Factions in a strategy game
I haven’t played starcraft in years, and when I did it was minimal. A few months ago, Namaste got back into playing it. I remember walking in his room to see Terran soldiers firing their machine guns, running on top of purple slime from which spikes were emerging and killing them. Later I learned that the purple slime just designates the area where Zerg can build, and the spikes were just a defensive building. However, the image had a strong effect on me.
I want to see a strategy game with (at least) three factions which are fundamentally different. Namaste put it well: “one side has units, another side doesn’t have units”. For example, you’d have the typical RTS faction with buildings that produce units that have guns. But another faction could be plants that only have biological weapons; they couldn’t chop anybody’s head off, but they could cause disease, metal corrosion, suffication, etc. Plants of course cannot move, but can spread their seeds. Perhaps a third faction would be a small tribe of people who could control animals, or something like that.
UPDATE: Namaste and I talked about it a bit. An interesting idea is a faction who only have “energy concentration” in areas, and that energy could take whatever form it likes. That is, you could have an oversized watch tower that could convert into an army when it needed to.
Splashing River
Here’s another improvisation today. I had to do something to contrast the gloomy mood of the last one.
Lonely
Today’s improvisation was directed. I received a letter from my mom who said she was lonely in Hawaii, so I set out to improvise the emotion “lonely”.
Turbulent Water
For today’s improvisation, I tried to take my head out of it as much as possible, and just let my fingers “do their thing”.
The Moment – Runaway Heyhole
The Moment practiced again today. Finally, Steve the drummer showed up. Starting at track #9, we started a heyhole exercise. Everything was going well until steve put his riff into the mix. It was consistent, but the beat was so weird that it messed everybody else up. Nonetheless, we persevered until we got it (the tapping hi-hat that he decided to add was a big help), and from there it took off into 40 minutes of non-stop music madness. It’s pretty good, too. As usual, it has an issue with dynamics, but this time was better. The listener gets a few seconds of breathing room every ten minutes or so.
The Enemy Approaches
Today’s improvisation was back in the unplanned, “sit down and play” style.
Lovers’ Touch
For today’s improvisation, I decided that I would focus on my left hand, since my right hand is usually dominant. However, my right hand sometimes can’t help but take the lead, and the result was a particularly beautiful, balanced piece.
Jam from last wednesday
Last wednesday we did the improv game that Connor was talking about. Some interesting ambient music came out of it. In my opinion, #3 is more interesting than #2.
If you listen to #3 the whole way through, just for fun listen to the first 30 seconds of it again and notice how different it is. Then try to identify the point at which it changed :-).
Theatre Drama
Here’s another improvisation for today.

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