Silverware wrote: ↑Sat May 12, 2018 2:09 am
Damocles wrote: ↑Fri May 11, 2018 4:57 pm
At least Josh is working now on some actual gameplay content with the economy, and not the 10th iteration on how to speed up technical details...
To be entirely fair, without a good underlying technical base, there is no way the gameplay can be fast enough to do everything that Limit Theory wants to do.
Large parts of the gameplay LOGIC can be developed and tested in testbeds before the final engine is even ready.
For example the simulation of the economy, where a (2d) testbed with special debug-graphs is actually needed to have an efficient environment to iterate on it. (A first person ship view is impractical here)
That can be developed even in a different language if need-be. The important output is how the logic works (not the concrete implementation), and how the balancing is set to make it interesting and stable.
Other such systems would be crafting, research, universe map-structure etc, UI layout structure. There is no need for those testbeds to run perfomant.
Once the logic seems to work fine, one also has a good understanding of how that concrete logic can be implemented best into the final version without optimizing at the wrong ends.
And most importantly: if something turns out to be not fun or end in complexity hell, there is still time to change plans and rethink, before even implementing it into the final engine.
Starting with concrete simulations of essential gameplay systems only after the underlying engine is done seems a bit late...
(Its not like this is a clone or iteration on a previously well proven game)