Today I was doing some requirements verification by looking over the game design document to make sure that my Milestone requirements are actually correct. From the perspective of my capstone, they
have to be because they've been incorporated into a binding contract with DePaul University, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're properly aligned with the game's design.
Thankfully, all of the requirements that I included are indeed correct. But there is a potential problem: I may have omitted two requirements that maybe should have been specified: Grenades and the Heal action. So the question is this: Do I write them in anyway even though they're not part of my independent study agreement, giving myself extra work to do before the deadline and possibly, hypocritically, exposing myself to further scope creep? Or do I hold off until the capstone phase is over and throw them in later? I love and hate both choices.
Grenade Tokens
Trooper units may have Grenade Tokens in their inventory that they can use during an attack. These are played like normal Combat Tokens, but have special rules for how they affect the defending side. (Specifically, that they do area damage and can't be blocked by the defender.) The implementation of Grenade Tokens was omitted from Requirement 2.2, but it definitely belongs there.
Healing
The Heal action on the Actions Menu has not been implemented. One complication here is that it doesn't seem to fit within any of the stripes defined by the three milestones.
- Milestone 1: Combat Initiation
- This is about validating player actions, setting up the attacker's input to the combat evaluator, and shipping the data off to the game server. Healing doesn't belong here.
- Milestone 2: Combat Resolution
- This is about getting the defender's response to an attack, computing the results according to the game rules defined in the GDD, and notifying the players of what happened. Healing doesn't belong here either.
- Milestone 3: The Game World Environment
- This is about interactive things in the game world that influence the units or the teams in some way. Healing happens straight from the inventory except when...hey, wait a minute. One of the random events in the game world is "Found a snack" which restores one hit point to the unit who encounters it. That's the same thing that the Heal action does except it doesn't require the player to sacrifice a Heal Token.
Maybe I'll slip this requirement into Milestone 3...or maybe I'll just let it slide and implement it when the capstone phase is over because it doesn't really fit here either.
