Design Land: Creating Great Design Docs - Extra Credits Video Games

[@extrahistory]

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[@aaronstanley6914]

I need help which wiki should I use? There are so meny and I don't know which I should choose. Anyway thank you for this video it is Litterally the best idea I have seen.

[@NochSoEinKaddiFan]

This is litterally all design work under the sun, even mechanical engineering. What you have outlined here needs to get implemented into all industries that develop anything immediately!

[@ericdillingham6858]

"Design Land" sounds like a term for your mind when you're high.

[@sanfransiscon]

Design love not war, maaan

[@KeyboardKrieger]

Designing works best when you are high xD

[@epicmetalwarrior5476]

Funny you saying that... Since a pokemon designer used to drink heavily before drawing...

[@ericdillingham6858]

@@epicmetalwarrior5476 I know exactly where this story goes.

[@sanfransiscon]

@@epicmetalwarrior5476 Are you talking about the original writer of the show? That was a dark rabbit hole...

[@ronaldoakes7139]

Ancient software engineer here: I’ve never worked on a video game (except for my project for my computer graphics class as an undergrad last century). However, I can state that much of this advice applies to many other software projects as well.

[@atk05003]

Especially being consistent with defined terms. I've worked on code that had "entities", then we later started using two different libraries that also used the term "entities". In discussions, we started having to prefix the term "entity" with the domain we were talking about. Even then developers would regularly get confused.

[@yitzhakkornbluth2554]

And not only the design docs; good software design basically amounts to doing much of the same thing with code. Which makes sense, since code is in essence nothing more than compiler-readable design docs.

[@ChaosDX1]

I'm the programmer on a game design team (that is just hobby-level and not at all professional) and it took me a week to convince the project leader that we needed a design document. And even then it didn't get made until I got tired of waiting and made it for them based on meeting notes and used examples of features I saw in other games with a giant asterisk saying "This is just an example. I don't know if this game will have spells and MP. Please edit." (Months later, that asterisk is still unedited.) Yes, I do have to hunt the project leader down every time I program a feature to ask them for details not mentioned in the untouched document. I am sending them this video.

[@pax6833]

Always nice when you've got a reference you can shove in front of people to explain something you need them to adopt.

[@Vendavalez]

Tell them I said that they suck as a project lead.

[@sonictimm]

LOL I feel the pain, for different reasons. Hobby teams can be very unorganized. Hope the project stays fun for you!

[@littlekong7685]

Centralized, coherent, design docs are even more vital in amateur or hobby projects. Where you lack a strong management system and designated or delegated roles/jobs, it can be common for 2 people to work on the same aspect, and both of them do it wrong. And when the team is not centralized, it becomes even more important to have a coherent reference so you don't need to hunt 1 person down every hour, most of the info should be in the doc to reference.

[@ChaosDX1]

@@sonictimm Yeah, despite my occasional annoyance it's still fun!

[@locked_lunatic8623]

6:25 1) If the FaithValue is too low it can trigger a CrisisOfConscience event. This can start happening at negative 10 FaithValue, increasing in likelihood fast at first and slowly later. At negative 20 Faithvalue it has a 50% chance to trigger. 2) This is an assignment. You increase RulerRespect by a value that's proportional to Faith and FaithValueIncrease. Dividing by 100 is just done to get the value into the desired range.

[@treyslider6954]

2) further, faithvalueincrease is probably a semi-static variable that can be used to adjust game balance (in theory it could also be used to produce difficulty levels, but since the value affects both increase and decrease of ruler respect, it probably wouldn't meaningfully change the game's balance unless there are desirable aspects of the game gated behind sufficiently high ruler respect values)

[@vidim888]

It can't actually happen at FaithValue of 10. It will start happening when it's LOWER than 10 and will have somewhere around 10% (depending on implementation) of happening at 11.

[@MossSquid]

Personally I would have moved the negative over and made it less than -1000 rather than greater than 1000. So the full thing would be FaithValue*rand(0, 100) < -1000. It ends up being more parsable to me.

[@treyslider6954]

@@MossSquid I get that. I personally am not fond of asking if something is less than a negative number, because that runs counter to your intuition when comparing negative numbers.

[@andresaraya5198]

I don't get it. Where did you get that it can start at negative 10 FaithValue. None of this parameters are really defined. They may explain what can happen but there is no defined values. Btw, what is Rand?

[@REXanadu]

First time I've seen someone in the games industry positively advocate for making a design doc AND lay out specific things to aim for when doing so

[@KapouehKanard]

A few tricks from my esperiences - have a template, and try to follow it - on the template have few introductory sections about the context, the design problem we are to solve, the constrains etc - mark the deprecated document in the title or the 1st line. - add an FAQ section where you put the recurring questions and the edge cases that ppl might get confused about - put links to the documentation of other crafts related to the topic (art mood board, prices spreadsheet, back end flow diagrams etc). - if your documentation tool doesn't have this built-in, add a last update date and author.

[@shawnheatherly]

Even just for designing characters, a document to keep all their lore and references handy is so nice.

[@GaleTheSpark]

QOTV: 1) If you lose faith in something, this could randomly result in a crisis of conscience 2) How much respect you have for a ruler is determined by how much you respect them as a person, and how much faith you have in them, and as your faith in them grows, so too does respect?

[@mejhdhhicbfshihids652]

given that another example referred to combat and units I imagen its more from the perspective of your faction and that the crisis of conscience and ruler respect represent your population's general opinion but otherwise I think you're spot on

[@umbracolt6364]

Let me muddy this. Seems to me that Faith is an over all value. 1) i agree with 2) Seems Faith has a strong impact on the on how someone or some groups view of a given ruler.

[@briankim3306]

1) Slight nuance with faithvalue needing to be less than -10 for a crisis of conscience roll 2) Somewhat hard to figure out without more context for faith and faithvalue, faith no longer looks like a real word. Ruler respect scales with faithvalue but not sure what faith is.

[@jonny.f4803]

Im glad extra credit used NFTs as an example of a terrible idea.

[@Okhanian]

It's indeed very important to stablish a common language for our game D. documentation, some times it may feel you (as the designer) are being a bit of a pain in the ass for your teammates, but it is well worth it to avoid confusions in the near and distant future!

[@LORDOFDORKNESS42]

A great example on a design bible I'd recommend tracking down as an example to follow, is the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic one. Not even kidding. It's got some really good illustrations, easy to follow layout & chapters, rules on world-building, initial character arcs. You can get a decent grasp of what the entire show is meant to be about, without even watching a single episode. I've genuinely seen art & background books made for consumer level sale on other franchises that held half the quality of that thing.

[@Scipiworld]

Lauren Faust in general in just a masterclass in media development. When she designs a show, she's worked out every little detail to the last inch and can answer any question "what would x do in y situation?" Before the first episode is even written.

[@LORDOFDORKNESS42]

@Jay Vander OK, fine, the SHOW Bible then. Just googled it to refresh my memory, and it says 'Animated Series Show Bible,' right atop the cover. Still, minor memory kerfuffle aside, my actual point stands. The MLP: FIM Show Bible is a pretty dang stellar example of how to write the sort of document talked about in this episode, IMHO. Concise, lots of concept art & pictures, and clear synopses for each character & what sort of roles they're meant to fill in the team dynamic.

[@TheRealE.B.]

(*Cries in hopelessly disorganized office with horribly unproductive meetings.*)

[@abbierobinson6626]

Bullet points are your friend. A paragraph can sometimes include multiple ideas or systems and picking them out from word walls can be difficult. Correct grammar doesn't matter as much as ease of reading.

[@cedah]

In my experience, the most important way to start your design doc is to outline your design goals. How do you want the player to feel? What function does this product, or piece of the product, serve? Without establishing your shared goals, design docs can become immune to review - it will outline HOW xyz should work, but not WHY we should put time into xyz in the first place, giving readers the impression that each documented decision is "final" and doesn't need to be questioned. Always establish your goals and justify how each decision works to achieve those goals. If you can't do that, work the design until you can!

[@David13ushey]

1) is a bolean call to a trigger. The game takes a the negative faith value, multiplies it by 100, and if that's greater than 1000, it triggers the condition / event: crisis of concience. 2) is calculating a system value for a ruler's respect likely on the clock, where the previous respect is added to the faith value/100 times the modifier.

[@Exevan110]

While i don't work as a game developer i'm still very tempted to send this video to a few of the software analysts at my job. It's an absolute nightmare how much knowledge about a project gets fragmented when nobody knows how to write a half decent design document ;_;

[@jamesportnow5983]

Bwahahaha, I had a friend who works outside of games say the same thing to me this morning.

[@ASpaceOstrich]

the bus principle. If someone on the project gets hit by a bus, how will the team handle that person just disappearing? Everyone keeping all their knowledge on how to do a thing in their heads is great until someone else has to pick up their task.

[@stevejakab274]

On the other hand, being the only person who knows how a system works is a great way to have job security. :)

[@Heightren]

1) You're rolling whether the character will have a crisis of conscience. However, the threhold seems to be quite high, so it seems unlikely to happen unless they have a FV < (-10000). You must've had a massive loss in faith for a crisis of conscience. 2) You're evolving how much respect there is for a ruler, depending on the amount of faith the character has. If your faith increases you'll respect the ruler more and viceversa.

[@amadeuscrossing7061]

I will say this, you don't understand how many people who develop software have no idea how valuable this is because they aren't engineers. This is a engineering concept and accepting its value requires the mindset of an engineer. Like I am ready to delete myself because the people in charge of the projects I have to work on, aren't engineers and expect me to code what is in their head. This video is so beautiful. Thank you for making it.

[@StarLightNow]

Wish all companies would embrace design docs instead of footnotes from a meeting. The time people have said "How does that work again?" or "Why are we making a design doc, we already have it in the game?" just draws out my inner rage demon.

[@BlankPicketSign]

Example one: The Character has a random chance to have a "Crisis of Conscience", when their "-FaithValue" seems to be 10 or above. Example two: A Ruler's Respect can increase faster the more of the Faith stat that ruler has. More Faith means more Respect.

[@WalksWithBooks]

I love how happy the faced stone waterfall looks just after the remarks about mining deprecated documents. Very happily explored environment.

[@Nathaniel2Leinahtan1]

the first 1 is a "skill check" where not having enough faith causes a "crisis of faith". the second one is a calculation for chane in "ruler respect" as a function of current faith and increase in faith

[@hudmo4193]

Would love a guide for design docs for books of different genres; dunno if that’s something your team has experience to apply and speak to, but I would eat it up. Sucks to make the same mistakes as every other beginner due to a lack of communication amongst beginners/experts and/or not knowing where to find experienced advice and material. You mentioned building a wiki rather than relying on a series of word docs for better access and faster info discovery and reminding, and it immediately solved one of the main issues I’ve had with the planning phase of creating a book series

[@colinsmith6670]

1) If Faith ability check is less than the Difficulty Score than gain Crisis of Conscience status/effect 2) Increase your Respect of Ruler stat equal to itself plus the Change in Stat formula

[@JEGranberg]

Then as the sand worm plunges into the water, it dies horribly.

[@stevejakab274]

Which is why the ending of David Lynch's Dune is actually a tragedy, Paul kills all the Sandworms by making it rain.

[@ReeveProductions]

The first equation seems to be asking if a character has failed out of being faithful (whatever that is a placeholder for). So if character has a positive faith value they would never experience a crisis of conscience, where as a character with a negative faith value (lower than -10) would be facing the possibility of having a crisis of conscience every time this equation is called. The second equation shows how “rulerrespect” (guessing the character respect for a ruling figure) would increase based on their current faith as a percentage of the amount their faith usually increases by. So someone with high faith would exponentially have more respect for the ruler. This sounds like a very interesting game. Possibly one where you’re a ruler and have to keep your peoples faith up while dealing with and invading neighboring territories.

[@jaydun6106]

Videos like this are the reason I subscribe to Extra Credits. More please!

[@CactusJackIV]

This channel is amazing! I can't wait to see the game in full when you guys get done. Good luck, and hope everyone is getting enough rest(big projects eat time)

[@TrentDonelson]

Documentation is the gift you give your future self.

[@jehova131]

6:34 1. If your faith value multiplied by random number (1 to 100) is greater than a value of 1000, then an event known as a Crisis of Conscience occurs. In essence, this is the formulae for a random event's chance of occurring. The higher your Faith Value is, the more likely that this crisis of conscience event occurs. 2. The total value of your Ruler Respect is Equal to your Base Ruler Respect value plus your base faith value divided by 100 which is then multiplied by faith value increase. This Formulae is determining the total value of your Ruler Respect value, which is not just its base value, but then is added to by a percentage of your faith and whatever bonuses to faith that you have obtained.

[@Gearhand]

Allright I shall give the formula's a shot. 1) Only a negative faithvalue would have a chance to trigger a crisisofbelieve. If the value exeeds 1000 after its multiplied by a random number between 0 and 100. 2) the new rullerrespect value is determend by dividing faith with 100. Then multiply it by the faithvalueincrease and adding the result to the current existing rullerrespect value. I hope that its plain enough.

[@Mega-lb2cr]

thanks, this helped me a bit when designing and writing a comic for a contest

[@WilliamAndersonGameDesigner]

My philosophy on creating full design documents has changed over the years, after working on over 20 published games.

[@fredq6118]

1) When called, -10 and lower FAITHVALUE has a chance to trigger CRISISOFCONSCIENCE 2) When called, RULERRESPECT increases by FAITH/100 multiplied by total FAITHVALUEINCREASE modifier

[@vamuse]

1: If the Faith Value subtracted from a unit , multiplied by a random value between 0 and 100 is greater than one thousand, apply to that unit the state of "Crisis of Conscience." If I had to hazard a guess this is a system to allow Priest units in a strategy game to convert enemy units. 2: Ruler Respect equals the current unit's value of Ruler Respect, plus 100th of that unit's faith value, times how much the Faith value has just been increased by. The respect the citizens have for the King/ Ruler, is directly correlated to the faith of a unit. If the Faith of a unit increases by a certain amount, that also increases that unit's Respect of the Ruler by that same amount, multiplied by 1% of their faith value.

[@Force2reckonVods]

So the first equation looks to read that you're checking a leaders faith to see if they're negative, and if that negative is greater than (or what I assume is meant to be less then -1000) then you trigger a crisis of conscience, whether that's an event, or a modifier. The second increments and monitors Ruler Respect, incrementing it by 1% of your total faith multiplied by your faith gain (per turn/per time unit). Implying whatever this game is puts a pretty strong emphasis on the Faith of a ruler figure, as there's a trigger for having very low faith, and Faith also is used to, at least from what we've been given, solely determine the respect the ruler has (which I assume influences diplomatic/managerial aspects).

[@africanwalkingtree]

Would ExtraCredits mind pointing one towards the specifics of making a wiki? (I am aware in the midst of testing a variety of different wiki/wiki like tools, and would greatly appreciate knowing what specific tools work for those in Design Land)

[@Exevan110]

Tiddlywiki might be a good tool to play around with. It's simple, lightweight and easily portable to most systems.

[@jamesportnow5983]

We use Azure if that helps!

[@ShadyDaisy]

@@Exevan110 These are not so great for teams, since they are local, and if you try to share the files on a network drive, if 2 people edit at the same time, one will lose their work.

[@danielkane8568]

1. If faithvalue is less than -10, you may randomly have a crisis of conscious. 2. Ruler respect is roughly to faith^2/200 plus some other factors.

[@emtheanxiousdragon4543]

I didn’t realize I have a fair amount of coding knowledge leftover from my late elementary school phase until this video. It makes me a lot more confident in my own game production

[@corneliusrosenaa3949]

1: checks if FAITHVALUE times a random number between 1 and 100 if it is less than a 1000 it then triggers the function CRISISOFCONCIENCE 2: updates the variable RULERRESPECT to be RULERRESPECT + FAITHVALUEINCREASE * the variable FAITh divided by 100

[@gargantula3274]

Updating my doc to include "Use weapons as weapons", thanks for the valuable insight

[@VaradMahashabde]

I think the two formulas are to control unit defection/desertion which can happen if A) their faith is too low and they have a crisis of conscience B) low respect for the ruler, which is update roughly quadraticly with respect to increases in their faith So very quickly gaining faith a lot of faith, especially when they are already faithful, will skyrocket respect

[@aliimad2520]

That's a good ad integration at the end

[@kayohwai]

1. If the negative of the faith value, times a random number between 1 and 100, is greater than 1000, you're having a crisis of conscience. - Probably from a civ-style game, you wanted to randomly determine if a particular person was having a crisis of conscience when the value was pulled. The fact that it's negative faith indicates that it's unlikely until someone goes deep into the negatives in faith. 2. RulerRespect is increased OR decreased by 1/100th of the referenced Faith rating times the increase in faith. - Probably same Civ style game, where big shifts in faith heavily affect the amount of respect either towards or by a ruler.

[@___i3ambi126]

A "faith value" of 10 or more will sometimes cause a "crisis of conscience". The higher the faith value, the more often this will happen. "Rulerrespect" will increase by a percentage equal to the "faithvalueincrease". So a faithvalueincrease of 100 will double the rulerespect.

[@iRedEarth]

A crisis of conscious can happen with a chance between 1% and 99%, starting at negative 11 faithvalue and capping at negative 100 faithvalue. Rulerrespect is increased or decreased by a percentage of the base faithvalueincrease value, moddified by faith.

[@Aeimnestus1]

5:55 Literally what to mods should have been asking, in Bofuri.

[@DarkCrimsonBlade]

1: the more faith value you have the greater the chances are of a crisis of conscience (small note: if faith is low enough it is impossible for a crisis of conscience to occur) 2: your ruler respect is tied to increasing your faith and has increasing returns the more faith you have. More faith allows your faith value increases to increase respect more. Examples - having 0 faith and gaining 50 faith value increase will increase ruler respect by 25. Being at 75 faith and gaining 25 faith value increase also will increase ruler respect by 25. Being at 50 faith and gaining 50 faith value increase will increase ruler respect by 50 (small note: if faith value increase gives a negative number on a decrease then having more faith will cause respect to drop faster) (Fun fact: if faith can go negative as well then you will actually start gaining respect for lowering your faith value) 1+2: assuming faith value and faith are the same variable (it is not clear if they are) the setup is that the more faith you have the more respected you will be while also having an increased likelihood of a crisis of conscience triggering. Provided there isn’t another piece that causes faith to reduce the likelihood of the crisis check running. (Fun fact revisited: disregarding any mechanics not mentioned, the ability for faith to go negative, ruler respect is good, and a crisis of conscience not having any benefits, the best strategy is to go as negative in faith as possible)

[@groffenator]

1) If the Faith Value drops below 10, then you start to have a chance for Crisis Of Conscience. This likelihood increases linearly as you lose Faith, but is not guaranteed to happen. 2) Ruler Respect increases as a function of Faith, but slowly. It is affected by the FaithValueIncrease 100 times more than Faith itself.

[@LRosieB]

I haven’t heard of using a wiki format to organize ideas before, but I love it. What software do you use to organize it on?

[@helenanilsson5666]

Oh, I would also like to know what the professionals are using! I used a regular wiki of the kind that's usually used by fandoms, back about a decade ago when I tried to organise a seriously bloated original novel aspiration. Basically I just prayed that no one else on the internet would notice that the wiki was there, everything was openly available online. After setting up some 300 character pages I got tired of not having any control over the platform. The site design would constantly update and features that I used daily were removed because they were unpopular among the larger wiki user population. I got Evernote and started copying the wiki over but it was extremely time consuming and I burned out and indefinitely shelved the project long before I was done. (I do still write today, but at 30 minutes/day available writing time in best case scenarios it's just not satisfying to work on very huge projects, so I stick to very short things that I can finish in a few months)

[@millis6054]

The first formula seems to be a morality system for a character, while the second seems to be a trust increase with an authority NPC.

[@Drejzer]

The ① seems to say "having low faith value can trigger crisis of conscience, the lower faith the more likely the crisis is" The second one is something like "when your faith value changes, it also influences how respected you are" And I guess it's a 4X game? Those are the most likely ones to use such things (there's something similar to Fable3, but it's less likely)

[@QuickStudy4]

I think formula 1 is used to determine if the unit will follow through with the action depending on how strong their faith value is. For example, a Crusader is ordered to kill an unarmed civilian because they are living in a city of a different faith. If their faith is strong then they will follow through believing that their god is on their side, but if they fail the check then they will receive a "Crisis of Conscience" where they will feel the opposite. With formula 2 I believe that this shows that in the game a ruler's respect is determined by their current respect level and the rate of how much faith is being generated/stored. So a ruler's respect will increase based on how much faith is being generated, and will increase faster if the faith resource is stockpiled. Based on this and the examples in the video, it sounds like it is some kind of fantasy strategy game where the faith of the army/nation plays an important role. Maybe some kind of Great Crusade sim.

[@postapocalypticnewsradio]

PANR has tuned in.

[@enzo.toscana]

I love Extra Credits!

[@extrahistory]

We love you!!!

[@gregorysember2164]

Funny to hear about this while I am writing a design document for an engineering project.

[@BlueMoonWolf85]

1: By the time you've got a faith value of -20 (on whatever scale it exists), you start to have about a 50/50 chance of having a crisis of conscience. Lower than that makes it more likely to happen; someone with at least -9.999... faith will never have a crisis of conscience. 2: Adjust the ruler's current respect by 1% of their/your current faith, multiplied by some arbitrary "increase" factor. Making this factor negative could be used to reduce their respect, too.

[@extratayodancer]

First formula: If your faith goes below -10 you have a chance to have a crisis of conscious, as it goes lower it becomes more likely Second: The higher the absolute value of your faith, the bigger impact changes to your faith have on your respect. If faith is positive, increases make it higher decreases make it lower. If faith is negative, increases make it lower decreases make it higher. So if a saint-like ruler shows good faith they is a massive boost to their respect, if herectical ruler does the same they actually lose faith. I guess people in this game respect consistency

[@ViolosD2I]

This is the best concise explanation I found after skimming over about 20 of them. More than half were wrong, others reiterate the formula without really explaining what it means to the player. Not meaning to bash - it rather demonstrates how you cannot just expect others (other than fellow system designers and gameplay coders, usually) to read such things from a formula without further explanation.

[@extratayodancer]

@@ViolosD2I I do have a degree in software engineering and have worked in the feild, deciphering algorithms has been part of my job

[@Alverant]

6:32 Second example. It looks like RulerRespect can only go up or stay the same. It can only go down if Faith is negative. And since you're using Faith in the first example in the context of a personal crisis, is that the same kind of Faith used in calculating the new value for RulerRespect? I think that could cause some confusion. Also, it looks like faith doesn't have much of an impact on RulerRespect given how it's used as a percentage of a different value (which is smaller than RulerRespect). So you have a percentage of a small value.

[@francescosorce5189]

I guess Faith value increase can also be negative. The sign of faith would probably impact whether the change given by faith value increase comes out of common achievement, disappointment, conflict or pity (both positive, faith positive but faith increase negative, faith negative but increase positive, both negative respectively). I have no idea if that's what they have in mind though.

[@DarkBloodbane]

If (-FaithValue*rand()&100>100){ CrisisOfConscience()} = this sounds like if someone has negative faith, he/she is likely in crisis of conscience. RulerRespect = RulerRespect + ((Faith/100)*FaithValueIncrease) = this means respect to a ruler is determined by people's faith to the ruler. The more faith people give to the ruler, the better the respect ruler gets in the future. Back to topic, thanks for the tip about making design docs. I usually work solo so I forget that if I work in a team, I have to make my teammates understand the concept I have in mind. Design docs are the tool I'd need to use for that. Good point about storing depreciated docs. Maybe we could the idea in same game or in other game in the future.

[@JanbluTheDerg]

1) When some entity is lacking faith, there is a chance, based on the amount of negative faith they have multiplied by a random percentage, for them to start the crisis of conscience event, which is most likely an event that affects that entitiy specifically, but can ripple outwards. 2) Ruler respect is influenced/modified by the amount of faith in their nation, that is, the current faith, and the next increase (or decrease) of faith. Combining the two, it would appear that a rulers respect is based on the amount of faith the population holds, and if the populations faith goes too low, they can start a crisis of conscience event, which could have them questioning why they are supporting this ruler, leading to a revolution of sorts. Or something, idk.

[@kyr58]

If negative faith value multiplied by a random number between zero and 100 is greater than 1000, then the Crisis of Conscience event will occur. This necessitates the player have less than -100 faith to trigger. RulerRespect value gets new value equal to the original value plus one one hundredth of the Faith stat which is itself multiplied by the latest faith value increase. This serves as an updater to a tangential variable RulerRespect when the faith stat’s value is independently increased.

[@ASpaceOstrich]

I've been in the preproduction plateau on a project for nearly a decade now.

[@xerberme]

Rule 1: If the Faithvalue drops below -10 a crisis of conscience can be triggert, getting more likely the lower the value is. Rule 2: Calculate Rulerrespect as current Respect for the ruler plus a value depending on the Faith and the change in Faith What I think is interessting, Rulerrespect for positive Faith values works as one would probably expect, increase faith leads to more respect, decreasing faith leads to less respect. But because Faith can probably be negative, see rule 1, we have a case that works differently. At negative Faith your respect increses as your faith drops (-10/100)*(-1)=10 and decreases as your faith increses (-10/100)*(+1)=-10. So the closer you get to a crisis of coscience event the more respect you gain. Not sure if that was intended or if that is an example for a mistake in the idea implemantation.

[@ASpaceOstrich]

What wiki would people use for their design documents?

[@chillmadude]

1) if the inverse of the variable faith times a random number between 1 and a 100 (or 0 and 100, i forget how that works) is less than 1000, then there is a crisis of conscience. i assume this is a way to track the guilt of a character for one reason or another 2) the citizens respect for a/the ruler is their current respecr plus their subjects faith times the increase of faith i assume this is a way to track npc's opinions about the player as they make decisions throughout the game as for the game as a whole, I'd say it's probably a game where the player has to manage a country and try to avoid a revolution (edit: just changed my wording for what the second formula is supposed to mean to be clearer. specifically changed from "the respect for a/the ruler" to "the citizens respect for a/the ruler")

[@gamester99]

1. A statcheck in a game where religion plays a significant role. If the character doesn't have enough faith in their religion, and rolls a high enough value, a cutscene, or other event, will occur, or a malice is applied. 2. An NPC's respect for the player is increased by an amount based on the player character's religious faith and a modifier that increases the amount of faith the player character gets from doing whatever it is that increases faith. This the most I can get out of it without spending more time on this than I already have.

[@psycoNaughtplaysMCPC]

i'll have a crack at the formula; so if the product value of the faith and random event(?) times -100 is greater than 1000 then the crisisofconscience occurs which I assume a character has a change of heart if a specific event happens to or around them. The second one is a little bit more difficult to parse but I think it means that the character has the ruler's respect if they have done enough in favor of the ruler's faction or goal and they have enough of a particular line of dialogue with them? I hope I got those right

[@SuperFlamethrower]

Wing Commander the digital version from GoG comes with a copy of the original project proposal. I guess that's different than a design document.

[@Hebdomad7]

The original homeworld game manual is a rich textbook of story and illustrations... I miss game manuals like that.

[@stevejakab274]

That's what you create before you make the design doc, in order to sell the game to a publisher.

[@grrr111222111]

Perhaps not necessarily plain English but I wanted to get my thought process down as well. 1) This sets the condition for the character to have a crisis of conscience based on their current value for faith. Presumably in relation to religion but it could be ideology or other belief system as well. Implicitly faithvalue can be negative (the conditional never triggers for positive values). So If you have negative faith there is a chance for a character to undergo a crisis of conscience. Your current faith is multiplied by a random number from 0 to 100 (presumably an integer but that is less important) and if the result is greater than 1000 then you have a crisis. We can know that your faith must be less than -10 (10*100=1000 which is not greater than 1000) to have a crisis but we cannot know if there is a maximum value. Based on (2) if the value is bound from -100 to 100 then you would need at least a random roll greater than 10 to trigger a crisis. So assuming that bound is correct a crisis is never guaranteed and there is a minimum amount of negative faith needed to trigger a crisis. 2)This is trickier to parse because we don't know the difference between "faithvalue" and "faith" (the wording of faithvalueincrease certainly implies they aren't the same but we can't know for sure). What we can say is that changes in your rulers respect depend on your faith and that the more faith the faster the change. At faith=100 rulerrespect changes by the full amount of faithvalueincrease, less than that and there is less impact from changing faith, more and there is more. There is some unfortunate ambiguity here. Presumably you would want the player to be able to improve their respect by improving their faith but if faith is allowed to be negative, like faithvalue, then you counterintuitively have to lower your faith to increase your respect (as you need to multiply by another negative to get a positive). Given that I'm going to assume that faith is simply the absolute value of faithvalue and that faith is capped at 100 (there isn't much justification for this but the factor of 1/100 is very suggestive). So characters of middling faith see very little change in their level of respect. As faithvalue increases in either direction a characters respect is increasingly effected by changes in faith, importantly in both directions. A ruler who has -100 faith will see large gains in respect for becoming more faithful, likewise a very faithful ruler will lose more respect for turning away from the faith. There is a slight inconsistency in that a ruler with exactly 0 faith will not see any change in respect when the first time they change there faithvalue as 0 times anything is zero. Once if has changed from 0 though everything works fine. Assuming the bound of 100 for faith is correct then there is probably a similar bound for rulerrespect as otherwise there could be rulers who become trapped in positive or negative respect. For example a -100 faithvalue ruler who somehow went to +100 in one go would receive +200 respect so any ruler below -200 would still be in the negatives. Given this I would guess respect is also from -100 to 100 or 0 to 100 but there isn't really any way to tell.

[@Yahuaa]

0:48 is it the Ministry of Silly Walks that said this? Gonna have to go to the clinic. Feel an argument coming.

[@PrograError]

Agreed on the documentation, got a job and the documentation is a huge arse mess, basically had to search too hard in the Gdrive to find that previous reference.

[@noxen1402]

Thanks for another great design video! It seems you've dropped this series, is that right? If not, where could I find the next videos? Or, are you planning to continue this in another channel or format? I ask this because I use everything I learned with you so far in my day work in my studio and in my personnal projects. I would really appreciate to continue learning with you all!

[@Watchinofoye]

6:24 These sound like formulas for designing unit AI in a strategy game. The first formula would be to define what causes a crisis of consciousness in a unit, namely the loss of faith in the leader. If faith is less than -10, a random factor triggers a crisis of conscience. The higher the loss of faith, the smaller the random value needed to trigger a crisis of conscience (no risk if the loss of faith is greater than -10). The second formula defines the respect of a unit towards the leader, so that this respect is proportional to the faith. I suppose this is a system where units would respect the player more or less depending on his actions. I'm curious to know what happens in case of a crisis of conscience. Are the units just less effective? Or do they just refuse to obey? Or will they join the other side?

[@IAmNeglectable]

did we never get the “impart meaning into math” video? because it sounded like exactly what i’ve been trying to find a lesson on 😢

[@Jaybiooh]

Design documents are great to make decisions out of ideas and to specify how a feature works, making it ready for programmers to implement. Creating a good understandable language is often hard and lots of effort, maintanence of such documents is often lots oft effort and depending on the state of production the documentation style sometimes leads to only create the next feature specification as this is the next thing people are working on. Updating your 200 page design wiki after every dialogue, every meeting you had that included tiny decisions changing things, is really tedious. Team size, state of production, budget can dictate or change what efficient document can be for you and you have to find out what works best to get features into your game and have team mates understand what your game is all about on the same level.

[@HappyHeart35242]

It's not a very original idea, but I've been using and/or altering the same formulas used in Final Fantasy VI; and that goes for using physical attack damage formula, modifying magic damage formula, implementing a new formula for calculating HP growth... Whatever I can use or modify. And the FFVI formulas are indeed complex, but most of it is pretty much all spelled out for me. As for aesthetic, I'm seeking the same style as seen in FFVI-an example would be the little hop forward characters do when using Attack command. I keep several different docs of all these details and more, but I compile them and hyperlink them to a main doc that directs my colleagues to specific concepts I had planned to implement.

[@kuhluhOG]

So, the first one is going to trigger a crisis of the conscience (whatever that's supposed to mean) if your faithvalue is too high and you get unlucky. The second one is going to increase the respect of the ruler by 1% of the faith value multiplied by the faithvalueincrease. Also, could it be that faithvalue and faith are supposed to be the same thing?

[@ASLTheatre]

First guess: “M34N1NG 1N70 M47H” = “MEANING INTO MATH”

[@yobgodababua1862]

#1 implements an interesting function for the likelihood of a crisis of conscience base don how low your faithvalue has dropped. A FaithValue of -10 and higher has no chance of triggering a crisis. At -11 you have a 10% chance of a crisis (rand of 91-100 satisfy the inequality) At -12 this increases to 17% (84-100) At -13, 23% (77-100) At -14, 28% (72-100) ...and so on, with the chance of a crisis finally reaching it's maximum of 99% at a faithvalue of -1001 (unless faith is capped at a higher value).

[@TheAmbientBeard]

What are some good tools for setting up a wiki?

[@frankharr9466]

You're trying to quantify loyalty and create a possible bad thing if it goes too low.

[@philVSmonster]

I didn’t know Ted Wassanasong was a game dev 😮

[@christopherg2347]

Formulas - both only make sense if this is a turnbased game or they are run on a interval, which is not given. But a critical part of how much and quickly they take effect. 1. If you loose faith into somewhat or something, you get a "Crisis of Confidence". RAND(0-100) is a Random Number between 0 and 100, +/-1. 1000 is the treshold für a Crisis of Confidence. -FAITHVALUE is the odd part. It reads "negative faith value". Can faith go negative and the - is supposed to flip the sign? If so, only negative faith could result in anything larger then 0. So any negative Faithvalue of -10 could cause a Crisis (1% chance), while not even a -1000 would guarante it (0 on RNG). 2. Respect for the Ruler goes up (or down) each turn, based on faith in said ruler. Or faith in the faith? RULERRESPECT is the current Respect for the Ruler. Is supposed to primarily go up, but I guess on negative Faith it might even go down? FAITHVALUEINCREASE is probably a Constant. The primary way of finetuning how fast the relation changes each turn FAITH I would say is a value 0-100. You are turning it into a percentage.

[@dserdsing]

QOTV: If your faith value times (random number from 0 to 100) is higher than 1000, then you have a crisis of conscience? Ruler respect is Faith times faith value percentage increase? I have no idea what I just said.

[@Mcgreag]

It's minus faith value so actually need a negative faith (-*- = +) for it to trigger and it needs to be at least -10 before it can happen.

[@GaleTheSpark]

I think they mean this: 1) If you lose your faith in something, this could randomly result in a crisis of conscience 2) How much respect you have for a ruler is determined by how much you respect them as a person, and how much faith you have in them, and as your faith in them grows, so too does respect (I think?)

[@herdinstinct8282]

What're some recommended services to create a private wiki?

[@420DOTcom7]

helped ALOT with my game thx

[@greyrhebok]

Can anyone recommend me a simple wiki solution to use for this purpose ?

[@Ryu_D]

Thank you for the video.

[@maddjak]

How can something equal itself plus something?

[@stevejakab274]

It's a math formula, not a logical statement. Take a variable, manipulate it, and assign the resulting value back to the original

[@yuvalharel3537]

First Edit: please return the Extra mythology series

[@ericdillingham6858]

Sadly, you're not first.

[@stevejakab274]

They should do Christian myths, just to piss off people.

[@pedronovaes5993]

Do you think having a game design document would also help with making a table top rpg?

[@stevejakab274]

Yes, it would be vital. "Making it up as you go" is a path to failure for anything but the simplest game. Plus, the stuff that gets left out of the final game can be used for expansions!

[@hlibushok]

Wait, what? Why angled brackets aren't allowed in descriptions?

[@brockormond4131]

6:22 Taking a crack at my guessing. 1) Reads as a check of weither an NPC or maybe 'the people' as a whole chance of betraying or at least not helping a particular ruler/leader. 2) How much a single action of ruler can increase the respect of an NPC/group/faction. Seems to be a mechanic for a Civilization or political game. FaithValue seems to be able to be positive or negative (since it has a negative modifer; implies good/bad feelings and good feelings would never trigger crisisofconscience) RulerRespect seems self evident; but Faith is not. You have 3 terms using Faith: Faith by itself, FaithValue which implys a calculation from Faith, and FaithValueIncrease which is a modifer on FaithValue. I'd be concerned what the difference between Faith and FaithValue is with just this to work from.

[@Hanokaze]

Being a Level Designer, I know all too well the pitfalls of not having a Design Document readily available (or sufficiently updated). I understand that it can be a hassle to Designers to make/update these documents, but by frontloading the work in making the document it saves so, SO much time down the line. The main argument I hear against documents is that it hinders the creativity of the designers and locks them into working only within the limits set, but I disagree completely. Making something creative within the limits is half the fun as far as I'm concerned, and it's far better than working with no foundation. With no foundation, the entire project is liable to fall apart at the most inopportune of times.

[@stevejakab274]

A designer who says "don't box me in with design docs, man" is someone who will never finish a game.

[@La0bouchere]

@@stevejakab274 Depends. Design documents will hold you back, but are useful if you actually have a team doing development work. Best balance is to have designers work on something completely alone for a while before development even begins, then solidify things and bring on development resources. Most companies aren't able to do this though due to how they're structured.

[@blazzerrazzer3800]

4:16 that is the worst maze i have ever seen

[@connordarvall8482]

In other words, write every idea that comes up in a google doc?

[@stevejakab274]

Not every idea, just the ones you want in your game.

[@francescosorce5189]

I'll try to give an interpretation to the formulas at 6:25. I may have gotten some interpretations wrong but that's what I can get from the formulas as given, though in the context of them being in a design doc the ambiguities I found would probably be cleared up there anyway. 1: On some occasion there might be the possibility to trigger a "crisis of conscience" state. This can happen randomly during the events that trigger this check and is less likely to happen with a bigger faith value. The condition as written there would never activate unless faith is less then -10. I guess you have a "firm believer" vs "strong diffidence" system in place? 0 would be ambivalence, positive values would mean the presence of faith and negative the presence of distrust. I'm not quite sure if that's what you're going for, given that distrust of a given faction doesn't really cause "crisis of conscience" but I'm sure I'm just missing some context. That minus sign is a bit confusing to me. If you meant that a low but positive value is more likely to trigger a crisis then you should divide by faith rather than multiply by its negative (actually, it's better to divide by faith+1 and adjust the threshold in order to avoid division by zero errors, but that is beyond the scope of a design document I'd imagine since you want formulas that convey the idea rather than product ready ones). 2: On certain occasions, the faith in a ruler might change (a battle was won or lost, a new political development, a character death, whatever). On these occasions the faith in the ruler should be the same as it was before plus some change. This value should change with a speed proportional to a value determined by the event itself (faith value increase) and the faith value, so a more faithful character would change their faith in the ruler faster then an indifferent character. The positive-negative value for faith also comes in handy because the same event (maybe a victory of the faction led by the ruler) would increase the faith in the ruler in someone that is already faithful and decrease it in someone that wasn't, analogously with a negative value for "faith value increase". This sort of system gives me the idea of "when the ruler serves those who are faithful to them, the faithful like them more and the unfaithful like them less. when the rule fails to serve the faction of those that have faith in them, those become less faithful while the unfaithful start to pity(?) them".