Old ideas for new projects
When I was about 15, I got the idea that I wanted to make my own JRPG, inspired by the Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy series. While that didn't really happen (yet?), I did some research on various needed bits and started planning based on that.
One key element of a JRPG is its player progression system. You know the classic: defeat enemies, gain experience, level up and all that! Part of that early planning was figuring out how to make a progression curve that wasn't linear: if you defeat tougher enemies, you want to gain more experience points, and higher levels should require more experience to progress. Based on this, I came up with the formulas pictured above, which return the HP and MP of a player at any given level (“NV”), plus the amount of experience at which this level starts.
How is this relevant to today? While that game hasn't materialized, the math was sound, and I've kept it aside for later. The same formulas, sometimes with tuned values, have been reused since then in various places. The latest example is none other than the player level stat that was recently added to the Creeper's Lab profiles! Each stat has a set amount of XP assigned to it, everything is added up for a player, then the level formula assigns a level to that player! At the time of writing, I have 570,512 XP, which translates to level 415.
The same pattern has come up multiple times in my life: I get an idea, I'm not sure what to do with it, I shelve it for possibly later, then it gets reused or integrated within something else down the line! If you take something away from this, I suggest not to trash things that seem pointless: they can still have value!
– Doctacosa