More constant and full work on the album. Each song takes me about 3 full days now, when the writing is all set out and complete, so it should perhaps annoy me less that an album takes so many months, when 36 days without a break would be an average time. Still, I feel tired at this project, though the music so far is good, certainly my best so far.
I've got 25 or so minutes complete. As the album is a collection of songs rather than explicitly themed, I thought about including a few older songs, and remembered 'Incomplete Version Of The Writer' from the old Harlequin Kings album, the album which marked my first experimental attempt at vocals. I've re-used half of those songs to date, but left this one as it was in completely the wrong key. Back then even this low key was at times too high for my voice, but yesterday I re-visited it and upped to key from C-Major to G-Major, a 7-semitone leap, to a much more comfortable and better sounding area.
The introductory 'guitars' were problematical. Based on an SY-85 sample, their timbre necessarily sounds very different shifted so much, and the strings too needed a lot of work for this reason, but I'm ready for the vocals now. I'm singing more than ever, party because of the regular open mic nights, and my singing, piano, and guitar playing are regularly improving, for what such things are worth.
The Taskforce v1.07 update was released yesterday. I thought about some sort of sequel. I need to make more games this year, in a quest for more income. Playing Taskforce reminded me how clunky and slow it was, and how silly some aspects were, like the lack of deadliness of a shotgun blast to the body. One advantage of a Taskforce sequel is that I can use all of the existing graphics and most of the engine, just create some new missions, and change some of the aspects of gameplay to speed it up, perhaps smaller maps, fewer action points, more deadly weapons. I'm unsure if it will help, as the game was a flop, though I must remember that Hilt II (and the ancient Amiga Taskforce) were very popular. I rather liked my move/fire phases in Taskforce Amiga. This idea (like the concept of the game itself) was based on the dice games I used to play with my brother with toy soldiers.
At the moment, the Action Points and opportunity fire in Taskforce works really well though so I'd probably leave this unchanged in any sequel.
The problem is that all things take time. I've already got lots of sequel ideas, none of which particularly appeal or have finished designs. Still, games, music, and books are all growth areas relative to my visual art, so I must keep going. Of course, I'm always busy on one or the other.
I'm unsure whether to bother updating the Yinyang engine, as the game is unpopular, and it works fine as it is.
