boring cause nothing is happening and you're just gliding along in 1st place without thinking. At least then bots can actually try to overtake you, and you can show them why that's not gonna happen :3

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