ISLES OF WAR (LAUNCHED OCTOBER 2013)
ROLE : TECHNICAL DESIGNER | DISNEY INTERACTIVE, JULY 2012 - APRIL 2014 | TEAM SIZE = ~50
GAMEZEBO REVIEW
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OVERVIEWI was fortunate to be a part of the development of Isles of War from conception to launch. My role as a technical designer included receiving high level game design documents and decomposing the mechanics described, to parameterizable systems and hammering out design details for implementation.
Though I was a part of many features, battle system and AI was my primary focus. The player manages battle strategically by customizing his fleet. This comprises of the following elements : Building Ships, Equipping Weapons, and Ordering Ships in Fleet. |
BUILDING SHIPS
The player manages different elements of gameplay through different structures in his home island. For example, a higher level shipyard unlocks stronger ships. Leveling up patterns of structures is an important means of exercising indirect control on navigating player behavior.
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The ships which are a part of a fleet impact the fleet's capabilities in multiple ways. In battle a tank ship might be useful at the head of the fleet to absorb damage, while heavy damage dealing ships trail behind. Alternatively a low fighting capacity fleet with high cargo might be created purely for resource harvesting purposes.
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EQUIPPING WEAPONS
Every ship has a designated number of weapon slots. The weapons that can be equipped are limited based on the weapon weight capacity of the ship. Key parameters of a weapon are fire rate and fire radius.
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The most important mechanic in the entire game is weapons firing from broadside. The behavior this encourages is manouvering ships to a point where player ships can fire while enemy ships cannot (as shown below).
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ORDERING SHIPS IN FLEET
Based on the mechanic described above, success in battle is heavily dependent on ordering of ships in the fleet. The player has control over only the first ship in the fleet. The remaining ships follow the ship ahead of itself in a 'follow the leader' flocking mechanic. Having a speedy ship in the first slot with high weapon range allows the player to manouver into positions as described above with greater ease. Therefore the data balance challenge herein is in between two parameter buckets.
1) Bucket A - Ship speed and Weapon range
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2) Bucket B - Ship health and Armour
To create a balanced system, increasing one bucket should result in decreasing the other.
1) Bucket A - Ship speed and Weapon range
vs
2) Bucket B - Ship health and Armour
To create a balanced system, increasing one bucket should result in decreasing the other.
