Revival Release Design Document

The goal of this design document is to lay down the development goals for a possible new release addressing various pressing matters that I think have been overlooked for years. --Clonkonaut (talk) 23:05, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Introduction

Currently, OpenClonk development is in a standstill. However, there is no shortage of possible development tasks. Personally, I feel that there are parts of the game that serve as a constant bother to all players but have not been properly addressed throughout the development history. These amount to some quirky behaviour of your clonk, weird looking situations and outright annoying gameplay. The little problems are well known to all of us and we have learned our ways around them. But, everyone who is not willing to go that extra mile will be put off for good. My goal with this document is to propose possible solutions for certain problems or to spark interest in exploring possible solutions to problems that I have no deeper insight into. The latter meaning that this document will not provide conclusive answers on everything.

What seems to be the problem?

Over the years, OC has got more features and expanded on its gameplay. This is not bad. Right from the start, we have always sought to alleviate the gritty bits of playing the game. But we always left a few things to be desired by saying that we will look into these at a later stage. As the game grew more complicated, these problems became more and more convoluted and harder to solve. Where changing a basic system now means having to work on many more little things and a seemingly simple task becomes a behemoth of annoying bits. This leads to something I have by now seen in other open source games. A fatigue to work on the pressing matters in favour of more fun, new and flashy features. Each new release brings a potpourri of new things to the table while the core problems stay the same and will annoy the players away all the same. Even worse, the game looks a bit different each release in a feeble attempt to somehow work around the problems through a path of low resistance to get to developing the fun features again. To my understanding this leades only to frustration. You want to enjoy a new set of cool things but still struggle with button-mashing your way through the landscape. The only way to lift this curse, as I see it, is to properly address the core problems and really grind into the hard work of trying to fix them. To make your time of playing the game worthwhile.

Exactly that is what I am trying to achieve with laying out this document. Pointing out the problems I see and put them up for discussion. Suggesting possibilities to smooth them out in a way that makes the overall game simply feel 'good', so you are eager to explore it more. All this will probably be a good chunk of work and not necessarily the fun kind of making new toys. The outcome will most likely - and I understand the irony of it - change the appearance of the game again - hopefully for the better and into something that will not need changing as much.

Structure

The document is structured in three parts, each describing a different overarching problem with the current game: the clonk's movement (core gameplay), the amount of and the way players are provided with information (UX) and obstacles for third party development (modability). Each part is split up into several sections that describe one problem in detail. Some of these are interconnected between the three parts because the problem does not always suffer from one particular flaw but more than one. Therefore the sections link to one another. Be sure to keep that in mind when trying to tackle a single problem. Each section describing a problem features the following subsections: The Problem, Open Points, Solutions, Cross Reference. The subsections respectively contain the following:

• The Problem: an introduction to a specific problem in the game. Describing it in as much detail as I can to make it clear what unwanted behaviour we find in the game and how it makes for a bad playing experience.
• Open Points: certain key aspects of the problem that I think are worthy of a discussion or more diverse input than just my own. Alternatively, in cases where I do not have a ready suggestion for a solution at hand, these are just my thoughts on how to approach the problem and connected thinking process to come up with a solution. Also vague ideas with no fully-fledged concept of how to achieve the desired effect.
• Solutions: more tangible suggestions of solutions to the problem. Plural, because a single problem must not always be addressed in a single way but multiple ways are imaginable. Since all of the ideas in this documents are so far coming from me and me alone, all these solutions are absolutely open for debate. I do not claim to have all the answers.
• Cross Reference: links to other sections (problems) that are somehow connected to this one and why.