Icarus

The trick of game design is to find the balance between ambition and execution.  Fall to far on the ambition side of the equation and your game has potential, but is full of flaws.  Fall to far on the execution side of the equation and your game make work perfectly, but doesn't stand out.

Another way of looking at this is that there are finite resources for any project.  That tends to be somewhat jaded (in my opinion), but it's the same point.  But limited resources aren't an excuse except to explain why game developers (or any company) don't have infinite scope on their projects.

This was an even bigger deal in the modding world where we had very limited capabilities and resources.  It wasn't just about coming up with a great idea for a mod, but coming up with an idea that was implementable.  There were so many grand ideas that could never be done, and so many dull ideas that could be done, but no one wants to create a dull mod.  The hardest part of design is finding an idea that fits both criteria.

I talked a little last week about the Design phase of development.  But now is the time we get to find out how implementable those ideas are.  I'm not worried about not being ambitious enough (that's never a problem Stardock has had) but now we get to find out how executable the design is.  The schedule is made, milestones are laid out, everyone knows what they will be doing throughout the entire implementation phase.  If we stay ahead of schedule then the design is good and we get more time to expand and polish, if we fall behind on the schedule then it's Toby's fault (though seriously it means the design was to ambitious and some things will be cut).

It doesn't sound too bad to have to cut features in implementation if you fall behind.  After all that's what you would have done with the features in design if you suspected they may be to ambitious.  But it's much worse in implementation because every aspect of a well designed game is tied to every other aspect.  The purpose of design is to iterate to get down to as tight and complete a design as possible.  If you cut pieces from that it effects all the related pieces, and in implementation, when you are already suffering from an overly ambitious project and running late on the schedule, there is no time to design the rest of the game to address the missing part.

One last point about the implementation phase.  It is where we rush.  Design needs time, polish needs time, even lockdown needs its pound of flesh.  But implementation is about getting feature complete as quickly as possible.  Of course we can't go crazy with this, it doesn't do us any good to rush systems that we are just going to have to redo, or spend 2 days troubleshooting for every day we spent implementing.  But it's all about getting a feature complete playable build together.  We don't take time to add bells and whistles, if you want a cool effect to play when a particular spell is cast (like shaking the ground with earthquake) we don't do that in implementation.  get earthquake in and functional and move on.  Take note of opportunities you see to make improvements, but for now we need playable.  We will come back with the bells and whistles.

That's it for this week.  Please check out the 1.19 beta (https://forums.elementalgame.com/403879) for the latest version of Elemental.  It is a polish patch and a beta version of the coming 1.2 patch.  Also if you were planning on submitting an idea for the "Submit a Quest" contest (https://www.elementalgame.com/contest) there are only 4 days left.  Toby and I have been writing our own quests and arguing about what makes quests great.  If you want to know what you need in a great Assistant Producer, it's a guy who argues with you.