Game Design

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The design Team is dedicated to the planning and balance of game features, as well as taking in provided feedback from players and testers to improve the gameplay experience. This team's ultimate goal is to strike a perfect balance of fun engaging gameplay, strategic indepth customization, and streamlined interface.

Activities

There are various ways the design team can help Thrive.

  • Tweak values and mechanics in order to seek balanced enjoyable gameplay for as many players as possible.
  • Design and write out concepts for new or reworked gameplay features.
  • Encourage and gather feedback from players to understand what may need to be done.

Resources

One of the key challenges of designing Thrive is to take the complex processes of the natural world, and convert them into understandable and fun game systems. As such, it will incredibly help any Game Designer's productiveness if they are knowledge on the natural world, to better imagine how it can be abstracted into the game.

Below is a list of useful resources to study to learn more about speculative evolution, speculative civilization, and all the associated topics:

General Requirements

Designers must be able to intimately understand the impact of gameplay features on the overall enjoyability and complexity of the game, understand the desires and capabilities of the audience at large, and apply the aforementioned understanding to ensure the gameplay remains compelling.

  • Aptitude for identifying problems and creating potential solutions to solve them.
  • Ability to write comprehensively and properly convey information about potentially complex and indepth concepts.
  • Willingness to listen to all feedback, good or bad, and appropriately apply it to design decisions.
  • Understanding of resource and developer constraints, and willingness to work with others to shape concepts accordingly.
  • Ability to, at minimum, tweak values in code to find a suitably enjoyable balance.
  • Willingness to compromise with one's own ideals of enjoyability in the face of the collective desires of the community and development team.

New Volunteer Guidelines

Being an effective game designer for Thrive is a complex process and a daunting task. As a new volunteer it is advisable to take it one step at a time in order to avoid being overwhelmed. But remember; You are never alone, feel free to ask questions or request help from your peers at any time.

Following this guide will provide you with the information you need to confidently convey your gameplay solutions to the organization.

Information Aquisition

Frame this truth within your mind; You will never appease everyone. There will always be people who are unhappy with your choices and the direction of the project. It is understandable to desire pleasing all you can, but you must always stay focused upon a target audience, or else you will struggle in perpetuity.

For a game designer, information is the most valuable resource in the world. One of the design team's most integral tasks is to gather and analyze any and all feedback provided by players, outside observers, and developers of the team in order to effectively identify a problem in Thrive's design. Without this information you might find yourself devising a solution that solves no problem, or perhaps even missing the problem entirely. Do not let that worry you however, as gathering information simply requires that you always listen. Good sources of feedback can be found throughout the internet, keep your eyes out for any chatter about Thrive and identify what people think about it and why. The list below provides excellent sources of feedback and player experience for you to analyze.

  • Gameplay videos and streams which grant the priceless point of view of another person.
  • Suggestions and chatter on our community forums, subreddit, steam community, or public chatrooms which will likely be the most prevalent.
  • Feedback provided by the testing team, which can very targeted and insightful.
  • Reviews on Steam and Itch.Io which can greatly vary in helpfulness.
  • Bug reports which can occasionally bring attention to a design issue.
  • Testing changes and features yourself to get a good feel for it.

If the information you need is rather specific and you can't find much naturally, do not fret! Engage people and ask them how they feel about that specific topic, and they will usually answer. Everyone wants to be heard, and sometimes they just need a nudge to know that you are willing to listen. It is also very helpful to discuss your thoughts on obtained feedback with your peers to better come to a conclusion everyone can agree on.

By now you have likely identified a problem or perhaps several, which you wish to rectify. Or perhaps you noticed a gaping absence of design in our GDD, and want to help with plotting out our future endeavors. Whatever the case might be it is now time to move forward into the Balance Pass phase, or should that be insufficient, the Design and Planning phase.

Balance Pass

As you receive feedback from our players, you might identify opinions such as photosynthesis not producing enough glucose, or flagella not being fast enough. These are often described as balance issues, and are typically quite simple to address. If you feel you have identified something that needs to change, it is vital to discuss with your peers to determine if action should be taken, and by what extent. In order to apply these changes you will need to have set up the development environment in order to access the code of the game, tweak the variables, and submit them as a commit or pull request to be reviewed and merged.

Balance changes are typically recorded and not acted upon until the final days before a release in the form of a "balance Pass" Pull request. This ensures that the changes remain stable, and that no further features will come about that could potentially upset the newfound balance and create more work. if the balance pass has already been submitted, it is important to test it out and ensure that it feels good to play.

Design & Planning

The process of design and planning is the most involved task granted to the design team, and will likely take up the most time out of any others. This task is typically divided into two phases; Casual ideas and discussion, and conceptualization and planning. Your objective is to maintain discussion to ensure it remains ever fruitful, and record the results as a comprehensive concept for future reference and consideration.

Ideas & Discussion:

The first phase of design often comes to fruition within our develop chatroom. An idea or problem might be presented, which often leads to developers from all teams pitching in to provide their thoughts and solutions to the matter.

As a designer, your task is to lead these discussions and record the potential complications and solutions that may be recognized. Pay close attention to each team's input on the matter; Programmers will know what is feasible, testers will know what is fun, artists will know how it can be presented. The goal is to gather up enough food for thought to create an adequate and realistic concept for further discussion.

Planning & Conceptualization

Once you have sufficiently discussed ideas and formed a good overall concept in your mind, it is time to move on to the second phase of design by setting to stone your ideas. This must take place on our developer forums to ensure that the concept remains easy to find and refer to for future reference. These concepts should be posted in relevant forum threads, or if none are found, in a new one in the Gameplay category.

Creating a solid concept requires much thought and consideration, with careful emphasis on it's impact on gameplay and other present and/or future mechanics. A designer must present their concept in a descriptive and understandable manner so that it is properly conveyed to the community which often involves the use of concept imagery (Provided by the designer themselves or commissioned via artist). Once your concept is created, listen carefully to the feedback given to you by other developers and the community to determine how it is received, and if any changes are necessary.

Once a concept is deemed ideal, it is to be transcribed into the Game Design Document (GDD) as an official planned part of the game. This should only be done by team leaders of the design team.

(TODO) Active Development

As a game designer, it is important to have a strong presence in the decision-making of new features during active development.

General Advice

  • It is perfectly normal to have many ideas, and you shouldn't be afraid to hide them! Every idea you present is a seed that encourages discussion and results.
  • Always show gratitude to the developers who implement your designs. Without them, you and the project are nothing.
  • Most changes made in a balance pass will be centered around Thrive/src/(Current Stage)/constants.cs and .json files found in Thrive/simulation_parameters/(Current Stage)
  • Use dividers and headers in expansive developer forum posts to help make concepts easier to read. #text makes a header, --- makes a divider.
  • When creating a concept with different conflicting ideas, present each idea as an option for developers to choose and discuss.
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