I like the layout of the JamLegend page on Snaptalent. The job is something I'm interested in and Snaptalent seems to do a good job aggregating info about JamLegend.
One quick question though. What are the benefits to signing up? The sign up ad could be read as implying that signing up would be beneficial to me in applying to JamLegend. Are you offering any services, like resume review? Or is this page all that a logged in user would see, and account benefits are more general things like search access?
Chris, I'm one of the founders of JamLegend, so feel free to e-mail me directly if you have any questions about JamLegend. We have been in News.YC for a while, so it holds a particular place in our hearts if people are referred from there.
I've been very happy with SnapTalent because I think it authentically conveys our company and we've helped test parts of their system. Snaptalent is so refreshing because it's a company that finally gets it.
Thanks for the response. I'll probably be emailing you my resume and a few questions later this evening once I get my resume cleaned up a little.
And thanks for offering to answer any questions I have. I find it a huge complement to know that I have direct access to a company's founders. One of the reasons I just signed up for SnapTalent, a company I have never heard of before, is getting a response from sharpshoot a few minutes after I asked a question.
I have played around on your site a little bit after hearing about it on HN yesterday, but I really wouldn't say I have much of a relationship with your site after visiting it a few times. So one of my first experiences with JamLegend is finding out that you are willing to answer any questions I have, and that created a lot of good will toward your company.
So your Snaptalent profile says it's 1-10 employees, and there's 4 positions for interns. That seems like a pretty high intern/fulltime ratio. Are you planning on filling all 4 of those?
Just signed up! I'm really impressed with the service so far. As ALee put it, it's really refreshing to see a company that gets it. I've been having a hard time finding appropriately aimed job postings as a soon-to-be-recent-grad and you've given me hope.
Thanks for the response. I decided to sign up for an account.
If anyone else was wondering what the Sign Up button does when logged in, the button turns into an I'm Interested button. This lets SnapTalent release your contact info, and since your resume and other info is in your profile, Snap Talent is saying that this an easier way to apply for a job.
Thanks Bcater. Please spread the word to those who want to join us in revolutionizing music gaming, the people we bring on will have HUGE impact on products that our users will immediately use.
The site and game look great, success seem inevitable; but I find playing unsatisfying.
The chosen notes often seem independent of the guitar lines in the song; and when played, they're not in sync. So for me, it's more like a simon-says game with incidental background music. :-)
- Is this a technical problem? Flash is not so great at syncing sounds and actions; and additionally, I'm trying it on a low-powered eee PC (most flash games are fine on it).
- Or is it me? I've heard that these games are not like playing the instrument at all (I'm an old guitar player, just garage bands and teaching, but I can play), and so maybe this spoils the experience for me.
I hope this feedback is useful to you - and even better if you can enlighten me! Thanks :-)
It is entirely a technical limitation of Flash. You have no way of guaranteeing a set sound latency, or even monitoring how much is present. According to the Adobe devs this might change in future versions.
But for right now, music games on Flash can't live up to the expectations set by games on other platforms.
All true on this thread. We push Flash pretty hard (could probably beat it a little further), but if you're interested in helping solve these tough problems, we'd love to talk.
To be honest, until Adobe changes Flash, I think Java is the best bet in terms of responsiveness (there's still random garbage collection delays of around 100ms so not perfect; but an improvement). Installation base is comparable to Flash.
But not in terms of design: for although a Java version theoretically could be as pretty as your Flash version (and it is very pretty), the designer-tool support really isn't there. It would be hard to port; and hard to modify. Sun has some tool support for designers, but I'm sure it has nightmare usability.
I think both design and responsiveness are crucial in your space, so this is a difficult one.
This is something we looked at for a while when starting out, and even posted on HN to ask about (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=203864). In the end, we chose Flex because it seemed like we could get good enough performance while enjoying the benefits of quicker development. We mostly use pure AS3, but we saved some time with a few components. Hopefully someday we can strip those out and cut the Flex framework overhead.
But yes, Flash player has an unpredictably crappy internal clock and performance varies significantly based on the browser and OS, so synchronizing the notes with the music has been a challenge. For the most part, I think we've done a fairly good job compared to the existing players. We scale intense tasks dynamically in game but there is definitely room to improve (custom a/v delay, controller delay, really-crappy-performance mode, etc).
Sorry, I made a mistake: I was thinking you are producing sound when the player hits a key - but you aren't. I think that's not part of the "guitar hero" concept anyway (it is in a drum version I saw in an arcade; a different story).
Anyway, I found that java can play user-triggered sounds instantly (or perceived as such), whereas Flash can't. I experimented with this in Flash, researched it/asked about it on FlashKit - and all the Flash music games I found with triggered sounds suffered from this same problem. So it's very likely true, but not relevant for you. :-)
I'm still looking for an internship abroad (I'm from the Netherlands), and this sounds like a cool opportunity! I only hope that JamLegend or any other company on snaptalent are waiting for some european knowledge ;)
One quick question though. What are the benefits to signing up? The sign up ad could be read as implying that signing up would be beneficial to me in applying to JamLegend. Are you offering any services, like resume review? Or is this page all that a logged in user would see, and account benefits are more general things like search access?