NobOrBob (interesting handle), a quest designer at Turbine, has posted the latest developer diary at the site for Middle-Earth Online. The theme is "polishing the game," specifically moving from concept and design to workability.
Weâ??re now in the stage of development known as polish. In our case (development process varies broadly from studio to studio), that means the majority of game systems are implemented and a quantity of content has been created; so itâ??s time to see how well they all work together.
Many elements of the game have been built in parallel, which makes the polish phase especially important. For example, in my last diary I wrote of working on one of our large quests, with complex behaviors for NPCâ??s in a sprawling Dwarf-dungeon. While I was doing that, other designers and engineers were working on our combat system, defining skills for players and monsters, defining their core statistics, and so on. That meant that while I could make sure the quest functioned properly and was fun from the perspective of moving through the dungeon, seeing new things, and hearing interesting bits of story, I could not be sure how all of that would interact with the then-in-development combat system.
It sounds as thought MEO is on track and coming along nicely. Read the full diary here. Click this link to visit the official site of Middle-Earth Online.
