Alchemy design has been taking up most of my project-time lately, even the limited number of ‘bases’ I’ve started with have led in a lot of interesting directions, but it all takes time to think through and write up. I’ve only just started on essence combination, what I might have to do is pull everything back to just a couple of the most basic bases and implement the more complicated stuff later, or else it’s just going to take too long.
In fact, that’s probably what I’m going to do with most parts of the project, really reign it in, in terms of actual content. From my original designs I’d already minimised to what I thought was a very, very basic level, but actually it was still fairly ‘full’. And as I worked on various systems features that I liked kept creeping back in, or I’d think of something interesting and let that distract me. Most commonly, it was the lack of design documentation that led to lack of focus, so I think the best thing to do at this point is go back to the design stage and do the ground work. A game like this is too big and too complicated to just make up as you go along, and although I do have design notes of varying depth, one thing I never made and definitely should have is a unifying ‘map’ of sorts, a design document that describes the relationships between systems. How everything locks into everything else.
So, my current goal is to create good, solid, workable design documents for each of the systems I have yet to complete, and a design map that shows how each system works with other systems. After I have those, I can start working properly.
