The accounting of resources that was required was daunting. We were so caught up doing math
that we could not see the forest for the trees. When one of the playtesters declared, ???This game is hurting
my head,??? I decided it was time to create a so ware prototype.
What Are the Requirements of the Tool/Prototype?
My ?¬? rst impulse was to build a full visual prototype, but upon further consideration I decided to ignore the
???programmer within??? and opted for a simpler solution. What I decided upon was a nonvisual representation
of the game in so ware and the old paper prototype for visual representation. It was easy for us mere
mortals to move pieces, count squares, calculate line of sight, and do all the things that take many personhours
to express in code. Alternatively, it was very easy to program the so ware to do all the accounting
calculations as well as some other tedious tasks like keeping track of turns. The ???prototype??? looked nothing
like a game; it looked like an ugly Excel spreadsheet with lots and lots of bu ons. It took me about a day and
a half to write it.
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