When I asked what I should put in the blog. They said write about some of the system design, where its roots are and how it was conceived. My response was “I thought you wanted a blog? That’s a novel!”.
I’m better at writing documents than blogs. Anyway here goes.
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Before that, let me say that we had a fun feature test last night with the team. Apparently it is really not a good idea to punch a bear.
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Sandbox gameplay
Personally I’ve always hated certain aspects of role definitions in games and really hate having to be stuck in a predefined play-style. We aren’t going the class based route with our -initial- Shards worlds.
In the initial Shards worlds you can learn any skills you want to, and improve by using them. Want to be a magic wielding, sword carrying, metalsmith? Go ahead, just learn and improve those skills. For those of you who have played skill based sandbox games, this will seem a bit familiar.
And that’s about where we are going to leave the familiarity, because that is where the fun starts. One of the goals that we are putting in to our development is to as much as possible let the whole package be more than just the sum of the parts. That means putting in frameworks to support interplay between skill sets.
Because hey a magic wielding, sword carrying, metalsmith, should be more than just a guy who can make and swing a sword and shoot fireballs.
–Logrus
