Game design course homework

[qarl]

I've now completed lesson two of the game design course.

There are some interesting people on the course. Zack Johnson, the guy who runs Kingdom of Loathing is on the course with some other guys from KoL, as is a producer from PopCap.

Homework from lesson 2 included some iterative development on the games we made in lesson one. Here is the

Comments

[slothphil]

I suspect Zack (more usually known as Jick) may be coming at game design from a very different direction to most of the other participants. Amusing to see you and the KOL folks overlapping.

[anagathic]

With the fire player's actions being completely deterministic, it seems to me that their side of the game will be pretty mechanical

[jarratt_gray]

Yeah I would have to agree with this. Intensify is an exponential action meaning the fire tokens grow from 1 to 2 to 4 to 8 if you use them like that. Once you hit 8 you want them away from the right and just grow which given that you are over 6 will mean more burnout throughout the game

[anagathic]

Ah, I hadn't noticed that it was the rightmost non-burntout square that was burntout regardless of its fire status, not the sqaure that had the fire in it (I'd read it as "any square which has six or more fire counters in it is burnt out"). That being the case, I don't see how the fire player can lose the game, as currently written; the fire player just keeps intensifying the fire, with the exponentially increasing fire front staying one step ahead of the burnt-out area. This being the case, play for the fire player goes

[qarl]

Made some general replies seperately, but thought I'd reply directly as well to trigger a response to you if you had email responses sent to you. Check the thread for the full response I had. Thanks for the feedback, it will be incorporated.

[jarratt_gray]

Actually the way the rules are currently written once you reached the threshold s2 would burn out (assuming you can't burn out the town). So the fire could sit in s8 and burn out from the town. You wouldn't of course you would intensify and burn out s8 and then stick 6 in s7 with 10 in s6. s3 burns out and next turn you can intensify s6 and dump fire all over s4 and s5.

I assume the burn out happens in the rightmost square because the chief is burning stuff out to protect the town. Making a firebreak perhaps. It also gives safe places for the engines.

Or perhaps Qarl just missed in the rules that he wants the rightmost square with fire on it to be burnt out.

[qarl]

Thanks for all the feedback