April 04, 2011

"Release early, release often"

Release early, release often (RERO) is a software development philosophy that stresses the importance of close feedback cycles between developers and testers. I definitely want to use this approach for Gaia Gamma, too.

With my other current RPG design, Hexer & Helden (a German old school version of AD&D 1st and 2nd edition with some ideas from 3rd mixed in), I started out with a similar idea but again caught up with fiddling with the rules. While I work on the rules quite often, I once more am imprisoned by the thought of "the next version must be finished enough to warrant a release" so that updates get fewer and fewer the more complete the game becomes.

I want to change this to the absolute opposite with Gaia Gamma by going for a continuous release approach: Every time I work on the rules and change something I will release a new PDF and blog about the changes. Thus every development step will become tangible.

I will start tomorrow with the next update concerning die rolling mechanisms.

4 comments:

  1. Hey Thomas, just gave the dice rules a quick read and it's all pretty understandable - even the mega example at the end. : P

    I haven't done much pencil / paper gaming, so this was my first time seeing some of these dice roll rules. Makes fine sense, and I'm interested to see how you choose to require certain types of dice rolls.

    Lastly, long time ADOM fan here... you know someone's gonna have to turn this ruleset into a Roguelike. ^_^

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  2. I would love to see a Gamma World roguelike. Warhammer (primarily) and Gamma World secondarily are prime motivations for corruptions in ADOM. Although you really have to give credit to Warhammer first.

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  3. The only thing that would be more awesome than a Gamma World roguelike would be a Metamorphosis Alpha roguelike...

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  4. Well, I've been working on a Gamma World-inspired roguelike (amongst other inspiriations), Caves of Qud, for a few years and recently released it publicly a few months ago:

    http://forums.freeholdentertainment.com

    http://forums.freeholdentertainment.com/showthread.php?10-Welcome-to-the-Caves-of-Qud-beta.

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