controls for testing

[solarr8]

In order to effectivly and fairly test the game the same conditions must be used. Since the change made to random placement has effected any maps different than 128 by 128 (the random placement is too sparce for custom maps that have it on) i have decided to recomend that the standard for all game viability and balence testing should have to be on the standard map. Since boaster has explained that medium diffilculty is designed to be closest to a "normal" setting for the mod (as in from a design standpoint) then i shall use medium as well.

So to start my testing i am using medium diffilculty, the standard map, and i am not using a custom lord. Every thing is standard, as normal as it gets.

[Boaster]

Jan 17, 2010 14:55:53 GMT -6 solarr8 said:

In order to effectivly and fairly test the game the same conditions must be used. Since the change made to random placement has effected any maps different than 128 by 128 (the random placement is too sparce for custom maps that have it on) i have decided to recomend that the standard for all game viability and balence testing should have to be on the standard map. Since boaster has explained that medium diffilculty is designed to be closest to a "normal" setting for the mod (as in from a design standpoint) then i shall use medium as well.

So to start my testing i am using medium diffilculty, the standard map, and i am not using a custom lord. Every thing is standard, as normal as it gets.

I merely stated that Medium difficulty is the bridge between Easy and Hard.

[QUAAL]

So what exactly are you testing or doing?

[solarr8]

I merely stated that Medium difficulty is the bridge between Easy and Hard.

Well the problem lies that when scaling diffilculty conventionally you don't change gameplay by adding or taking away gameplay elements or options. You've decided to be unortadox in actually changing gameplay elements rather than using a simple scaling system. Your plans for example are to try to find a way to make all races eventually hate you while on hard mode. While this would make the game harder it is changing the fundimentals of the way the game is coded and designed. More orthadox ways to make a game harder would be to start the player with a lower level character and/or less resources and/or make all player controled player characters scaled down in power and/or making the a i scale up in power. The game itself at its core still behaves the same way.

Because of the way you are doing this it's hard to benchmark the game from a design point of view. What i aim to do is use these constant variables i have listed starting with the order faith to determine if i think there are any changes you have made that either make 1 faith more fun to play than another or make 1 faith more powered pound for pound than another considering the relitivity of what a faith is known for. For example is the legendary creature or any unit of any one particular faith gimp or not or is it a huge letdown based on what i am expecting to see and imagine based on the description of that legendary or normal unit. Obviously fire faith should have more attack than water faith in gbut the water faith should have more defense than fire according to the origional intentions of the sierra team.

I am to determine if in your massive multitude of changes you have made weather or not you have broken any checks and balences that each faith is (according to my best interpretation of the origional designers intentions) ment to have. (that is if your mod is made to enhance the origional game vs frankenstien it) Each faith is ment to have a specialy this is true but if the same fire units with the same items levels spells and options everything being the same fought an equal army of water units the origional design of the game would intend the army to stalemate. The person who got the first attack in would be the winner but only by a literal hair.

I am also lookng at astethics as well.

So to summarize i am looking at gameplay, balence, funfactor and astethics in order of importance.

I am currently doing order mage on medium not custom lord standard map to look at every tiny aspect of how the game plays and to see if anything appears in my opinion out of sync with what the origional designers intended on a fundimental level or if anything seems just plain weird. I then report those things and boaster decides if he wants to make any changes.

This is simply the way that i express my love for the game as boaster does just that he is focusing much more on the nitty gritty and i am focusing much more on the overall picture. I know that in order to really determine if a game is working as intended you really have to sink a good couple of hours into each faith at minimum because alot of times issues don't maifest themselves untill much later in the game and furthermore changes made from a coding standpoint may make sence by the numbers but when you get into the game sometimes you realize that wait a minute theres an x facor i need to figure out cause its not working as i intended/thought it would work. And for a massive project like this i know there are atleast some of those.

No offence to boaster but i know he needs to sleep to survive so theres no way he has the time to play test each faith for hours on end to see if they still play as they look on code while working while living and while coding.

[Boaster]

I see what you're saying. He may be able to catch things that fall through the gaps on my part.

[solarr8]

turn 32

Looks like ill have the most to say about each faith douring the begining and as time goes on the things i will catch are less. So far i have 2 and almost 1/2 pages of un organized observations. WHEW Hope your ready for it when it comes boss

[solarr8]

Boaster, Thank you for your consideration. In order to be more effective in my work. Please give me a list of controls or options for controls so that i may play the game using the diffilculty, and the map that would in your opinion be the most even ground for testing the viability of all races and the game in general.