Match Making Marauders

(Transplanted from the Video Game board after an advice from a troper as I don't get any feedback)

After some really careful consideration, I decided to release my design documents for a match three game/RPG hybrid collection under Creative Commons. Now, I got two problems with them:

1. Are the elements sufficiently balanced enough to prevent overuse of certain elements?

2. The RNG that I am currently using (for generating colors based on number codes while I making battle data for novel writing) is the one that comes with Microsoft Excel, but the numbers are rather off and leads to either lots of board resets or too much chain matches. Is there any alternatives?

Thank you for your help and other kinds of feedback are welcomed too!

edited 4th Jun '14 7:24:24 AM by murazrai

Regarding point two, have you considered making a simple prototype in a language like Python? While I haven't looked into the quality of its random-number methods, I imagine that they're likely to be better than the one that you're dealing with in Excel, and if not, you can probably find third-party libraries that improve your results.

As to point one, without reading through that document and giving it significant thought, I recommend putting together a prototype and getting people to play it; sufficient playthroughs should (hopefully) reveal gameplay or balance issues the the concept has.

(In fact, if you're comfortable with doing so, why not create a web-build and share it here—perhaps some of the Tropers might be interested in playing. ^_^)

I agree with Ars, for point two. The random generator issue is a known issue in computer science. It comes about because the the RNG isn't actually random, but rather a result of a very large equation a(n) given value(s). There are a couple ways to get better results(result of equation using multiple RNG values, "skipping values", using other non-static input such as the clock or an online atmospheric reading, modular arithmetic), but yes, generally using even a basic library function for random values should get you relatively good random values. Of course, that won't entirely reduce the problem, but neither would a physical dice roll/coin toss. You still have some probability of weird events.

I would advise you to put this particular issue off until you get to the coding stage. There are plenty of work arounds there.

&Thank you for your feedbacks, but the main reason for me to release this document under creative commons is because the design itself is literally everything that I could do and I hoped (perhaps against all odds) that someone else would actually create the game. I'm doing this as a tool for me to make an original story about gaming because to use existing games would make the story a fanfiction.

As for point 1, maybe generating battle data using spreadsheet will help a lot, but it will take a lot of time.

In case of point 2, since that I am writing a story, I might as well rig the RNG myself to tweak how the battles actually go.