Potential Blog

I don’t yet have as defined a game design process as my software process, but I’ve evolved a simple methodology for recording and refining my game design ideas. The technology needed is a pen, a journal, and a wiki. The process involves three activities:

For one, I write down (with the pen, in the journal) every random gameplay thought, with little regard for feasibility or conformity to the rest of the design. From my technical background, I tend to auto-cull things that would be impossible to implement. From my board game background, I tend to prefer strategic mechanics, rather than fuzzy “wouldn’t it be cool if” concepts.

The second activity also involves a pen and a journal (I use the same one from above). The goal is to refine the random thoughts into coherent game mechanics. Terminology like “attributes” and “weapons” and their interactions must be defined. The goal is to draft and refine the game systems.

The final activity, which I had underestimated, is concisely documenting the final game design. This phase forces decisions, exposing gaps and conflicts. If you can’t play the game in your head from these designs, and design the software, then there is something missing. I’ve found that a wiki provides the best balance between formality and flexibility.

All of these activities happen more or less at the same time. This is not a sophisticated requirements tracking system, and document versioning would be needed to coordinate design and software teams, but this works for my team of one.

Overall, this methodology seems rather obvious, but it’s important to be aware of the process, and write it down. Unless something is well documented, it cannot be well understood.

After making some progress implementing new game features, I found myself leafing through my design journals to extrapolate the final design decisions. To solidify the ideas, I’ve spent a few days codifying the design in a wiki (DokuWiki with Dokubook template). Now I have a more rigorously defined design. There are still gaps (the 20% of the unfinished design mentioned earlier), but they are more clearly exposed, so I can code around them.

The most fundamental design change is to the character attributes. From a gameplay standpoint, the character system should feel more “classic.” Simply put, raise your attributes to become better at things. Strategic decision involves which attributes to raise, and what equipment best compliments them. From a technical standpoint, this affects many of the core content objects (characters, creatures, and items).

The new attributes have been implemented, but not integrated with any logic that uses them. As soon as I can, I will release a new client, so Alpha playtesters can at least see the character changes.

Last week, I announced commencement of development, after a phase of game design. No updates have been released as of yet. (Alpha testers will find the client is “expired” … and the server is offline anyway.) I’ve spent this week switching gears back into software development mode.

The technical task at hand is to alter the software to support the latest game designs. Nearly all of the existing infrastructure (the so-called Potential Engine) will remain untouched. Only game objects (Items, Characters, Creatures, etc.) and logic/rules need be manipulated. Plus, the user interface will need to be updated to reflect game object changes, such as new character attributes.

Beyond these updates, the game design calls for three significant additions to gameplay:

• Combat (redesigned)
• Magic
• Quests

These will probably appear in this order. There’s also a Skills system, but that’s part of the 20% of game design that’s only roughly sketched out. These components comprise the fundamental gameplay of the MMORPG project.

As soon as the world is stable enough to walk around in, I’ll start releasing updates with new bits of gameplay (for Alpha playtesters).

If you monitor the MMORPG Dev Cave Status page (which I assume everybody does), you’ll have noticed the renewed development activity, including exciting software updates, such as:

• fix javadoc warnings

Core game design is about 80% complete (on paper). Game testing is needed to finalize the remaining 20%, so I’m shifting back into development mode. Every aspect of gameplay will be improved, including Items, Characters, Creatures, Populations, World, Shops, Towns, and Combat (in roughly this order).

I haven’t written a single line of code for a month (for the first time in a many years). For what do I put myself through this withdrawal? For the potential player, and for the love of the game! My development philosophy for this project is:

• 40% for the love of the code
• 40% for the love of the game
• 20% for the necessities of life

It’s that last bullet that becomes increasingly important over time. The cold hard reality is that I’m developing MMORPG on a 5-year-old computer with a 17-inch CRT monitor — ouch! (…not to mention secondary concerns like food and heat…)

Actually, this past month of game design focus has been extremely valuable. Lesson learned: I should have finalized the game design months ago. I got wrapped up in that first bullet, but developing the Potential Engine was certainly time well spent. The scant gameplay available in Alpha(2) provided for essential testing of the Potential Engine and fundamental game logic. Many thanks to the hour(s) put in by the Alpha tester(s).

In February I will finalize the MMORPG game design on paper and begin implementation/integration with the engine. Soon there will be more to do than click on spiders.