Getting ready for TSE2

These last few months have been very exciting. Preparing for the release of The Spirit Engine 2 is making me very anxious. I've been doing a lot of work to prepare for the completion.

First, a lot of work on polishing the soundtrack is being done. I'm going back through every piece I've written for the game and cleaning it up and polishing the mastering. Some of these tracks are almost three years old now, so I have to put in a lot of work to make them all sound up to date with my recording quality. I am expecting to get a playtest of the game with the music in it for the first time this weekend, and I'm pretty excited to start making the initial adjustments.

Second, I've been busy working on a DRM-free solution to the music piracy thing that I'd like to avoid. I'm creating a website that will store the encrypted music files and people that purchase the soundtrack will download the music through a java applet that will simultaneously download and decrypt the music. The applet will also 'tag' the music with a hash label that I can use to track down anybody who shares my music. While this seems like a bit of a privacy issue, it really is the only way to combat music piracy without stamping a huge DRM stamp on the music. So share the music with your friends and I'm cool with it, put it on your mp3 player, CD player, streaming radio and I'm still honored, but throw up a torrent and I'll be quite displeased.

Although the game isn't that close to completion, and a release date hasn't been announced, it is safe enough to say that the 5 year wait is DEFINITELY drawing to a close. The game is absolutely fantastic, and I hope that people will think the music is fit to match the quality. The music currently sits in my iTunes as 2 hours and 37 minutes long, not including drafts that I've thrown out completely. So the good news is that your ears will not get tired.

I'm headed home to Louisville this weekend for some much needed R&R... but in all truths I'll probably keep on developing some of the website and other stuff. I've got a big workload on my hands and a lot to do, so the sooner the better.

~ Josh