Play Spell Studies
(Directs to CurseForge)
Fighting Against Chance
Electroblob's Wizardry is a Minecraft mod I've grown quite fond of. It is a mod of boundless creativity, simple on the surface but full of complexity in the spells you choose.
However, after multiple instances of playing through it, I found several issues that hampered my enjoyment. Chief among these issues was the fact the books were found exclusively as chest loot and monster drops. This left any progression the game could grant you wholly up to chance.
This problem is only strained further by the wand progression system, where wands must gain experience through casting spells, further limiting one's pool of options.
This felt contradictory to the mod's very design, as the spells were classified into various different magical affinities or "schools". Several of these were evolutions of the same spell (such as Telekinesis and Greater Telekinesis), giving a clear feeling that one was supposed to progress into another.
With a problem in mind, I did what a designer does best, go about making a solution. With the use of a quest-creating mod, I was able to do just that.
Forming Tiers & Specializations
The first order of business with this project was determining exactly how the progression curve would play out. After a thorough analysis of the spell selection, I divided vanilla Minecraft's progression into 4 fairly distinct chunks and allocated the spell tiers accordingly.
Since the mod had distinct schools of magic, the next step I took was to specialize the quests in those schools. I've long had an issue with modded Minecraft leaving many vanilla mechanics entirely untouched in their progression, so this was my opportunity to encourage synergy between vanilla's mechanics and modded rewards. I left novice without a specialization, due to it having the shallowest pool of spells. This allows the player to get a sampling of all the types of magic before specializing.
Playtests Aplenty & Modularity
As this project serves as an addon for another work, its exposure will similarly be larger too. If even a fraction of the multiple millions of players of Electroblob's Wizardry choose to install this project, it will be a far larger user pool than a student game could hope to achieve.
This, in turn, leads to a better playtest loop. As more users play and give feedback on the project, the more ways it can improve and expand. This gives an experience much closer to a larger game industry project, as developments happen live with an active audience.
There are also plans to support other addons, increasing the coverage of the project further, and allowing for interactions and networking with more developers.
