Talk:Tranquility (video game)

message: I'm proposing to move this page to Tranquility (computer game) and placing a disambig page at Tranquility. Although I'm no so sure anyone will write an article on tranquility anytime soon, at the moment most of the articles which are trying to link here are really looking for Tranquility  as in Peace#Peace_and_quiet. 
Alternatively we could move the Peace and quiet section from Peace to form a new start for a Tranquility article. -- Solipsist 20:30, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: I'm not sure that "peace and quiet", or the word "tranquility" by itself would be something found in an encyclopedia unless it referred to this game. Please note that "tranquility" as it is used here is trademarked.
On the other hand, I could see why something like "Sea of Tranquility" would be found in an encyclopedia, and if I were a researcher looking for this, I would probably type "sea of tranquility" in the Search field.
Now, if we're talking about the "tranquility" reached by someone studying transcendentalism or any number of new age philosophies, why wouldn't the word "tranquility" be a sub-topic of the parent "transcendentalism" or "new age movement", etc.?
Also, could someone help me on this: the article is definitely more than a dictionary definition. Does anyone know why it has been classified as "stub" instead of "start"? 
~~TranquiliC~~
:Up until today there was not much in terms of referenced information in the article. Now that you've added some information I think it may be approaching full article quality. I think the only last thing that should be addressed is to make sure we nail down why this game is notable at all. Right now the whole article is ripe for a self-righteous deltionist's purge. -Thibbs (talk) 00:51, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not too sure 

message: >> Fitting with tranquility's non traditional approach, the cost of the game varies from month to month, but gentle requests to the support staff often result in a free lifetime account.
Probably just delete this part of the sentence? People (including me) were told not to spread the word about this by the creators of the game... people are supposed to find out on their own. Greets, enc
--80.171.26.198 09:52, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Don´t tell people they get a free lifetime account 

message: Hey, I need your thoughts on this. A music video game is, by Wikipedia definition "where the gameplay is meaningfully and often almost entirely oriented around the player's interactions with a musical score or individual songs". In other words, the score is guiding gameplay. A good example of this would be Guitar Hero, however, this does not describe tranquility. With tranquliity, the musical score is generated on the fly based upon the player's past, current, and future interaction with the game environment. I did say something that was erroneous earlier. I indicated that the music was independent of the play. After speaking with Mr. Romanowski, I find this is not true. What the user does has a direct effect on the musical score. They are, in a sense, writing their own song. The Jukebox is generated on the players past play, or even a seed of a song that is then mutated according to past play.
The concept of the generated score was not present in the original version of tranquility, which used a simple, looping new age sound track. A generated musical score is not considered an "official" component of what makes up a rendition of tranquility. The official components are a star field; a floor; moving platforms; and the concept of gravity and platform bouncing being the mode of navigation through the environment. Secondary components are new age-style audio and the abstract first-person viewpoint.
So what is tranquility? Does it belong to an entirely different genre of entertainment, and if so, what is it? It's not a platform game, it's not a first person shooter, it's not a board game, it's not a card game, it's not an MMO, it's not hokey, it's not baseball. It's not an echo of any real-world activity. It was very much, by design, defined by what it is not. It is an "anti game".
One of you mentioned that to avoid a broad-sweeping delete, this article needs to reflect what makes tranquility unique or special. The fact that tranquility is an "anti game" is the very thing that makes it unique. There are no guns. There are no predators. There is no way to die. Movement through the levels is always in a positive, forward direction. Though there is a hierarchical flow of Rank and Realm, tranquility is no more a game than throwing a pebble into a pond is a sport. 
TranquiliC (talk) 02:42, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Other users will disagree and have disagreed with me on this issue, but I do think that this is an interesting aspect of the game. I think that this is pretty notable. I also think if you look at other music games like Rez and Otocky for example you'll see that tranquility (in its current configuration) is what is known as a "Generative music game." I had earlier categorized it as an art game also since it is an unconventional game whose main point seems to differ from strict platformers. I tend to think of the game as more of an open canvas for artistic expression with the option of playing a goal-oriented game if the user chooses. The Eaton article you linked seems to support this as the author speaks of playing the game as if it were an instrument. Anyway, perhaps we should rethink adding those tags ("music game" and "art game"). -Thibbs (talk) 02:54, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Just to further explain what I mean about "generative music games," a generative-form hybrid music video games often make the concert music resulting from the interaction between performer and in-game dynamics a goal of the game. According to the Eaton article, "The developers have created a relaxing and ever-changing musical score that’s a remarkable part of the game. Whenever you bounce off or through a platform, the game responds by playing rich, harplike tones. It’s as if you’re playing the platforms like musical instruments" (emphasis added). To me this indicates that the player's interaction with the music is intended as a central element of the game. The designer, you have mentioned, is a musician. I think it is likely that he intended the player to be able to play the game as a non-game but rather to treat it as an ambient musical experience. I am not alone in this. Another eidtor had previously listed this game as an arrhythmic music video game (presumably in distinction from "rhythmic music video games" like Guitar Hero). I have compared the gameplay here to that of the game Rez. To explain what I mean by this, in Rez the game takes the form of a simple rail shooter, however by integrating sound effects created by the actions of the player (as he completes the normal tasks of rail-shooting) with the soundtrack as a whole, the game is intended to permit the player's direct interaction with the soundtrack and to encourage the creation of a synaesthetic experience. In this situation I believe the game takes the form of a platformer, but is intended to allow the player to experience the game on a purely musical level as well. Does this make any sense? From what you have now brought up, that "the musical score is generated on the fly based upon the player's ... interaction with the game environment" (emphasis added), I have removed the claim that the "gameplay is [not] meaningfully ... oriented around a player's interactions with a musical score." I'm strongly inclined to re-insert the material about it being a music game. Do you have any objections to this? -Thibbs (talk) 18:23, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I apologize if you think I'm jumping the gun a bit here, but I've re-added the music-game-related material based on my above analysis, your statements regarding the game, and what I have seen in the third-party sources. I don't consider this to be a final decision right now, but I thought it might help if you saw it in context. I just reworked the whole article for smoothness and clarity, and as it stands now I think the nature of the game is explained in fair detail. Does it seem OK to you? I'm not trying to claim the game is a "rhythm game" like Guitar Hero at all, but I do think the musical portion of the game is notably central to it, and with so much suggestion that the game is intended to allow the player to experiment, I think it really is quite comparable to "generative music games" such as Rez and Otocky. Thoughts? -Thibbs (talk) 20:50, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

text: Oh ok then. Thank you. I see your additions and I think they are great. Thanks for all the good help here. -Thibbs (talk) 07:08, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Premise - Music Video Game or something completely different? 

message: A couple of minor corrections. 
1. In many worlds the floor is not solid - you can pass through to play on the other side. The effect, the first time, was rather like scuba diving.
2. There was not 'approximately 1 spinner' per level - there was exactly 1 spinner per level, apart from the very rare bug that allowed another one to creep in. I challenged the creator on the residual bugs, but he was pretty clear that coming to terms with the bugs was a step on the path to acceptance of the imperfections of reality.
A comment - I feel that the article somehow misses the most important points of tranquility. I at least found the music extremely irritating - electronic bong-bong music that simply drove me wild. I played through the whole thing (all 21 realms) 13 times in total and had the music switched off the whole time. What never palled however was the sheer overwhelming beauty of the game, particularly at the topmost levels. It's hard to convey in words, but the slow movements, vivid colours, profound sense of flying amongst complex solar systems in a giant galaxy were always immensely seductive. It was also amazingly simple to play - effectively the only action one could take was to bounce off or through a platform - 3 minutes to learn, and many hours to perfect. It's this sense of it being slightly trippy, transcendental, new age, that made it such a standout achievement - any attempt at haste or aggression just made it harder to play fluently. Utterly unlike any other game that I'm aware of of that period. Even now, I keep hoping someone will kickstart if off again - hint, hint.
UnNovel (talk) 21:38, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  A correction and a comment 

message: I hope it's OK to talk about the desire to archive old levels. Before the servers were shut down, some levels would be stored locally. I managed to find two levels, one is the Daily Demo for May 10, 2011 at state "Neophyte on the Path To Understanding", and the other is a local level at state "Sublime Sage of the Zodiac". I won't put a link here but they're on GitHub at "tranquility-levels". These can be played in the game. I'd be very interested to see late-game levels.  —Flicky1984 (talk) 21:20, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Archive of Levels