Mostly, the white are inputs, shaded are computed outputs. There are some exceptions, like Estimated Money Needed I put formulas in on a line by line basis, since it’s different for each level.
Final Health: that has to be positive for the game to be playable. That’s the key output metric. If final health is too high, risk game being too easy.
So the fields:
- Player Level: the experience level when entering the scene
- Scene Name: the scene being tuned by this line
- Base Damage: on player progression, based on experience level
- Weapon Name: the primary weapon the scene is tuned for
- Weapon Additive Modifier: comes from the primary weapon
- Weapon Percentage Modifier: comes from the primary weapon
- Base Armor: on player progression, based on experience level
- Armor Name: the primary Armor the scene is tuned for
- Armor Additive Modifier: comes from the primary Armor
- Armor Percentage Modifier: comes from the primary Armor
- Max Health: on player progression, based on experience level
- Bonus Health Available: e.g. pickups
- Likely Initial XP: Estimate of XP available at start of scene
- XP to Level up: should be a bit less than the computed Final XP
- Estimated Money Needed: should be computed based on Health Value of armor and weapons to be purchased. This is for this scene only.
- Total Money Needed: cumulative, assuming prior armors/weapons sold say, at 50% discount (actual discount may vary). The formula is not the same for every cell and has to be hand-adjusted.
- Net Undefended Damage: damage per hit not counting enemy’s shield
- Net Armor: total player armor
- Likely Health: estimate of health available at start of scene. Just bonus health + 70% max health (In the spreadsheet, I see I forgot to add the bonus health). A crude estimate.
- Final Health: estimate of health remaining when enemies are all defeated, but before an experience level up resets to 70% max health.
- Final XP: XP earned at this point.
- Hits per Kill: number of hits to kill this enemy (each enemy type is a new row, even if in same scene)
- Weapon Health Value: how much health this weapon saves, compared with base damage with no modifiers. Used to estimate how much weapon should cost if purchased (currently saying 2 health points = 1 currency unit so divide by 2 to estimate monetary value).
- Armor Health Value: same, but for armor. Estimated Money Needed is based on this. (I realize now I need to divide it by 2 since I am giving it in health value).
- Notes (free form)
Then I’ll be lazy and say, the remaining fields are for a specific enemy, mostly similar to player fields.
Each player/scene/experience level/enemy type gets a row, so a scene and/or experience level may have multiple rows to complete the tuning.
Note, these estimates are just crude enough you need to actually play test.
To add a new row, just copy the previous row and start changing things not marked as output by shading. Try to ensure hits to kill enemy (a computed value) is a reasonable value but above all, ensure final health is positive!