Elemental: War of Magic Developer Diary
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I spent most of December working on design docs for the first expansion. I talked in an earlier Dev Journal about the phases of game development and how the high level design was created by the end of November. We had our stakeholders meeting and high level concepts were approved. December was spent turning those concepts into specific items and tasks.
I start by fleshing out the ideas in docs. Large lists get trimmed, ideas are improved, I try to make the most of every idea. After the list is down to the assets we want for the game they go into a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet serves 3 functions. First it is able to export the XML directly so we never need to touch XML files. Secondly it provides list boxes of all the common data types so we can't mistype them (so if something requires a tech the listbox allows the designer to pick from all the current techs). And lastly it allows us to do some data modeling.
The spreadsheet pulls weapon values from the weapon sheet and armor values from the armor sheet and shows the average and max damage for any given strength from any weapon against any armor type. It lays out the damage all the monsters in the game do at different levels so we can make sure that damage progression looks even (we don't want Garrote's hitting for more damage than a Red Dragon). That should save us from having to require as much playtest feedback since it becomes visually obvious if leather armor is too good or not good enough, if a certain weapon (or new weapon mechanic) is too effective, or if a given spawn 3 monster isn't correctly balanced.
