May 2, 2008
Project Tracking
I have starting managing Dragonlings using Fogbugz, a project management and bug tracking program, and I will say that it is great. I had no idea how helpful and polished it would be. The ship date confidence distribution really tells me if I am just fooling myself about when I will get a sprint done.
Here is the chart:
I have been a fan of Joel Spolsky for a really long time now, but I had never actually tried any of the software that his small company in New York makes.
I love reading his articles when they talk about development and his ideas about how you should treat a programmer. I have a list of rules he created posted on the wall in my cubical and I try to encourage my employers to implement as many of those rules as possible to help encourage quality software, low turnover and great people that “get things done“.
Oh and it is free for up to two users as a Start Up version. I would have to say that that price worked out perfectly for me!
So if you want to try out a neat program and need to manage a project I recommend that you give it a try. I love it and it has only been two days.
On a side note I promise I will post about Dragonlings soon, I am having a hard time figuring out what to do next and I need some ideas about what would be the best possible thing to design next to make sure this game is going to be fun.
April 30, 2008
Quick update
I have been busy and I am making great progress. I am still working on the design for the skill system and so far it looks like it will be fun. I am picturing a world where you can search for rare animals or creatures you have never seen so that you can try to learn the rare skills that they possess so you can use them.
I have been thinking lately that I should also randomize the chances that each creature has a certain skill. The skills could be the gear and finding that rare skill could be like finding the rare sword or piece of armor. Anyway that is what I am thinking right now.
More to come soon, just don’t have any time right now to keep typing.
April 23, 2008
How to balance something?
I have a very strong feeling that my initial playability is going to be a mess. I really need to come up with a method to place all my variables (player, monster, skills, traits, etc.) into a spreadsheet so that when fighting happens I end up with a net damage to the player as less than the damage to the monster. Otherwise everyone will keep dying. If the balance goes the other way I will have the other problem and the game will be impossible.
I have no idea exactly where to start this though.
I am about to start working on the skill system and that is why I am bringing this up. The skill system is based upon use and focus. If you are focusing on a skill and it is used on you or you use it then you can gain experience in that skill. Eventually that skill will increase in power, accuracy, abilities or all of the above. When I start to think about what that would do to the game system I start to wonder how quickly the game will become unbalanced and the challenges become boring. I really, really don’t want it to be boring and for me personally that means lots of areas where I can explore once I have got my fill of an area. Not everyone is like me though.
Some like to gain as much power as possible in as much of a risk free way as possible. Then take the great power they have gained and wreak havoc on the game. Maybe there is nothing wrong with that, but what can I do to make sure that the free power isn’t too easy to get? Should I even care?
I can remember playing, I think it was Dragon Quest, and staying in the same area until my level was ridiculously high so that I didn’t have to worry about all the random encounters that would get in the way of the story. (Yeah, I am one of those players that likes the story.) Anyway, because I invested my time and because the game let me I had a much better experience.
This is all fine and good when one player is involved, but what about when lots of players are in one area. When the players are competing for the kills and the high level person investing in herself kills things in seconds and keeps the lower players from playing at all. I pretty much can’t let that happen. So I will have to introduce controls on what gives skill and what doesn’t and what makes you bigger and what doesn’t.
If your dragon goes out and kills only rats you would eventually grow bigger and bigger, but your hunger would become greater and greater until the little rats are similar to eating a single peanut for a meal. Sure you could eat just peanuts, but really you would have to eat a ridiculous amount of them to get enough to eat. So there I go, that is what I will do about that and it will be very similar to what other games have where the gains go down the stronger the character is in relation to his/her prey.
If Dragonlings works like that then it should force players out of the starting areas into areas where they will gain more and hopefully enjoy themselves more.
What do you think?
April 21, 2008
Dragonlings Design II
The Design (Based on Raph Koster’s Design Questions)
Dragonlings – Game Documentation The Sales Pitch:
You raise and a dragon through hatchling to adulthood. The world awaits as you head out from the protective shelter of the hatchery into the world. You will learn of the elemental magic and the battle between good and evil that has put the dragon race where they are today. They will meet the other aces that control the land and make the choice to help them or destroy them and ultimately decide what side of the war of good and evil they are on.
Design Goals:
- Learn by watching things
- Skills strengthen by use and are granted by knowledge or gifts from the elemental gods.
- Adult dragons gain strength from their hordes
- As a dragon grows in size the world view changes and new area are accessable. (Think katamari and how the world zooms out as you grow bigger, only not quite as extreme.)
- Magic is gathered from the surrounding world and has can be used up forcing that character to move on to a new local.
- Good and Bad magic pools exist so that a good dragon will have very little ability to do evil, but they will have some.
- Over time a dragon can change it’s ways and become neutral or switch to another alignment entirely.
- Multiple small editions that slowly expand the world of the dragons.
- Flight is possible eventually
- Customizable avatars so you can look different from the different dragons around you
- Group dynamics to accomplish larger goals
- 4 types of magic one for each elemental god. (Earth, Air, Water, Fire)
Core Mechanics:
- Learning: As a small dragon you are a blank slate that needs to be drawn on by your experiences. As you try things in the world and experience things, you will learn knowledge that will add to your abilities. Those abilities can then be used to make them stronger. If you watch a fire you will learn something about the fire line of skills. If you focus on a river your water skills will expand as well.
- Skills: You skills are where you start after learning something. Maybe you can breath a little flame. Maybe you can swipe your claws, but barely hit anything. The skills are the base that you have to build on and over time they will improve by age and by experience. As you grow you will grow stronger but you won’t be any better at magic, unless you were using those skills. The same goes for melee skills. Sure you can swipe at anything, but if you haven’t been practicing you aren’t going to do much and you may miss them completely.
- Horde: An adult dragon grows from more than just knowledge. A full grown dragon has a desire for a horde and with a large horde the happiness that the dragon knows brings it more strength, focus, and even abilities. It isn’t till later in life that the dragon care for such things, so this mechanic will be left for the end game.
- Size: When you start a rat or a snake is food, but as you grow those small animals will do nothing for you and you will be able to tell as they are now smaller and not selectable in any way. The bigger animals will always be a threat but the size of the smaller ones will determine if they are just in the background or something that you can use. Intelligent races will always be selectable, however they will also scale as you grow larger.
- Magic: Magic is granted to dragons through their ability to control the elements in everything around them. They can gather from the grass, trees, water, fires, etc that are around them. As a dragon uses that power the levels of elemental energy in the immediate area decreases and the recovery of magic become slower and slower until the land will no longer recover and the dragon must move away from the dead area. As the area is sapped of power it darkens and loses color.
- Good or Bad Magic: Every dragon has both. The use of one type or another adds more of that type of magic to that pool, but takes some from the other pool. Each pool has a base amount that increases with dragon size, so every dragon can cast some spells from both. However the most powerful elemental spells can only be cast at a great cost of power that is only accessible to a truly good or bad dragon.
- Change in skills:A dragon can learn all skills that is has the power to perform if it only learns the base from something. Since skills are gained from practice a bad dragon can use good abilities and eventually will become a neutral dragon and over time even a good dragon.
- Added Content: Content will start at the hatchery and each release will grow from that point into a full world. The time it takes to accomplish this will depend entirely on developers involved and art assets available.
- Flight: You can fly eventually! Using the same scaling technique that was used as your grew you can eventually soar above the trees and mountains. There are limits due to power levels and the amount of energy it takes to fly for long periods of time.
- Grouping: Dragons can group with other dragons so someone will melee skills can group with a good caster so they can have some healing as they travel across the kingdom. All magic abilities have group spells and all four elemental magic types have different strengths.
Lore, art, world, etc.:
The world is placed in the typical dark ages setting. Mythical creatures exist as well as humans. Other mythical races have yet to be determined, but most likely will not be available.
The art direction will be photo realistic eventually, but initially all art will be basic to develop game systems that are actually fun.
Narrative and guidance will occur through distant mental communication, other dragons you meet, and knowledge of the dragons that all dragons learn as they grow older and eventually remember how to do things they were never taught. The collective knowledge of the dragons is shared, but unlocking that knowledge is time and size, not effort to remember. As adult dragon can suddenly know how to freeze their water breath and cripple a target just because they have finally remembered that inborn knowledge.
April 17, 2008
What I will talk about & Rock Band
I have asked to be able to put screen shots on here. YAY!
The answer was no. BOO!!
So I asked if I can do drawn mock-ups of my interface to show everyone. YAY!
This time the answer was yes. YAY!!
So soon I will have some pictures showing everyone that reads this what the interface looks like so far. It isn’t pretty, but it is what I have so far and maybe someone will read this and give me some ideas to make it better.
In really unrelated news I have pre-ordered Rock Band for the Wii. Now I don’t need to hear everyone complain about how the is no DLC (Down Loadable Content) available for the Wii, or how this is just going to be a knock off of the PS2 version. I really don’t have the money to get one of the powerhouse systems, so really the Wii is where it is going to be at if I want to ever play this game, and I really, really, want to play this game.
I have to admit I am also hoping for a possible solution to the DLC content sometime after release. I can only see the lack of hard drive as a reason it wouldn’t work on the Wii and given the wireless Internet connection on it I could see a patch or content release giving the Wii version DLC some day.
