Sat, Jun 6th 2009, 19:56
Nomenclature Madness
Sat, Jun 6th 2009, 19:56
Well, I finally sat down and worked through the only real
remaining hurdle: reworking the defensive attributes. Each "ship"
had three different adjustable attributes (the names of which
where never really finalized, but were: "offense", "defense",
"quantity").
Each of these attributes then influenced one or more specific
qualities of the unit, with many even overlapping to create
"compound" properties.
e.g. The Streamer's movement rate was affected by both
its Offense and Defense. By moving faster:
* It is harder for the player to spot it and get out of the way
in time.(Offense)
* It is more likely to make it off the screen without being
shot and destroyed, yielding a "successful" deployment. (Defense)
It's worth mentioning, for those that haven't already played
(and quite probably most that have), that this ship doesn't maximize
its damage potential until after it exits the screen.
So, in order to max out its speed, you'd actually have to max
out both its offense and defense attributes. I think this is
a pretty neat way to handle things, and, in a perfect world, it
would make a great game, but it.. doesn't.
The reality is that not only is this pretty complicated (especially
for a game that's largely just pick up and play shooting), but
it's all happening in the background under vague labels too! Best
case: dedicated players reverse engineer the numbers and learn
how to work the system, while casual players are uninformed and
fail miserably. Worst (and most probable) case: players are quickly
frustrated and annoyed, prompting them to give up on the game.
Obviously that's bad, so that plan has been scrapped. Or at
least severely amended.
It's not exhaustive, but here are some quick bullets about the
"new" system:
* Each unit type still has three attributes, but each set of three
has been tailored to the specific unit type, instead of trying to
shoehorn the unit types into a generic attribute set.
* Each attribute is linked to a single property. Gone are
the days of complex, intertwining relationships.
* When setting up your defenses, the UI clearly displays what an
attribute adjusts for that specific unit when mousing over
its slider. The numbers are all still tucked away in the background,
but at least the relationships are clear; semi-transparency should
be sufficient.
As big as I'm making it sound, in implementation these are tiny
adjustments, but I spent a lot of thinky-juice deciding that this
is the best course to take. Now that this is done, I'm feeling
good about the project again and really can't wait to wrap up the
rest of the non-balancing work so I can get this out to everyone.
