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Messages - Cobraroll

#16
Site News / Re: Update, Friday 23rd of October 2015
October 23, 2015, 02:26:36 PM
Nice!

Now, anybody care to compile how many updates we've had in this first year of the new system?

...oh, heck, that's only to look at the Site News forum, I'll do it myself.

I count 16 updates since this date last year. That's roughly one every three weeks, which is an amazing pace compared to how it used to be. Assuming 25 new sheets on average for every update, that's 400 sheets in total, which means that ~17 % of the sheets on site were arranged over the past year, and that's a conservative estimate. Considering that many were replacements, it's hard to tell how much the amount of sheets grew by, but based on the estimated numbers alone I'd say 12-15 %. Anybody wanna count the number of uploaded sheets in total more accurately?

...wait, that's not too hard either. Just count the number of (relevant) pages in the Archive subforum, multiplied by the number of entries per page, seeing as one new thread is made there for every accepted sheet. Doing those numbers, I find the first old, archived Submissions thread at the very bottom of page 19, with 20 threads per page, giving us 379 sheets accepted through the new system. Though, some of them are deleted, amounting to perhaps 50 in total.

However, we have some arrangement projects too, and I don't know where they fit in all of this. 50 sheets from Pokémon RBY were replaced or newly arranged. I find only some of them in the Archive, which means there is some overlap but very little. In addition, there's the McDucky update which left no trails in the Archive that I cared to find. We also have a very nearly completed Animal Crossing arrangement project (two sheets missing), and a quite-nearly-finished Super Mario 64 project, which together add up to some 80 sheets. All in all, without scouring the news threads and doing a manual count, I'd say we're somewhere between 400 and 500 new sheets this past year, which is quite an achievement. Certainly magnitudes better than some earlier years.

EDIT: It should also be mentioned, the standards we set and the quality controls undertaken are of course also improved compared to the site's earlier days. All in all, arrangers and staff deliver more on both quality and quantity than ever before.

 
Hooray for NSM!
#17
What are the odds of the forum ever getting a Like system? Is there a mod for that in this kind of forum software?
#18
We do have a sheet of the Super Smash Bros. Brawl version of the theme: http://www.ninsheetmusic.org/download/pdf/674

Still, I believe the original version is different enough to warrant its own arrangement.
#19
Request / [PC] Kerbal Space Program - "Main Theme"
September 30, 2015, 07:04:14 AM

The main theme of a highly addictive game I picked up the other week. The theme alone is motivation enough to suit up, strap yourself to a rocket and try to go to space.

It's strings-, horn- and percussion heavy, but based on a few YouTube videos I've seen, it has decent potential to work well on a piano. Alas, the few YouTubers making sheets for their performances don't do a very good job of it, I think NSM could do that a lot better.

Also, hi!
#20
^Well... yeah.

At least, nice to miss a thread like this by just a little over a week, and then see that the Fixing Project in question is almost finished. Just had a look at the SM64 Fixing thread and saw most of the sheets were finished, with only a few in progress. That's remarkable! I know many users feel nostalgic for the "good old days", but really, things have never been as fast-paced around here as it is now. And the quality of the work... well, have you ever seen some of the older sheets? What we take as minimum requirements nowadays would have been a rare gem of excellent quality back then.

By the way, for the next project: Can I nominate something other than a game? If there's one set of sheets I feel should be given extra care, it would be Main Themes. The representative piece of music for the game as a whole should really be given a sheet of good quality. That's especially true for the "classics".

Then again, it's been a while since I've browsed the site archives thoroughly, so I'm not that sure on the need for a major fix for most of them. Still, just throwing suggestions out there.
#21
Feedback / Re: Easy Versions Idea
June 23, 2015, 01:45:23 PM
Oh, hi, it's one of those sprees again. You're not going to get rid of me for long, you know. Or, well, you might, but I'll be back occasionally, chiming in on subjects then vanishing into the night again. I'm easier to find on Smogon these days.

Small talk aside, on to the subject:

In my opinion, simplified versions would be a great little boon to NSM. As FierceDeity said, and Olimar touched upon, "lil' Joe Schmo"s comprises a pretty major part of our target audience. People who like gaming, have some piano skills, and would like to play video game music. Heck, even that part about "have some piano skills" is optional; when I first started downloading sheets from this site, I knew exactly one piece I had learned off YouTube, and I learned to read notes mainly to get something out of the huge database of sheets NSM had (and continues to have). Simple appreciation of some video game music can get people into piano or music in general, and NSM would seem to be a natural place to start for those people. As such, the effective removal of the "Finale Wall" by adding PDF versions of sheets was possibly the greatest thing to yet happen to NSM, as it made our content a lot more accessible.

However, lil' Joe Schmo will soon hit a pretty major hurdle: Many songs on site are pretty damn hard for people with little experience. The iconic ones such as the Mario Athletic themes, or the Legend of Zelda theme, or most things from Pokémon will be far beyond the skill of beginners. Many sheets on site feel like they shout "learn piano first, come back here later" to the poor novices, and motivation drops like a brick in vacuum. Simplified versions (sometimes grossly simplified, even) of popular themes would be a good motivator for inexperienced players. It gives them something to build their skills upon.


Quote from: Olimar12345 on June 17, 2015, 11:19:15 AMAnother topic regarding the submission of simplified arrangements would be to watch for lazy plagiarism. This is something that I have been extremely cautious of when reviewing challenge-based replacement arrangements, and, imo, would be even more problematic for simplified versions. Let me give you a quick scenario:

-Little Joe-schmo visits the site regularly and likes hearing all the new arrangements posted on the site.

-Eventually, he creates an account on the forums, and sees how things work behind the scenes. "liljoshmo02" then sees that simplified arrangements are a thing, and decides that he wants to become internet-famous (as he and his friends call it).

-liljoshmo02 then proceeds to downloads all the popular arrangements, replaces the LH with sloppy block triads, then submits them one-by-one under his name, as "simplified arrangements".

I daresay that even if this happens, the sheet approval procedure should be good enough to filter out the laziest conversions. If the mods/peers do such a bad job that they let sloppily edited plagiarism through just like so, we kind of deserve the quality we get. Nothing is put on site without prior revision, so any failure to meet standards should not be blamed on the submittors only. I have faith that this community would stop lazy hacks like that.

And even if Olimar's scenario unfolded, as per my point above, liljoshmo02 would still contribute to the site by making more sheets accessible to more people. Heck, we do have quite a few pretty botched arrangements on site already, but they still get downloaded from time to time.



Conversely, the idea of "virtouso arrangements" are less important to NSM the way I see it. If you're a skilled enough pianist to even be able to play some of MaestroUGC's stuff, you're skilled enough to elaborate on the sheets we already have on site yourself. You wouldn't need a dedicated sheet to do that job for you, if you already are on that level.
#22
Off-Topic / Re: Official "I'm Away Topic"
June 23, 2015, 12:57:56 PM
Wait, Dude and Deku are leaving? And Slow too? Noooooo!!! My occassional drop-ins to this forum suddenly becomes a lot less enjoyable. Could you at least come dropping in like I do from time to time? We could talk about old times and the fun times when guys such as BK-Pianist, GreekGeek, Brassman, Pumpy_heart, fuurianda and all the other veterans lost to time were around. It's be a thread with two posts a year, sure, but...

Well, goodbye.


Also...

Quote from: Dude on June 07, 2015, 08:47:59 PMOf course, I'm not leaving for sure until my sheets are down, so expect some PMs, JaMa and Deku. >_>

What do you mean "down"? Not pulled from the site, I hope?
#23
Feedback / Re: Difficulty setting
February 26, 2015, 03:26:09 PM
Actually, I do kinda like the "tags" idea. Basically, it would help users identify why some sheets could cause problems. Tags for stuff like "awkward transitions", "pieces that go really fast" or "chords span more than one octave" (less easy if you've not grown up yet), but also for things like "suitable for beginners". I know we have a couple of sheets here so easy you could play them within a month of playing the piano (SM64 File Select comes to mind), and simply singling out those would be a great benefit for some visitors. If you want to get into piano game music, it's a little disheartening to have to scroll through dozens of seemingly-impossible sheets before you find something you can play.

This is also why I advocate having two versions of some arrangements. Not one basic and one virtouso (because if you can play the virtouso level, you're probably good enough to spruce up the basic sheet through improvisation), but one basic sheet and one simplified version. Certain themes can be done simple, and serve as a great gateway to the wonderful world of NSM.

In due time, of course.
#24
How impossible would it be to implement a Quick Reply box, a Like feature or even notifications? Would that be compatible for this kind of forum software?
#25
Site News / Re: Update, Tuesday 27th of January 2015
February 02, 2015, 12:53:17 AM
I'll once again use the occasion to praise the new submissions system, which seems to be working stellarly.
#26
Just now looked through the "Archive" subforum, and noticed we've built up three full forum pages of accepted sheets since mid-October. That's 60 in three months, which is actually a quite good pacing (on average, it's one accepted arrangement every 36 hours). Looks like the new system works great!
#27
Site News / Re: Update, Monday 8th of December 2014
December 12, 2014, 05:05:57 AM
An update three days ago, yet the thread has only accumulated a handful of posts?

HUZZAH!

This means they have become regular enough to not be viewed as a spectacular, out-of-the-ordinary event any longer. We're on track for regular updates!
#28
Piano Arrangements / Re: Dahans' arrangements: swoon.exe
December 06, 2014, 12:58:50 PM
Yay, Dahans is back for a visit (or more!)!

As I told you on Facebook, it was sort of becoming necessary for you to pop in here. Also check out our new submissions system!
#29
Nintendo / Re: Pokémon Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire
November 21, 2014, 02:24:29 AM
New Hoopa forme...

What.

The.

Flip.

Spoiler


How the hell did this thing get approval? I mean, not its general ugliness. In Pokémon Amie, you're meant to rub and poke the Pokémon on the bottom screen, a significant portion of which consists of the sketchiest crotch bulge since David Bowie in Labyrinth. At what point did the creature designers think "You know what this thing needs? A pants tent!", and at which point did the executives actually greenlight this decision? Didn't any alarm bells go off when the "like/dislike areas" were programmed in for Pokémon-Amie? Hoopa-Unbound will go down in Pokémon history as one of the biggest jokes since HSOWA (a term that I urge you to look up on Bulbapedia if needed, NOT Google, and certainly not Google Images).
[close]

I wonder if it will spark any public controversies like Jynx did.
#30
Site News / Re: Update, Saturday 15th of November 2014
November 15, 2014, 02:37:00 PM
Wow, hardly two weeks after the previous one! Awesome! Is this system working well or what?