Supporter newsletter 56

Issue
This is a copy of Eternal and Diamond Supporter Newsletter #56, published by Grinding Gear Games.

Hello Supporters,

Many of the team are off to GDC this week. As well as the three founders, we have seven other developers at GDC. Those of us still in the office are busy working on 1.1.2 and the Season 7 race season.

As we often have multiple contributors to the newsletter, to avoid confusion we’ll start signing our own sections. - Carl

With so many artists and programmers off at GDC, the design team is running the madhouse this week. Nick is now starting on a few more supporter uniques, and with the aftermath of 1.1.0 and 1.1.1 dealt with, we’ll finally be able to start playing catch up on all of the supporter uniques that have been on hold. Apologies if you’re still waiting on a mail response from me, I’ll get back to you when I have a chance, or you can email design@grindinggear.com for an update. - Rory

Unique & Design Info

We are very interested in the processes other game designers use, and like to read and watch any useful information they post. One piece of design process we saw, and has become an integral part of assessing unique design is based on this video from the Legend of the Five Rings - Ivory Edition lead designer, Bryan Reese:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsv_waqk1NA&list

In this video he talks about the influence of the Apple design ideas on his design. I really like this video, and the watchwords mentioned became a useful checklist for unique design. For each unique item, going through the list we ask, is it: genuine, intuitive, concise, innovative, desirable, useful and thorough?

Not every unique hits every one of those keywords. If an item does not fit one of those keywords, it is important to ask why. Often we’ll change an item if it does not. Sometimes we don’t change the item, but it is good to be aware of why we don’t change it, basically it needs a reason to fail on one of the keywords. for example, it is OK if an item is not innovative, but if it’s not innovative then it should be highly desirable and/or useful.

Another example: the Three Dragons unique item is not concise. We probably should have worked more to making the item more concise (and we still might), but it needs a certain amount of text to explain what it does.

Checking items against these design principles has helped us design uniques, and has been a useful tool to add to our existing design processes.

I really love the opportunity to see what other designers think and are inspired by. I imagine the developers at GDC are also learning new and interesting things from the talks there, and hope to hear all about it when they return. - Carl

Insider Info

Insider info this week shows some work in progress. We outsource some 3D work. In this case this quiver has come back with too high a poly count. This image shows Saveun optimising the 3D art to use in game.

http://i.imgur.com/rxAFPcr.jpg