Core Mechanics

Design is hard. Design is even harder when instead of focusing on it, you waste time playing a big heap of gaming goodness, but that aside...

For the moment, I'm not (overly) displeased with the technical aspects of my code. I really want to get on and implement some gameplay stuff, get the combat working, stick some kind of character advancement in there. Y'know, nudge it towards being a game. This will probably root out the next crop of show-stopping issues with the code, but it'll be progress.

This is where I'm stuck. Because I haven't thought about the core gameplay mechanics anywhere near enough: they're ill-defined and derivative.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to go usurping tried-and-tested design decisions for the sake of it, nor do I hold any illusions that the game I want to make is in any way original or revolutionary.

I just want to make sure I've thought about these decisions and made an attempt to cobble together a design that supports the kind of game I want to make.

I'm not exactly a fan of BDUF, and a lot of the motivation behind writing this game is exploration of both the programming language and game space, so I'm leaving plenty of wiggle room. Besides, I'm lazy, and speccing out every little thing is hard.

Nonetheless, I want to have a long hard stare at some absolutely key areas that I haven't addressed fully yet:

• Character advancement: experience, levels, skills, and other madness
• Resource pools: health, fatigue, spellcasting resources etc.
• Magic: a huge topic to be split into more digestible chunks
• Defense: I've got some ideas about how combat will work from the offensive point of view, but not the other side

So, expect further brain-dump posts about these soon. I'll try to sprinkle some screenshots in between the incredibly boring stuff though.

Hmm, looking at the above list makes me wonder what I do know about this game I'm writing. I'll get back to you on that.