Brainstorming in paper!
I got on this project knowing that it will be a huge time-consuming undertaking. I have had a bad streak in project planning where I aim for something good and ambitious in little under three months. “Dream Arena” and “Unorthodox” were unfortunately one of those projects. I have learned from these that, since I mostly work on raw Web-based code and not a dedicated application, making an operational and editable combat system and editor in a website in such a short amount of time would be laughably impossible.
But you have to start somewhere.
So I brainstormed.
When I work and brainstorm, I find it easier to draw ideas down on paper because I get to write and draw whatever comes to mind with no inhibition. My initial concept was more detailed functionality-wise, but for something just sketched in less than five minutes, it shows what my ideal version of Simulacrum would look like. I find it better to look back on it sometimes, thinking on what details I can add to my polished prototype next. I harkened back to “Dream Arena” with its four-player setup.
With visuals sorted out and with feedback from others, I then simulated battles that could happen in the game also in paper, starting off with a simple “here’s a player, here’s an enemy, player attacks enemy” and going off to more of the combat’s particularities like specific equipment and actions. The goal of these paper simulations is to find out the repeating formulas and structures I find myself writing down through these simulations. Those repeating portions of the paper simulation would become the foundational functions and objects in the digital program.