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Planning for Game Progression

A topic by Zyrean created 45 days ago Views: 70 Replies: 3

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Hello friends, I recently finished my first game made with Godot and published it. This project took me about 2-3 months and taught me a lot about game development. I can now see the shortcomings of my game more clearly from the feedback it received. I would be very grateful if our experienced friends could help me.

My game was a clicker idle game. Therefore, planning the player's progress is of great importance. Since this was my first project, I didn't think much about this aspect, but now I see that it may be the most important aspect of the game. My questions about this are as follows: Is it possible to express progressions with mathematical formulas to provide the player with the optimum experience? For example, those who use RPG Maker know that when adjusting the required XP to level up, the game engine automatically creates a visual level curve based on the value of XP in the game engine. This calculation is quite helpful. What programs can be used to create a similar curve? Which area of mathematics should one work on to calculate level advancement, upgrade costs, and express them infinitely? Can Excel be used for these tasks? If so, do you have any recommended tutorial sources?

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hechelion45 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

This is a very good question, but it is quite complicated and long to explain in details, so I will try to do my best.

If you can model how the weather behaves in mathematical formulas, you can model anything, especially games, especially because using formulas for the progressions of a game is much more powerful and easier than doing it with a data table or with an infinite if.

Nowadays, there are many tools that allow you to do what you are looking for, it is quite common to use Python and libraries like Pandas, it is a very powerful tool that allows you to do everything, play with statistical distributions, progressions, etc. but they are a more advanced level and you would have to invest a good amount of time in learning them.

But any spreadsheet, such as excel or libre office calc, google sheet, etc, should be enough to do the work you need.

As far as I know, there is no area of mathematics focused exclusively on what you are looking for. It is rather a set of different disciplines, perhaps the closest would be series and progressions (arithmetic and geometry).
But if you allow me the comparison, it's like wanting to learn Russian just to translate the buttons that say "new game" and "exit".

If you are interested, perhaps the easiest thing to do is to look at some exponential progressions and perhaps logarithms. The rest will be a bit of experience and asking if you are looking for something specific, for example in RPG it is very common to use formulas with S-shaped curve or sigmoid curve.

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Zyrean45 days ago

Thank you for the long, and detailed answer. I'll look into logarithms and exponential progressions.

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Magicsofa45 days ago

What exactly do you mean by "provide the player with optimum experience"... are you referring to how much XP can be gained in specific area of the game, and being able to determine what level the player should be at any point?

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