Good morning pizzas! We’re back with another dev feature. Lisa, otherwise known as the do-anything, bug-smashing, pretty-much-always-on-Discord-ready-to-help code-ninja breaks down her work on Raid Boss.
Question: What parts of Raid Boss do you work on?
Lisa: Hi, I’m Lisa. I’m a full stack engineer, and I work on Raid Boss. “Full stack” is just a fancy term that means you work on client and server code. On a team of just 4 people, it’s kind of a requirement to know how to “wear multiple hats,” as we say in the industry. In general, you can blame me for: The UI, the home screen, combat VFX, and combat AI (oh and the website hosting / forum hosting). Even though I’ve worked on the backend systems before at previous jobs, I don’t actually work on the server code for Raid Boss that much. Gotta leave something for Dan to work on.
Question: Who is your favorite Raid Boss Guildie?
Lisa: I play a lot of MMORPGs. It’s definitely part of what helped bring Raid Boss into creation. Because I think no one actually reads this stuff, I’m going to reveal a shocking secret right here: I have never played a Warcraft game. That’s right folks, I’m making a game about MMORPGs and I never played WoW. When I said I play a lot of MMORPGs, I mean Korean and Japanese MMORPGs. So I’m sorry Blizzard fans if I got your memes wrong in Raid Boss, I’m trying my best. And no, I can’t pick a favorite Guildie, because I like all of them.
Question: What’s the most surprising thing about working on Raid Boss?
Lisa: We originally planned to have 72+ characters, with multiple characters sharing the same combat ability sets. The plan was to have different characters have different passive AI quirks, some positive and some negative, creating differentiation between characters (similar to Darkest Dungeon or Valkyria Chronicles). But it turns out the differences were too subtle and we didn’t have the art budget to create that many characters, so we cut down our scope to 42 characters each with their own unique combat ability “kit.” We ended up launching with 36 characters, hopefully we can get back up to our original planned 42 before the end of the year.
Question: What is the next thing you’re most looking forward to for Raid Boss?
Lisa: Looking forward to adding more progression systems for characters. We have been throwing around an idea for “sub class boards,” where you can pick one of three different “specialties” with different sets of slot configurations where you can arrange gems (or some equivalent item) into the slots, that give you stat boosts and passive effects (sort of like a simpler version of Path of Exile). This should give a lot more customization to characters, and allow for a variety of “builds,” which I think will be invaluable as we add more features where you interact with other real people, like PVP and Alliance content.
That’s it for this week! Thanks for all the awesome insight into Raid Boss development, Lisa. Make sure to come back next week for more, pizzas!
Stay cheesy pepperoni!