{"id":1734,"date":"2014-04-04T12:55:34","date_gmt":"2014-04-04T10:55:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/?p=1734"},"modified":"2014-04-04T12:55:34","modified_gmt":"2014-04-04T10:55:34","slug":"the-importance-of-randomness-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/2014\/04\/the-importance-of-randomness-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The importance of randomness"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"crowded\"<\/a>
\nIn the screenshot above, the new random items in all their splendor!<\/em><\/p>\n

I’ve been recently playing Diablo3 on the PS3. I can hear a voice in my head saying:<\/p>\n

“What? You’re playing!? Go back immediately to work on the games!”<\/em><\/p>\n

But NO! Doing research is important for every business, so I decided to force myself to play it (also an excuse to use the PS3 for something since the recent PS+ games have been a bit disappointing for my tastes).<\/p>\n

I played more and… I had the idea to implement random items on my next RPG, Seasons Of The Wolf \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

One of the strong points of Diablo has always been the use of the random element. I am not sure if other games before it used it so well. I fairly remember the first game, and how every match was different.<\/p>\n

Obviously, since I make story-based games, I cannot rely too much on the randomness, since the plot follow a linear path, some locations must be fixed, the characters too, etc. I cannot also generate random maps or dungeon (at least for now!) so the only random element I could add was in the items\/loot.<\/p>\n

\"looting\"<\/a>
\nA test for the looting screen. Of course in the real game you rarely will get so much stuff!<\/em><\/p>\n

And I must say that it works VERY WELL. Now whenever I kill an enemy during testing I wonder what item I’ll get – is pretty exciting! Of course the drop rate is not high, rather than flooding the inventory with garbage that you’d have to resell it immediately I decided to limit the amount, but increase the average quality.<\/p>\n

In general the rare items are, rare, but also depends on the enemy. Boss enemies now will drop obviously higher level loot \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

I decided to go with the following tiers: Rusty, Standard, Fine, Quality, Excellent, Masterwork, Rare and Legendary. Legendary is the only item that is not randomly generated, since I still want to have control over the most powerful items, so I’ll define those manually. They’ll also be unique and have a unique name.<\/p>\n

To help the player recognize better the top items, the Fine\/Masterwork\/Rare\/Legendary have a different color and a small letter with the initial of the word near the item icon in the inventory.<\/p>\n

Overall, it took me a week of hard work (last weekend I worked 10h\/day straight!!) but now that is working I must say that was time well spent! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

I’ve seen the (green)light<\/strong><\/p>\n

In other, but no less important, news, three more of my games were greenlit yesterday! They are Flower Shop: Summer In Fairbrook, Always Remember Me and of\u00a0 course Planet Stronghold (was about time!).<\/p>\n

I plan to release Always Remember Me next weekend, if all goes well. And the others coming shortly after in next weeks. Stay tuned \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the screenshot above, the new random items in all their splendor! I’ve been recently playing Diablo3 on the PS3. I can hear a voice in my head saying: “What? You’re playing!? Go back immediately to work on the games!” But NO! Doing research is important for every business, so I decided to force myself […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,94,44,9,14,171,173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-development-screenshot","category-development-tricks","category-game-design","category-indie-life","category-roleplay-games","category-seasons-of-the-wolf","category-steam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1734"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1748,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1734\/revisions\/1748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}