Melodic Thursday: Destiny

On short notice today.



And at the end of the solo, the strings section and the big brass joins in for the reprise... oh right. I haven't written that part in yet...

Art Weekend: Business Casual (WIP)

Since this is a long weekend, technically I'm still on time. This is going to be a multi-week project.

I had a late start for this particular drawing. For the longest time I couldn't think of anything good to draw, but this idea came up in the last minute. The first draft of the drawing looks like this:

The idea is there, but the perspective for the chair is way too extreme and the leaning height is not right for Cecil at all. I also went back to previous pages of Future Sight and remembered Lynn has shorter hair. I went to Photoshop, dragged some things around, print, retrace, and came up with a second draft:

The pose looks a bit better. I like Lynn's new nonchalant attitude. Cecil's height still isn't quite right though, so I had to do more fixing. I retraced the corrected image in Photoshop and added some of the background back in, resulting in the trace on top.

There's still some awkward anatomy that'll need some fixing, but overall I'm pretty close to being able to color this piece, which is a whole other nightmare.

Weekend Art WIP: Replacement art for Flash Duel

I talked about Flash Duel last Tuesday. There's a lot to like about the game - it's unique, it's fast, it's cerebral but not overwhelmingly so, there are times when you'll have to take a chance and win or lose, the next game takes like no time to set up.

The game is in its second iteration - there's a pedestrian version and a deluxe version of the first edition of the game, where one is a bit too bare bone and the other too expensive (laser etching everything probably costed a lot of money)... so with the second edition release, the card art got updated, a lot of the deluxe components are replaced with less durable but much better looking printed cardboard, except for one thing.

The track that the duelists walk on. It's so pedestrian. Compared to all the character art, the track is a relic that really, really needs to get an upgrade. And I thought, I don't do enough background/landscape pieces (I haven't done a single piece this last two months...), this is two birds with one stone!

Then the heat wave hits SoCal. God it's too hot in here. This is as far as I got with the times of day that's not melting my face off:

You can see the original layout underneath the new one. What I've drawn up is obviously a sketch and color test, but I like what I have over what was there already. It'd be best if I can plan it so the landscape would naturally have dark and light spaces (required as part of the game mechanics), but if not artificially darkening spots still doesn't look too bad.

Rhythm Thursday: Drum Variations (Paranoia)

Learning drum patterns. Always fun, though the end result isn't necessary listenable. Oh well, here it is anyway:

Melodic Thursday: Chip Church

I was actually looking around Renoise to see if it comes with a string synth that sounds somewhere near the ballpark of Carly Rae Jepsen's Call Me Maybe, but I ended up finding a chiptune instrument that I want to play with instead:



A very simple melody. I've never quite figured out how to spice these basic pieces up a little though.

Design Diary Monday: Stuck In a Rut

Well, we've caught up with the present with my current game's design process, but I suppose that may not necessarily be a good thing. There's several numeric problems with the design right now that can be eventually fixed, and several fundamental design issues that might prompt another design change or just outright abandonment of the project.

I wrote down the rules last week, in case anyone is looking for a reference:

Here is how the game is breaking down at the moment:

1. It is optimal for each player to attack the target that appears on his or her turn instead of someone else's target. By default, if you secure your own target of opportunity on your turn and you're not being attacked, you're guaranteed to score those points; however, if you attack another player and fail, you lose all the cards you spend to attack and you get no treasure. Even if you win, you've only denied another player one turn's worth of points and as it turns out, in a game where the current point totals are blind, people tend to only track their own points and not worry so much about the points other people are getting, even if it means they'd lose in the long run.
2. The problem is compounded when the loss from failure don't justify the cost of attacking players. Since there's no limit on the number of cards used to form ships and crews, players just kept dumping entire hands in order to secure his or her own target. Your hand increases by 1 each turn, without an upper limit, but whenever you lose, you lose everything and the hand size resets. Players become even more risk averse as the game goes on for that reason.
3. The rock-paper-scissors mechanics don't work if a preference for a certain attack can't be established. There's an even number of pirate, sailor, and broadside cards in the game. You are severely disadvantaged without one of the three types of units, so you'd tend to see hands with all three unit types in every hand. In the end, knowing part of what the hand contains is useless, since all card types are probably present anyway. Throwing out random cards can score you as many victories as defeats, just like a normal game of rock paper scissors. The meta game is suppose to offset the risk-reward of the individual elements, but so far none of the designs worked toward that goal.

And now, back to the drawing board. I've been drawing blanks about this game's design lately, but hopefully I'd come up with something to talk about next week.

Melodic Thursday: Hurtful

A bit upset today. That and listening to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xbkovCQMmc">Circus Galop ad infinitum more or less produced this result:



Again, unfinished. I have a feeling that having some basic knowledge of note scales would save me a lot of grief, instead of fumbling around the keyboard looking for the right note...