Welcome to the

Monthly Audio Contest 2007 - June CASTLE CRASHERS theme.

What is Castle Crashers?
- Castle Crashers is an adventure game with rpg elements under develpomement. You play up to four players at the same time. At your place with your buddies next to you, or online. It is a well balanced game completely in 2-D, as a counter to all the 3-D games that flood the market nowadays.

- The game is about four knights, who are seeking revenge for the abduction of their idol. The world where the adventure takes place is a completley handdrawn fantasy world, with all kinds of wondorous monsters, magic and treasures.

About the Contest this month
- This contest is your chance to get noticed by console video game developers, The Behemoth. Although it's important to know that there are no promises that any audio from this contest will be used in the complete game, it still is a great opportunity to test your skills. Who knows, maybe your song and your style is exactly what would fit Castle Crashers!

- You can make your audio about practically anything, but all audio will be judged according to the Castle Crashers theme and feel. Read up on the guidelines given further down, check out all the links, and visit this thread once in a while to see if there is any new reference material, pictures or other info.

- If you decide to participate, try to give this your very best shot! The whole Behemoth team will be listening to the audio submitted!

- An important part of this contest is to get You, the audio artist, more understanding and experienced in making an audio in a large scale and professional project such as Castle Crashers. Hopefully this will also encourage collaborations between flash and audio authors on a higher level on newgrounds.com!

Awards
#1. $300, a T-shirt and stickers
#2. $200, a T-shirt and stickers
#3. $100, a T-shirt and stickers
#4 - #10 a T-shirt and stickers

- Front Page Spots for the #1&2 songs.

- We'll continue the tradition with the custom-made BBS signature picture, crafted by Metalcan.

- The winners will be announced by the friendly radiogrounds.com DJ PsychoGoldfish as usual!

- Once again it is pointed out that there it is fully possible that no audio will end up on the final game. This is entirley up to The Behemoth!

Entering the Contest, Basic Rules
1 - Check the Rules for Submitting Audio to the NGAP. If you still are unsure what's OK to upload and what's not, check this thread. Basically, you must not submit material that include samples you have no copyright/permission to use.

2 - Make a song according to these rules! Your song can be no longer then 2 minutes. Its recommended that you keep the length within 1-2 minutes. This because the game is to be released on XBOX Live Arcade, and file size is limited. The Behemoth wants many different songs on the game. A loopable audio is to prefer.

3 - Submit the song to the NG Audio Portal.

4 - Go to this thread and post a link to your songpage. You risk of not being in the contest if you do not post links to your songs. Also include the audio title.

5 - For this contest, we have no limit of the amount of songs you can submit. It is strongly suggested that you work hard and long on your song(s) before submitting it to the portal (we don't want the AP to be filled up with halfway done crap, right?). Collaborations are allowed, but please notify LJCoffee or Rucklo if you intend on doing so! Do know that if you submit audio that's not up to standard, your submission risk being neglected for the contest.

6 - Do not break any of the rules stated in this thread. If you intend on submitting with different profiles, notify LJCoffee or Rucklo about this. If we find out that you break the rules, there's a great risk that you will be disqualified from this contest. Depending on how serious your medevil actions are, you might get banned from the contest for a time. Basic BBS rules apply in this thread too, of course. If there are posts that are irrelevant for the contest/spam, a moderator will clean it up. This mean your post(s) might get deleted, and you risk getting banned from the NG BBS. All according to the BBS rules and the forum specific Audio Forum Sticky.

7 - You should have your submission signed up for the contest in this thread by 11:th August. If you cannot post for one reason or another, PM or e-mail Rucklo, enter a valid reason why you can't do it yourself, and we'll see to it that your contest entry is in. To make it even clearer; - No submissions will be accepted from 12:th August.

8 - There will be NO changing/re-submitting of contest audio, unless there have been a mistake one way or another. If that is the case, PM/e-mail LJCoffee or Rucklo, and explain what the deal is. Make sure that you're satisfied with your contest entry before submitting it!

9 - Ten songs will make it to the final and actually receive judgment and get scored. The fewer the songs the judges have to judge, the more fair the end result is going to be.

10 - It is strongly recommended that you keep your original song, uncompressed and at least 16-bit 44.1kHz. If The Behemoth decides that Your song is exactly what they´re looking for, it would be quite shameful if you´ve gotten rid of your project and can only provide an mp3. The quality of mp3 encoded audio is not enough for most professional projects.

What are The Behemoth looking for?

- Words from The Behemoth programmer and newgrounds.com creator TomFulp;

"We want the music to have that epic battle feel to it, but it can also have modern / electronic touches if it all works well with the aesthetic. My main goal is that I would like people to hum and whistle the music after they play, the way you hum and whistle music from a lot of Nintendo games after you play. The music in the current demo doesn't really have that effect, although it's still great music (we also know it's repetitive - it is just a short demo and not a complete song for the game)."

- Further down you will find various links to demos, interviews and so on. Please spend some time going through these links for inspiration. Throughout the contest, feel free to discuss various techniques and ideas in this thread. MAC-crew will help providing additional information whenever anything relevant comes up!

Links for references and inspiration
- Castle Crashers Official Home
- The Behemoth (Castle Crashers developer team)
- Rednote Audio (made the audio for the Castle Crashers demo)
- Castle Crashers Demo and ingame sneak preview, on gametrailers.com
- Dan Paladin Interview by gamezone.com
- Previous indie hit by The Behemoth, Alien Hominid
- On the IGF coverage, from March 07, Tom and The Behemoth featured NG AP music in the demo. The following songs were in the demo;
- cornandbeans - {Factory}
- Waterflame - -Space pirates-
- Helix - Archetype (Helix6)

Extra notes
- The judging will be done similar to the previous MACs. At least one of the more newgrounds.com related crew-members of The Behemoth, TomFulp and/or DanPaladin will join the judging crew! If you think you´re qualified for judging, contact LJCoffee or Rucklo. Note that if you judge, you are not allowed to compete.

- Rules, guidelines and other things that this contest have, may change as time goes by. If anything changes, you will find out by staying updated to this thread.

- If you have any bright ideas for future MACs, don't be shy to PM LJCoffee or Rucklo, with your ideas.

MAC7 - June Crewmembers and their function.
LJCoffee - Chief Judge, creator of the judging system. second in command of the MAC7- June.
DanPaladin - Artwork, crewmember of The Behemoth.
PsychoGoldfish - DJ who will announce the winners live on radiogrounds.com
DarKsidE555 - Listmaster, updates the list of new submissions with new entries since the previous update marked.
Metalcan - Sig-pic maker, a damn good one too! He´s been making the sig-pics for all MACs so far.
Denvish - BBS Moderator, puts the top two audios on the newgrounds.com frontpage.
TomFulp - Provides the awards along with creating/managing this website, newgrounds.com and is a crewmember of The Behemoth
Rucklo - Contest manager.

Previous Audio Contest in the Audio Forum
MAC7 - May REDESIGN, FRONTPAGE THEME!
MAC7 - March (+April) PICO LOOP theme.
MAC7 - February PICO TREASURE HUNT!
Mrac06 - December
Mrac06 - November
MAC6 - October X-MAS theme
MAC6 - August TANKMEN theme
MAC6 - July OPEN CONTEST
Heaviest riff ever competition! (2006)
March Contest (2006)
Battle of the Audio Portal (2005)

1st submitter!
i submit

1)Chanson De L'Espace 2
2)Whenever [NG Extenstion]

awesome idea, but I need to use some orchestralishness :(

This time at least we get a slight idea of what we're supposed to make :D

Must... make... something... pure... awesome...

Of course I'm in on this. One piece coming up in the next week or so. Whenever I have time. This coming week is gonna be nasty :(

Exams next week, omgz :O

At 6/11/07 02:46 PM, loogiesquared wrote: 1st submitter!
i submit

1)Chanson De L'Espace 2
2)Whenever [NG Extenstion]

shit man, take it easy with the premature submitting... if your submissions suck, you'll be ignored, ya know...

Can we simply submit a song, not say its for this contest, but also submit it to this contest?

Cool contest :) Hmmm medieval-thingy's maybe I'll make something in between the exams.

At 6/11/07 03:16 PM, Envy wrote: Can we simply submit a song, not say its for this contest, but also submit it to this contest?

eh... what?

At 6/11/07 03:18 PM, Rucklo wrote:

At 6/11/07 03:16 PM, Envy wrote: Can we simply submit a song, not say its for this contest, but also submit it to this contest?

eh... what?

i think he means, do we need to say it's for the contest in the song descriptions

At 6/11/07 03:18 PM, SBB wrote:

At 6/11/07 03:18 PM, Rucklo wrote:

At 6/11/07 03:16 PM, Envy wrote: Can we simply submit a song, not say its for this contest, but also submit it to this contest?

eh... what?

i think he means, do we need to say it's for the contest in the song descriptions

if that's what you mean, Envy, then nope, you can enter whatever you want when submitting the audio to the portal. When submitting it to the contest though, you must follow what's in the rules (eg. song name + link)

Well I meant, does it have to be solely meant for the contest. Cause I have a song thats almost finished that I started long before this contest was created. Could I just submit it as a regular song and stuff, and then on top of that say that it was made for the MAC or does it not matter.

I think you already answered it, but just making sure.

At 6/11/07 03:24 PM, Envy wrote: Well I meant, does it have to be solely meant for the contest. Cause I have a song thats almost finished that I started long before this contest was created. Could I just submit it as a regular song and stuff, and then on top of that say that it was made for the MAC or does it not matter.

I think you already answered it, but just making sure.

nah that's all fine. It is OK to submit old submitte songs as well, but bare in mind that if it aint CC related, it'll be out in a blink, and people who submit unrelated audio to the thread risk being generally ignored.

By the way, what you guys think of the banner Dan Paladin made? I think it's awesome :)

At 6/11/07 03:28 PM, Rucklo wrote: what you guys think of the banner Dan Paladin made?

It is awesome!

I'm so glad that the CC MAC is finally here! - I've been sitting on this sigpic for so long now just waiting :D

As usual peeps, if you suck too much to compete, then you can always be a judge!

(that's why I do it) :D

Just send me a PM.

Good luck to all who enter - this should be a really fun comp.

crud...2 minutes? I hate time limits, they make me cry...

At 6/11/07 03:38 PM, LJCoffee wrote: Good luck to all who enter - this should be a really fun comp.

Damnit, I forgot the mandatory "GOOD LUCK PEOPLE!" in the first posts again >:(

ill make up to that.

At 6/11/07 02:46 PM, loogiesquared wrote: 1st submitter!
i submit

1)Chanson De L'Espace 2
2)Whenever [NG Extenstion]

WoW...I'm impressed, go buy some stuff with that. You know teh "1st submitter" phrase is teh awesome...seriously...

As Rucklo stated before, if you submission sucks it will be not on the list! So hold your horses or whatever you're on.

Seeing that the submission time is till the 12th of August, some def. will try to get shit on the list and we WILL most likely take some stuff down!

Remember kids, the allmighty Listmaster will pwn you all eventually!

>: (

At 6/11/07 03:47 PM, Rucklo wrote:

ill make up to that.

HAWT. Well at least the deadline is in my summer holidays.

At 6/11/07 03:46 PM, Deflektor wrote: Just a question. I didn't see anything in the rules about old songs.

Are the contestants allowed to submit previously submitted songs (it means before June) to the contest?

old songs can be submitted, but they better be damn well suited. >:)

i'll be in in 2-3 days..

At 6/11/07 04:27 PM, ZeRo-BaSs wrote: i'll be in in 2-3 days..

jesus guys, you have two months! whats the rush? :D

At 6/11/07 04:34 PM, Rucklo wrote:

At 6/11/07 04:27 PM, ZeRo-BaSs wrote: i'll be in in 2-3 days..

jesus guys, you have two months! whats the rush? :D

My track is ready ^_-

Epic...

medieval...

epic medieval...

I'm sorry, everybody, you might as well stop right now. The ball is in Maestro's court now >:}

>:}

Epic medival TECHNO?

maestro just got something to worry about >:)

"but it can also have modern / electronic touches if it all works well with the aesthetic"

Tisk tisk Rucklo, you thought you could scare me?!

They would prefer pure awesome orchestration, but it could also have electronic touches IF it works with the imagery.

And I had sworn to myself that I would help judge in the upcoming MAC :(

At 6/11/07 05:10 PM, MaestroRage wrote: And I had sworn to myself that I would help judge in the upcoming MAC :(

Actually, I wanna compete in thisone too :)

I never competed in a MAC before :(

At 6/11/07 05:16 PM, Rucklo wrote: I never competed in a MAC before :(

Cool beans - Rucklo will be submitting. I wonder who will win - heh heh... >:D

I've got a question..
The song I'm gonna upload has a full song structure (with intro and epic conclusion)

this is my question: should we upload the "final perfectly looped" track or is a "full song structure" track enough? because i know that console games can loop tracks not necessarily at the beginning/end of an audio file like flash games for example does.

Personally I belive that submitting a Full Song Demo would be better than sending a litle loop..then the Behemoth guys can request an edited version..true?