Coming Soon

I like to keep a sort of mental to-do list of the next steps I should take. I rarely make this into an actual list or flesh it out fully- knowing that the next steps are "make a simple battle map system," "come up with basic abilities," and "come up with actual numbers for the classes" is helpful but knowing "wow, there's fifteen different things that need to happen for this to work" isn't. It is helpful on some levels- and if there were more people involved, it would be critical to make sure tasks are split and people are working on what's most important.

One other thing I should mention is modular programming. Essentially, you design everything so that it doesn't need everything else functional for it to function- it makes it so you can test, say, an inventory-management program before items are fully done, or make sure that items work properly before making a battle system that can use them. The question, though, becomes how much I should try and keep the sophistication of each component at the same level- should I finish coding the classes before I move on to abilities, or should I code enough for the classes to be able to reasonably test other things, and then come back to improve them once I have a basic program running?

If I had done more planning, the "finish each component" method might work- but it's not really an option when I'm still musing over other critical things. Should movement be just speed plus a single action, or an action points system where you can attack multiple times if you don't move? Should units move in some initiative order, or should a player's entire party move together?