No sooner do I post about all the Crowfall news updates from last week than ArtCraft Entertainment publish a new update to the game’s website. This update, by designer Thomas Blair, focuses on the Knight character archetype, specifically on the class’ skill tree and powers, and the UI which will drive the use thereof:

Our Approach: Minimum Viable Powers

We have been building each archetype with what we think would be a ‘minimum viable power’ kit for that archetype to be useful and fun in combat. This means that the current list isn’t final, and some of the powers might even jump to other archetypes (or be cut entirely!) as we continue development.

You’ll also notice that this is just our first iteration of the combat user interface (UI). As such, we are also leaving ourselves room on the powers tray for the player to eventually slot additional combat powers (i.e. the ones that the player will acquire via disciplines, advantages, or class promotions). We also assume there will be another non-combat related power bar when we start building those systems.

In other words, don’t freak out about the interface!

The first round of powers was selected for a dual purpose: to build a set of cool, functional powers (obviously) and also to test the limits of the PhysX simulation in Unity. Each power often had a set of new (and different) components that would be useful not only in the construction of that particular power, but would also open up a new area of design discovery.  The goal is to build reusable elements that we can repurpose in other powers.

For example, in order to build the Knight’s Shield Slam power, we defined what we needed first. This power should:

•          Use a hold-to-charge-up mechanic to activate,
•          Deal more damage the longer it is charged,
•          Allow the player to rotate their facing while charging up,
•          Display a small screen shake visual effect at each charge level,
•          Guarantee a critical hit if charged over a threshold value,
•          Stop charging at some point (a max charge level),
•          Have a maximum hold time at max charge level and, lastly,
•          Send an email to any player who gets hit by a fully-charged power to inform them that they are a bad player and need to get better (no, not really).

That’s a lot of new features needed to make this power work! Rather than hardcode it as a single feature, we want to build it in components so that we can mix them and match them, then reuse them to create other powers (for other archetypes and disciplines).

The payoff for this, eventually, is that our toolbox of features will become bigger and more varied, and it will become easier (and much cheaper) for us to build new powers.

Click on through to read the rest. If you can believe it, the above is only a short excerpt relative to the length of the entire post.