Dave Luehmann joins Boss Fight as VP of production
Boss Fight Entertainment have a new staffer joining their ranks in the form of Dave Luehmann who takes up the role as VP of Production according to GamesIndustry.biz. You may recognize the name as Dave was one of the Executive Producers for Age of Empires Online. Prior to that Dave was one of the General Managers at Microsoft Game Studios looking after a number of Microsoft’s internal studios including Ensemble Studios. It’s safe to say he is a familiar face amongst Ensemblites! Read more
Video game music interviews Stephen Rippy – new music!
An excellent interview has been posted over at vgmonline.net featuring Stephen Rippy – “Music through the ages.” The interview covers all aspects of Stephen’s career from his time at Ensemble Studios working on Age and Halo Wars to post Ensemble work with Zynga working on Castleville. We also learn about Stephen’s new recently released album “Mainland Static”. Read more
Delving into Castleville – new trailer and interview with Kotaku
Earlier this week Zynga Dallas published the first trailer for their upcoming Facebook game adventure “Castleville”. The game follows Zynga’s existing “ville” series of games such as Farmville, Frontierville and Cityville. Looking at the below trailer it can clearly be seen the game will be taking forward similar game mechanics ans art style of previous games in the series. Lets take a look at that trailer now: Read more
Stephen Rippy “What Ive learnt at Bonfire”
Hot on the heels of Robot Entertainment’s one year anniversary comes Bonfire’s own anniversary and is blogged about by musical genius Stephen Rippy.
This evening, Bonfire Studios will have a small party celebrating the end of our first year as a company and the beginning of our second. In honor of that sort-of startling milestone, I wanted to take a minute to look back at the past twelve months and maybe share a couple of things I’ve picked up along the way.
Stephen talks about the transition from Ensemble Studios to Bonfire Studios. Turns out they didn’t move very far, just down a few floors in the same high rise building:
The end of Ensemble Studios as an entity also meant the shuttering of the space we’d occupied for the previous ten years. We were nearing the end of our jobs and our lease, and had nowhere to go but down. So down we went, literally – ten floors lower in the same building. And we did it ourselves. Over a single feverish weekend, fueled by junk food, beer, and months’ worth of accumulated angst, we grabbed our inherited computers, desks, and full-sized arcade machines and hauled them down, one armload at a time. There were cuts, bruises, and people walking around with refrigerators strapped to their backs, but at the end of it all, we had something that was our own: a new home.
The team at Bonfire have been working incredibly hard over the past year and while there is nothing to show just yet you can be sure these hard working developers will come up with a great game, perhaps more will be revealed at E3 this year.
For all of that, though, we’re confident and excited about the future – and we hope you’ll come along with us! To everyone here, congratulations on our first anniversary. See you back here this time next year.
Keep an eye on and read the full blog over at the Bonfire Studios website!
Fancy creating your own Halo Wars music?
Stephen Rippy has put together a selection of “stem files” which are the break up of all the parts which make a Halo Wars music file. So for example the “Best guess at best” music is made up of “pads”, “leads”, “drums” , “base” and “effects” for example. You can then put these stems into your favourite audio editing program and get mixing!
Once your done i’m sure Stephen would like to hear! Drop him a line at his website with your creations! If you want to publish your files on the web then let me know and i’ll host them for you here. You can contact me on dean@remember-ensemblestudios.com
Heres the link to get started:
http://www.stephenrippy.com/soundtracks/halo_wars/remixed.html
Source: The Bonfire Studios blogs!
http://www.bonfire-studios.com/blog/index.php?/archives/15-Bonfires-Halo-Wars-Remixes.html
Have fun!
Anthony Long – Composes excellent Halo Wars five long years music video
Anthony Long, a fan of the Halo Wars Soundtrack originally composed by Stephen Rippy has uploaded a YouTube video of his own version of the Spirit of Fire music piece. I think you will agree that this is an excellent version and I am sure Stephen Rippy would be proud of a fans hard work on this. You can see the video below and a link to the original YouTube page. You can also find a direct download of the MP3. I encourage you to leave comments on the YouTube webpage and rate the video if you like it.
“That’s a really cool interpretation of “Spirit of Fire” – I like it quite a bit and am really pleased that the theme meant enough to inspire some creativity.” – Stephen Rippy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S8sos-DjjA
MP3 Download:
Stephen Rippy released new music samples
UPDATED: You can download music samples and purchase the CD by going to the official Stephen Rippy website. – Enjoy!
Stephen Rippy has released preview tracks on his official MySpace page of both new and old music from Age of Empires. Stephen is looking for feedback so feel free to comment on his MySpace what you think!
Stephen has also updated his official website and notes that he is now part of Bonfire Studios. The official MySpace blurb from Stephen follows:
“I’ve got a new “songs” CD out today: “Somewhere Close to Near.” You can hear a couple of tracks from it here on my MySpace page.www.stephenrippy.com – it’s been completely re-designed and features information on all of my game soundtracks as well as my more pop/rock-related records.
Please also check out
Hope you like what you hear!
-Stephen”
IGN talks to Stephen Rippy
In an informative interview you can find out information on how Halo Wars was recorded and more thoughts from Stephen about the soundtrack:
The Dallas Observer talks to Stephen Rippy
The Dallas Observer has done an excellent article on Stephen Rippy discussing his past and how he came to work for Ensemble Studios where he wrote music for all the “Age of” and Halo Wars games. The article continues right up until present day where Stephen is currently working with Bonfire Studios lead by his brother David Rippy.
You can read the article here: http://www.dallasobserver.com/2009-02-26/music/stephen-rippy-set-s-halo-wars-high-schore/2
Halo Wars soundtrack is SOLD OUT in the UK
Great news for Stephen Rippy as his Halo Wars soundtrack is completely sold out in the UK! If you are in the US you might want to try and secure and order quickly.
Looks like this will be a very successful album! Well done Stephen!
From Amazon UK:
Please accept our apologies for this inconvenience, but “Halo Wars” appears to have been a surprise sellout.
When you placed your order #xxxxxx, we believed we had access to more copies – we then discovered that every one of our distributors had rapidly sold out.