Age of Conan Behind the Scenes #1
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The most fundamental part of the NPC designer's job is to plan which monsters are going to be used in each playfield and the levels they're going to be.
This is information that other people like the quest designers depend on to get their jobs done, so it must be thoroughly and clearly documented. For this I use a combination of spreadsheets with various information and graphical maps with overlays depicting areas with information about specific monsters and levels as well as markings for camps, villages, bosses and such.
When the planning is done we use a special tool called the monstertool, which is written and maintained by our tool coders. Using this tool we can set and change many aspects of each specific monster, such as name, level, general looks (is it a human or a bull?), specific visual tweaks and combat settings. Every time any changes are done, we of course test them in the game itself to make sure it is working correctly.
