Gondorian
#1 - Welcome to Gondorian's Development Blog
by
, 10-01-2017 at 11:46 AM (25429 Views)
Hi all!
I've been using this site for more than six years and have racked up almost 22,911 forum posts at time of writing, but have NEVER ever made a Blog Post ... until now! (Maybe if there was some kind of Blog Post Count leaderboard, it would be a different matter.) Can you believe it?!?
I expect you can believe it because I reckon most people don't even know this Blog feature is here. I think I remember it exists roughly once or twice per year, and think I've read more Harry Potter books in my lifetime than blog posts on this site!
Well, that's all going to change now because I'll put a reminder in my calendar about it and intend to make regular Blog posts on the subject of Shadow Era Development, which I think it's fair to say is my specialist subject (aside from Lego).
I'd love to get stuck into writing some content on that now, but actually would prefer to get your input on what you wish to hear about, so I can write with more purpose and so I can try to make this as valuable as possible. So please comment below to help steer me in the right direction.
In the mean time, I'll share a very condensed summary of my history as a developer with Shadow Era, in case you aren't aware:
2011 - joined the Design Team in December and immediately set up the Players' Focus Group (PFG) to get the community properly involved within the design and playtesting process.
2012 - heavily involved with fundamental lore of the Shadow Era universe; design work finalising CotC with help of PFG; editing the rule book; designing and balancing Dark Prophecies with the help of PFG.
2013 - project manager and principal designer of Shattered Fates from start to finish; coded the majority of Shattered Fates (Unity with C#) ready for Beta release.
2014 - became a full-time contractor as Head TCG Designer (initially tackling SF Beta and then Live balancing of SF) and Lead TCG Developer (initially solving all known card behaviour bugs); conducted rules overhaul to make everything as consistent as possible based on card wording, so that inconsistent behaviours across cards could be clarified and then corrected in the code; selecting and commissioning art for SF.
2015 - set designer of Lost Lands; lead designer and coder of Lost Lands part 1; managed the PFG during playtesting and balancing before LLp1 went live; selecting and commissioning artwork for LLp1; writing spoiler article series for LLp1;
2016 - balancing Lost Lands on Live server; lead designer and coder of Lost Lands part 2; mission designer of single-player campaign, including crafting the story and dialogue;
2017 - designer and coder of 15 new Campaign cards; completed first phase of single-player campaign dialogue that was started in 2016; devised and implemented new Best Score leaderboard in PHP/SQL; commissioning art for LLp2.
Hopefully that list gives a good idea of what I could share and answer questions about, and what new things I could develop for the game if you ask for them (and the Board approves the work).
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