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robiwan
Moderator
1035 Posts |
 Posted - 28/03/2007 : 07:33:00
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Jeden z developerov zacal pisat dennik o novom expertise pre beast masterov. Kazdy tyzden v utorok vychadza novy diel. Doteraz vysli tri diely:
Dev Diary March 13th: Beast Mastery Expertise - 03/13/2007
http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/players/content.vm?id=66929&resource=features
Dev Diary: Beast Mastery Expertise
Hi everyone, I'm Mark Halash (SWG-Tunso on the boards) and I am a game designer on Star Wars Galaxies. Over the last year I've been primarily working on the expertise system and I'm also responsible for designing the bounty hunter, officer and medic expertise trees. For Chapter 5, I added the Build-a-Buff system for entertainers and the Reverse Engineering system for traders.
I'm sure you've heard that our next chapter is introducing beast mastery and for that I am working on the beast mastery expertise tree. What follows is my dev diary that will give you a look behind the scenes at what I've been designing.
Over the next couple of weeks Ill post updates to my dev diary to share a little bit about what goes on behind the scenes with a game feature like this.
Beast Mastery Expertise
I spent the last few days writing my final design documentation for beast mastery expertise. From there, the design doc will head up the chain for final approval and/or revisions.
Right now, Loche is designing the incubation system, Shadowbrak is working on all things pertaining to beast special abilities, SWG-Swede is going to be picking up the loyalty/happiness game mechanics, Hanse-SOE is writing the back-end and related systems for pets and I've been assigned to do the expertise system.
For my part, beast mastery expertise is going to be the gate to unlocking your pet's personal potential for power! It is being added as a skill specialization that will be available to all professions and purchased with expertise points.
Since beast mastery will be available to all classes through expertise abilities, I'll need to make sure that the point system acts as a proper "control valve" based on how much or how little expertise you invest on the skills. In other words I need to ensure there is a good game balance so that it isn't possible to achieve say, 90% of a creature's potential power by spending 20% of your available points. Because of this, I've designed the Expertise tree to be much more linear in nature than some of the expertise for the main professions.
At the very front of the tree there is a block of skills I've clustered together that will allow players who just want to dabble in pet handling or might just want to be pet shop owners (the Mr. Peebles zone, I call it). For those skills, players only have to invest a modest amount of expertise points. This will give them full access to some really fun game play, providing them with the maximum potential for success at engineering new beasts and for keeping their personal beasts happy and healthy. This will also allow those folks who just want to collect DNA, engineer beasts, create mounts and who just want to enjoy all the beast mastery meta-games *except* combat to do so without having to sacrifice too much.
I hope you have enjoyed my first dev diary. I'll be back with an update it in another week!
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Dev Diary March 20th: Beast Mastery Expertise Part 2 - 03/20/2007
http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/players/content.vm?id=66929&resource=features
The Beast Master designs were approved, so we're good to go! One of the items that we decided to change was to move one of the expertise boxes up to make it available a little earlier, so I changed my design docs to reflect the change. I did that while I synced up my computer up to the developer environment we'll be working in for this publish.
I started by constructing the base skeleton of the expertise tree and getting that to show up in user interface as an expertise window. This time it's a little different though, since this expertise tree will be available to every profession and not just a particular profession.
Either way, it's lots and lots of data entry.
Thunderheart came over and let me know that there were some questions on the boards about a recent hot fix. I worked on one of the changes related to the previous publish. I let him know that I would go and field some questions on it in between while working on the expertise tree set-up.
Answer some questions. More data. Answer some more questions. Enter more data. Data and questions pretty much today.
The Beast Master expertise tree shows up in game (in my dev environment) and it's accessible by every profession. Of course all of the text is just blank code strings at this point. All of the abilities have default icons and none of the boxes actually do anything when purchased. That comes later.
The art for the icons is still being worked on, so the next order of business is to get some coherent strings and descriptions on everything in the tree. I'll do a final pass on all of this later but it really makes working on the tree a lot easier when you can tell what a box is supposed to be doing =-)
Next, I'm off to enter a bunch of titles, descriptions, names and generally a lot more data entry. It takes a couple of passes because invariably, I'm long winded and some of my descriptions don't fit.
I share an office with Hanse-SOE. While I was working on this, he let out a jubilant cheer as he successfully called his first pet, an angler. His work in writing the new pet functionality is coming along well.
William Shatner sang "Rocket Man" on some TV show or another back in 1978 I think it was. I remember actually seeing that on TV when I was like eight years old and it was just as funny then as it was today. So I found a video of it on the internet and showed it to Eidson. He then found a recent one where Shatner sang at a roast for George Lucas. I really have no idea what made me recall William Shatner singing "Rocket Man" though…
Anyway, back to finishing up these strings and descriptions.
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Dev Diary March 27th: Beast Mastery Expertise Part 3 - 03/27/2007
http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/players/news_archive.vm?id=67194&month=current
The strings and descriptions are wrapped up, so now I'm at the point where I can start to add actual functionality to the Beast Master abilities. This is infinitely more enjoyable to me then entering strings. =-)
I already know the modifier values for the various skill boxes, so adding them to the system is pretty easy. Besides, we're going to have to tweak the modifiers once we get all the beasts fully callable in a few days anyway.
Next, I "stub out" the actual commands like Attack, Revive Pet and the various pet heals and cures. I also have to enter strings and descriptions for those too. Then I determine the action costs for the various abilities at different levels, when they are granted, and set up the data that triggers the events. Last, I add the required scripting support for the abilities and voila!
While I was connecting everything, I played around with the commands for a while to make sure they feel right. Granted right now, they can be used without restrictions on whatever or whomever I want (in-game of course). The functionality for determining whether something is a "beast" or not, let alone if it's your beast, isn't in the game yet. But it's coming along pretty well so far!
It's been a busy week but all the pieces that were developed by the individual designers are now mostly integrated and it's starting to look close to being ready for prime time. You can gather materials and incubate an egg, hatch it into a beast, learn special abilities from wild creatures and then train your beast with the abilities you learned in the wild. There are lots of interesting mutations to discover (I'm partial to the mutant rancor). If you have invested in the combat portion of the expertise tree, your pet will tear stuff up for you (or die trying). For that, I've spent the last few days balancing creature power with expertise point investment to ensure that playing a profession that uses beast master as its primary combat expertise is viable, competitive and most importantly, fun.
All in all I think we have something that everyone will really enjoy here. We're all looking forward to beast master going live and we think you're all really going to enjoy it. I hope you all enjoyed this inside look into the development process.
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Pozn. Prve dva denniky su spojene dokopy do jedneho dokumentu, preto su oba odkazy rovnake.
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I have waited and planned and built my strength for fifteen thousand years. I have evolved. It is time.
(Omnius Evermind)
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Feyd'Rautha Saresh (Medic, Rebel Alliance, Europe-Chimaera), Robe Saresh (Force Sensitive, Rebel Alliance, Europe-Chimaera)
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Edited by - robiwan on 28/03/2007 08:25:50
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Yurekk
Junior Member
503 Posts |
Posted - 28/03/2007 : 10:11:32
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na Beastmastera se moc těším,doufám že to nebude dlouho trvat  |
SWG:Dosec soustružník ,Dosec' Yurek JEDI -EU Chimaera server
WWIIOL:Oberstleutnant,Axis side,
DF:Twombly-meč,srp a kladivo
WAR:Yurek pasáček vepřů -Eltharion
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Dromedarr
Junior Member
629 Posts |
Posted - 28/03/2007 : 15:29:08
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jj, a to bude jako nove povolani nebo dalsi trader?  |
SWG, Europe-Farstar - Drom, Losos, Efiss, Casia' - R.I.P. SWG |
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robiwan
Moderator
1035 Posts |
Posted - 28/03/2007 : 15:36:30
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quote:
Originally posted by Dromedarr
jj, a to bude jako nove povolani nebo dalsi trader?
bude to tretia zalozka v expertise, a bude ju mat kazda profesia...
podla toho, co som cital, tak kvoli tomu nezvysia pocet expertise bodov, takze kazdy, kto bude chciet vychovavat zvierata, bude musiet obetovat nejake body z tych 45ich, ktore uz ma...a schopnost trenovat a pouzit zviera na boj by si malo vyziadat podstatnu cast expertise bodov |
I have waited and planned and built my strength for fifteen thousand years. I have evolved. It is time.
(Omnius Evermind)
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Feyd'Rautha Saresh (Medic, Rebel Alliance, Europe-Chimaera), Robe Saresh (Force Sensitive, Rebel Alliance, Europe-Chimaera)
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Edited by - robiwan on 28/03/2007 15:36:45 |
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Jorssk
Moderator
2991 Posts |
Posted - 31/03/2007 : 10:41:15
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| Ale ja videl na tom obrazku i tu tabulku jako povolani, to je teda co? |
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robiwan
Moderator
1035 Posts |
Posted - 31/03/2007 : 11:01:53
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quote:
Originally posted by Jorssk
Ale ja videl na tom obrazku i tu tabulku jako povolani, to je teda co?
no ten prvy post je prvy april od developerov...precitaj si tie popisy k povolaniam su tam napr. veci, ako 40 % sanca, ze ti zviera neznici veci v dome, alebo abilita "Cistenie zubov" aby jeho uhryznutie nemalo na Beast Mastera DoT efekt a tak
druhy post zacinam "ale teraz uz vazne" |
I have waited and planned and built my strength for fifteen thousand years. I have evolved. It is time.
(Omnius Evermind)
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Feyd'Rautha Saresh (Medic, Rebel Alliance, Europe-Chimaera), Robe Saresh (Force Sensitive, Rebel Alliance, Europe-Chimaera)
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Jorssk
Moderator
2991 Posts |
Posted - 31/03/2007 : 13:06:38
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Nahodou by to bylo super, cisteni zubu atd  .
Muhaha skill uklidit si po svem petovy hovno :D
Dirty Job: A level 1 ability allowing you to scoop up your pet's poodoo. You'll rely heavily on this skill line to you can clean up after your pet.
Expert Poodoo Management: Sweet relief comes with this level 22 ability to manage your pet's poodoo trail. You are also granted your first poodoo management device. |
Edited by - Jorssk on 31/03/2007 13:11:15 |
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Miky
Moderator
947 Posts |
Posted - 31/03/2007 : 15:02:23
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| No nic...jsem zvedav, jak to vlastne bude vypadat a hlavne co vymysli potom. |
Wyndia Creel - Tarkin server
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Edited by - Miky on 01/04/2007 18:13:35 |
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Jorssk
Moderator
2991 Posts |
Posted - 02/04/2007 : 08:55:14
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Krom toho ze budou hlavne delat nove questy a upravovat theme parky, by pak mohli udelat toho zahradnika  . |
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Dromedarr
Junior Member
629 Posts |
Posted - 02/04/2007 : 09:54:44
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jj, slechtit rostlinky bude taky sranda :) uz se tesim na novy questy  |
SWG, Europe-Farstar - Drom, Losos, Efiss, Casia' - R.I.P. SWG |
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robiwan
Moderator
1035 Posts |
Posted - 02/04/2007 : 12:08:49
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| jo...bude treba investovat 40 bodov z expertise, aby bol clovek uber masterom gardenerom a potom bude chodit na HK so styrmi chodiacimi ozbrojenymi kaktusmi |
I have waited and planned and built my strength for fifteen thousand years. I have evolved. It is time.
(Omnius Evermind)
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Feyd'Rautha Saresh (Medic, Rebel Alliance, Europe-Chimaera), Robe Saresh (Force Sensitive, Rebel Alliance, Europe-Chimaera)
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SNowie
Average Member
1746 Posts |
Posted - 02/04/2007 : 12:11:49
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quote:
Originally posted by robiwan
jo...bude treba investovat 40 bodov z expertise, aby bol clovek uber masterom gardenerom a potom bude chodit na HK so styrmi chodiacimi ozbrojenymi kaktusmi
místo trnů budou mít kladélka  |
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WereHamster
Junior Member
982 Posts |
Posted - 02/04/2007 : 13:11:50
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quote:
Originally posted by SNowie
quote:
Originally posted by robiwan
jo...bude treba investovat 40 bodov z expertise, aby bol clovek uber masterom gardenerom a potom bude chodit na HK so styrmi chodiacimi ozbrojenymi kaktusmi
místo trnů budou mít kladélka
Mutace je svinstvo :) |
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WereHamster
Junior Member
982 Posts |
Posted - 04/04/2007 : 09:12:04
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Deníček, dny 28.3 - 3.4.
Seru na kódování SWG, du betatestit LOTRO a Conana.
P.s. Škoda že můj zaměstnavatel nebere odremování starého kódu jako novou vzrušující zkušenost... |
Edited by - WereHamster on 04/04/2007 09:14:28 |
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