SubscribeInfrastructure Systems
November 2, 2007 1:26 pm
Following up on Joe and Damion’s posts, Raph says “a designer who only works inside of data-driven systems will not have a career path and training path to learn systems design unless they are given access to system modifications.”
Well, shit. Somebody tell my boss.
I design “infrastructure systems,” like items and abilities, and I do so all the better because I have years of experience in data management. Five years from now, the live team will be three guys in a cardboard box. If I’ve done my job right, they’ll do more than tweak numbers — they have room for creativity because the systems are well-thought-out and allow for combinations to last for the service’s lifetime. And if they need something the system doesn’t support, they can get an hour’s worth of code and be on their way.
If the player ends up feeling like they’re “wandering through a database,” then the systems were poorly designed.
There’s nothing wrong with design within constraints. That design will be easier to polish, balance, and maintain in the long run, because it’s easier to run a query than to comb through scripts. And we’re failing if we’re not in it for the long run.
Raph wrote:
So you’re a systems designer, and you’re saying design systems for longevity, and for maximum flexibility within constraints for content designers later. Sure, I agree completely. I also agree with “design within constraints” quite vehemently.
Filling in tables, however, does not help someone get better at your job, which is my point about the career path.
I disagree that you can always get it to the point of an hour’s worth of code. To pick a random system — what about when time comes to add housing, or an auction system?
As a data person, you know there is a difference between a formula and a number fed into a formula. There is a lot of skill involved in picking the right numbers to feed into formulas. But it’s not the same job as writing formulas in the first place.
Posted on 02-Nov-07 at 1:46 pm | Permalink
isildur wrote:
“There is a lot of skill involved in picking the right numbers to feed into formulas. But it’s not the same job as writing formulas in the first place.”
If you wrote that formula, you better damn well know what numbers should go into it, and you’d better be the person doing the plugging-in. And the process by which you decide what numbers you plug into it is probably more important to the gameplay outcome of the design than the formula itself. There are only so many curves one can describe before one is simply tweaking the slope of the curve at any given point along it.
But this also struck me: “what about when time comes to add housing, or an auction system?”
If I ever find myself adding housing via a scripting language, I will find a gun and first shoot the producer and then myself.
Posted on 02-Nov-07 at 1:58 pm | Permalink
Raph wrote:
“If you wrote that formula, you better damn well know what numbers should go into it,”
Agreed.
“and you’d better be the person doing the plugging-in”
On large teams or long-term projects, this almost certainly isn’t the case.
“the process by which you decide what numbers you plug into it is probably more important to the gameplay outcome of the design than the formula itself.”
I agree. In fact, limits should probably be built INTO the formula to stop problems from happening later.
“There are only so many curves one can describe before one is simply tweaking the slope of the curve at any given point along it.”
Well sure, but this skips all the nasty complexities of interactions between systems and curves.
“If I ever find myself adding housing via a scripting language, I will find a gun and first shoot the producer and then myself.”
Heh. My point was that you’re not going to be adding a housing system with an hour’s worth of code and massaging data.
Not that you should do it all in script.
Posted on 02-Nov-07 at 2:03 pm | Permalink
the only haven you can trust » Metastasis wrote:
[…] It all began with Joe’s post. Then Damion picked it up. Then Raph did. Then Sara did. Joe, you created a monster. […]
Posted on 02-Nov-07 at 2:31 pm | Permalink
Scott Hartsman - Off the Record » Scripting in MMOs: The best/worst tool you’ll n/ever have wrote:
[…] There’s an interesting debate going around about designers and scripting. […]
Posted on 03-Nov-07 at 1:13 am | Permalink
Joe Ludwig’s Blog » Scripting for Designers wrote:
[…] I started a kerfuffle on the subject of designers writing scripts. Since my original post was more about our experience with Lua than about scripting for designers I thought I would collect what I’ve already written in everyone else’s comment thread in one place. […]
Posted on 03-Nov-07 at 12:39 pm | Permalink
Sara Jensen Schubert wrote:
Well, I’m specifically talking about systems like items and abilities. Sure, every spell in the game can be implemented as a unique script, but that’s a maintenance nightmare. Instead, have a data-driven system that allows designers to build abilities by combining bits of functionality and tweaking variables.
If you want to build an ability that requires functionality that you don’t have — for example, you want an ability that buffs your entire group, but your system was only built to allow you to apply effects to a single target — you don’t need to ask for very much code to add that. And now that you have effects that are applied to all of your groupmates, you can create all kinds of new abilities, combined with all the stuff you already have.
The Pirates of the Burning Seas guys are the ones talking about building entire new systems out of data-driven functionality blocks. That sounds pretty cool, but it’s not really what I’m talking about. I’m talking about predetermined systems like spells, equipment, AI behaviors, and so on, using combination-based data-driven systems to create lots of cool content that’s easy to maintain and still feels unique. I think it’s possible because I’ve seen it done.
Posted on 05-Nov-07 at 1:36 pm | Permalink
Psychochild’s Blog » The role of scripting for designers wrote:
[…] However, you also need to keep in mind the type of people you have on the team. A designer like myself, with a Computer Science degree, shouldn’t fill the “real” programmers with a sense of dread because of having to deal with my code. (They usually get that sense of dread when they realize they can’t simply tell me, “That’s not possible,” and get away with it because I can often show them how it is possible.) Other people have other strengths, and this is the point that Raph and Sara are talking at each other about. Someone like Sara, with a background and keen interest in data, will work better in a system that allows for interesting combinations of data. I, however, would probably find such a system very limiting since I probably don’t think in terms of data as well as Sara does; I think in terms of code. Raph makes the comment that data-driven systems designers don’t have as much of a career path. I disagree slightly, because given that the position of “designer” is so ill-defined, any designer will have to make his or her own career path. However, I think it’s important for designers to understand the basics of coding and computer science even if they can’t sling C++ code around like an expert, because it gives insight into what can and cannot easily be done. For example, if a programmer notices that a design is NP-hard, I know what that means and won’t argue the point.
[…]
Posted on 07-Nov-07 at 6:03 pm | Permalink
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