I’m working on the new resource interaction, so I can fix it, so the quests will be completable again, so I can get the Events update out. I took out the “Hex view” in doing the Events update but that kinda broke the game, and now I need to put in the replacement sooner than i expected.

The solution is to create interaction ‘tiles’ for stuff you can do in a map location.

I’m not trying to solve it for everything, but I do need a solution that scales for all the game interactions, not just resources.

Trouble is, I don’t have a team anymore, so I don’t have anyone to talk to in the middle of the day with questions like “A or B?” Posting to Steam once a week and waiting several days for responses is too slow for the kind of micro-design decisions I’m speaking of.

I decided to do an experiment: I created a new channel on the Archmage Rises Discord server called real-time-dev-blog where I just started posting my questions, conundrums, and challenges as I work on the feature. I didn’t know if anyone would read it or respond.

But respond they did! I was able to dialogue in real time with fans just like you and collectively we got somewhere pretty good with how the resources will work.

I’m going to continue using the channel as I work each day on the feature.

Normally I do a lot of writing, but today I’ll just let the screenshots of the feature evolution do the talking:

This is where I started from before engaging the channel

Used this as a thought template for the design

Experiment with “simple” and “complex more data” types

I was just about done, but decided to take another stab at the global layout. The channel liked this better so I continued with it.

I’m happy with where we landed for the “Resource Tile” so i started figuring out how interacting with it might look.

I’m satisfied I’ve explored this enough, it works.

I had to figure out the kind of data that will populate these resource producers

This is as far as I got it this week. It’s in unity now in the various prefab pieces, hooked up, now I just have to get the game data displaying.

Game Design seems like the fun part of Game Development. And it is, but it is also a lot of groping in the dark looking for solutions. I’ve worked with experienced full time designers and a common trait to all of them is feeling like their ‘work product’ is low compared to all the time and sweat they poured into it. Designers generally make documents with pictures, but are afraid everyone looking at it is secretly wondering “really, it took you 3 days to come up with this?”

Real solutions look ‘obvious’ after the fact, its an iterative work process to build up to a conclusion.

Special thanks to Dagy, Odynn, KafkaExMachina, CrisisSDK, Monster Tamer Bloba for dialoguing in the channel with me!