My concept

A large portion of WW1 seems to be trench warfare, and I wanted to make a game based on that. I wasn’t allowed to have death/destruction or owning territory as an objective for the player, so I decided to have a Race to the End type game.

You play as the Allied Powers, though that doesn’t really matter. The Central Powers have come into your trenches, killed off most of your team, and have taken your ammo supply. They have taken a handful of your team mates hostage, and placed you in a central holding cell, within your own trenches, waiting for their commanding officer to decide what to do with you. When the guards backs are turned, you’re able to escape the cell, and have to exit the trenches to return to your home base. (Cheesy, I know.)

Allied Powers Goals

• Reach the outside edge of the game board without getting caught.

Central Powers Goals

• Capture players
• If you can’t capture them, prevent them from leaving the trenches before your commanding officer arrives.

Rules

• For 4-10 players, even numbers work better. Half are Allied, half are Central; if there’s an uneven number of players, the odd man out is Central.
• The Allied players start in the middle area (blue) , the Central players start on the edges (yellow).
• The game goes for a set number of turns, at the end of the game, the Central Powers’ commanding officer arrives, and any Allied Powers players left on the game board are captured.
• Players roll 1d12 to move.
• Color Definitions: Brown: Trenches, Green: High ground, Blue: Jail, Yellow: Freedom
• Players can move from the Trenches to the High ground through the Orange squares. Players can move from the high ground to the trenches without restriction. Allied Powers Players cannot enter the jail, Central Powers players can pass through the jail’s doors.
• Players are given a number of “Sandbag” tiles, which they can place next to their player-marker at any time during their turn.
• Sandbags block the path. A player can spend a turn to remove the sandbags, and they can keep the tile to play during their own turn.

What did I learn from this?

• I need to stop procrastinating. This took me 30 minutes, and I’ve had the idea and rules figured out by the day after the assignment was given.
• Even if the idea sucks, finish it, so I can move on.

(Crossposted from http://www.davematney.com)

Now that I’ve pointed that out, I want to make it perfectly clear that the decisions I’m making right now are a step in the right direction (Forward, if you will.)

Last night, the five remaining members of the original Fews & Two lineup got together (Nathan Iverson, Erik “Ecks” Ohlson, Eric Soper, Brett Jensen, and myself) –plus wives, girlfriends, a three year old Ninja, and an 8 year old greyhound named Lady; the people who have been with us every step of the way– to have a “breaking up BBQ” and to split up what was left from the merch money. As with any of the band get togethers, we decided we should jam, even though we hadn’t played together in about seven months (or so someone said; I think it was less time, but it felt like longer).

It should come as no surprise that we all had a blast playing together. It should also come as no surprise that we remembered almost every old tune we decided to take a swing at… 100+ shows –plus weekly practices and an album– over a three year lifespan will do that to anyone. What surprised me, though, was the overall attitude we had. There was no animosity, there were no feelings of resentment or regret, and there was an absolute feeling of cohesiveness that was missing when we made the decision to put down the old leadsheets and move on.

That said, it should come as no surprise that it was suggested, and unanimously agreed upon, that we should pick up the torch and move forward. Not as F&T, we’re not that band anymore, but as something new. We don’t even know what, yet, but we know a few things; it’ll involve ska/reggae, and you’ll be able to shake your ass to it.

I’m excited. I need this. It’s not going to become my first musical priority, and it probably won’t for anyone else in the project, but it’s definately something we all agree we need.

I guess all I can say on this is here’s to moving forward.

Crossposted from http://www.davematney.com

This is the third track in the Churches series (two per location). Brandon wanted something happy, and the song he featured had a piano over a hip-hop beat. I’m not to positive on the tuba; I thought about adding more horns, but my samples aren’t that great, and I don’t have the time to make them sound that good. So, the tuba might go. I’m sure real bass and real guitar will make an appearance in this, as well.

Without the Electric Tech-Hop piece, I don’t know how well I would have been able to write this beat, either, so it’s good that my random pieces can count as some sort of practice.

Crossposted from http://www.davematney.com

Crossposted from http://www.davematney.com

Check me out at DaveMatney.com.

(I will keep crossposting entries, but my portfolio is only available there.)

To be honest, I’m a bit nervous about the complexity and potential of Absynth, Reactor, Massive, and most importantly, Kontakt, but that’s never stopped me before. And it didn’t! As soon as I had the samples loaded, I started pounding away at my keyboard, listening to the new sounds, and I must say, I was impressed. The stock sounds are of a quality I’ve never had on my computer, and I feel it will be quite awhile before I’m fighting with my software to get it to sound the way I want.

Speaking of sounding the way I want, as I was dabbling through Massive, I found a bass sound that I was completely inspired by, and I had to get the inspiration into Sonar ASAP.

Electric Tech-Hop by Dave Matney

The drums are mostly a preset kit from Battery, with a single thing changed, bass from Massive, the guitar I recorded with Line 6′s Pod Farm, and the compton-esque lead is from the Kore Player.  It’s REALLY basic, and rough, but it marks a style of music that I’ve been unable to write, previously, so I’m excited.

Keep an eye out for the next steps, as I finish it.

An exercise in game design

In the first lesson from Game Design Concepts, we were instructed to build a simple 15-minute game (an exercise developed by Brenda Brathwaite).  The above game was my product.

The goal is simple: reach the top of the mountain.  The rules are equally as simple: roll a dice, move that many squares forward.  At that, the game is supurbly boring.  In lesson two, we were asked to playtest it (which I didn’t do, but given the simplicity, I am fairly certain I can play it in my head), and then change or add a rule.  I added “If you land on the same square as someone else, you can forfeit your next turn to ‘throw them down the mountain.’  Roll 1d6, and move the opponent’s piece an equal amount down the mountain.”  I’ll playtest it tonight, hopefully, though I think my three-year-old won’t much like the new rule.

So, how did I get here? Passing all the nitty gritty that gets us all here (it’s not that kinda blog!), my story sounds pretty similar to just about every other non-prodigy musician’s, writer’s, designer’s, or composer’s story. I started at a particularly young age, producing absolute drivel, but I have a supportive family that felt lying to me was a good idea. They said “I love it!” and told me to keep it up, and I did.

Piano lessons, public school band classes, Dungeons and Dragons with friends, an overactive imagination, various jobs to pay the bills, various bands to build my musical arsenal… I didn’t write much, not traditional writing anyway; that was my brother’s area. For those of you without siblings, that means I never considered writing as an option, but that didn’t mean the ideas never came, only that I never learned to polish them.

I started writing music for short films, church projects, and that lead me to sites like indiegamer.com, which lead me to PARPG.net, a project that I’m currently working on. I signed on to write music, and when the other composers started moving in, each with more experience, I opted to move into sound design. Being so early in the design process, and hanging out in the forums, I started contributing story ideas, with people taking note and seeming to enjoy what I was putting out.

I began reading game design blogs, hoping to find some direction I could move in PARPG, and I came to realize that all of my D&D games and overactive imagination were priming me for this.

This blog will serve as a progress report for everything I’m learning, and doing, concerning music, sound, writing, and design.

Here’s to moving forward.