Editing Gregory Fulton/Diaries (section)

== 12/08/98 ==
Yesterday I was wondering where I would find the time to write the game help file. Today I have the answer.... I think I have the flu. This doesn't feel like any 24-hour "see-ya-bye" flu either. This feels like "kneel before Zod!" flu.

All right. I've got a story for you.

Earlier today we "officially" stopped making maps. From here on out, we play, test, and polish the game. This could mean a little, or a lot. If the maps play well the first time out, revisions will be minor. If we end up chucking whole maps, we may find ourselves back to making maps. Thus, we started playing them today. JVC ([[Jon Van Caneghem]], New World's president) ended up playing a notorious map named "[[Barbarian Breakout]]."

Ten minutes after he starts, [[JVC]] pages me over my phone intercom: "Hey Yoda." (He's been calling me Yoda lately. I don't know why. I'm not sure if I should be honored or offended. On one hand, Yoda is wise and he trains Jedi Knights. On the other hand, he is a short ugly green dude with big ears.) "Enemy hero with six behemoths (one of the highest-level creatures) knocked on my front door on week two, day one."

 "Oops. I'll be right there."

As soon as I walked into JVC's office, the razzing began.

 "What's with the six behemoths? Is this one of the balanced scenarios?"
 
 "OK, OK. Something's wrong. Turn off the fog."

Jon restarts the scenario, turns off the fog of war, ends turn four times in a row, then right-clicks the enemy hero to see the extent of his forces. Aside from his other three stacks of creatures... he has one stack of six behemoths. Oops.

 "All right. Open the map in the editor."

Jon opens the map in the editor. What do we discover? First, the enemy hero starts at level three, and the mapmaker ([[Dave Botan]]) has given him four stacks of creatures. In addition, the enemy hero's starting town has three of seven creature generators already prebuilt.

No wonder the enemy was able to recruit behemoths on day four.

Remember the story about the father who comes home from a bad day at work and yells at his wife? She in turn yells at her kid. The kid in turn kicks the dog.

At this point, I'm looking for a dog to kick. So, I hunt down [[Dave Botan]]. Immediately, Dave states his defense.

 "Everyone says the map's too hard. It isn't. The AI's cheating." (Recently, we discovered the artificial intelligence was exploiting an undiscovered bug allowing it to recruit more creatures than were actually available.)
 
 "The AI doesn't need to cheat. It's already got a huge advantage."
 "There's a bug."
 "Doesn't matter. Set all players to normal starting conditions."

At this point everyone begins to playfully dog-pile on Dave telling all the reasons why his maps suck. In the end he relented and fixed the map.