Development Diary Week 2 -- Nothing to see here, move along

This will be a short update. My plans for big productivity Friday died along with my main computer's motherboard. So all I have this week is a couple of minor design thoughts.

• Magic and MP: I want to allow characters to cast spells without MP at a penalty, to avoid the phenomenon my friend Dustin pointed out where you never use your cool magic because you're afraid of running out. I'm tentatively thinking that you can cast a spell instantly by spending MP, or you can spend time charging the spell (gathering magic power, if you will) to reduce the MP cost. If you have no MP stored, you can still cast a spell, you just have to charge up the full amount first.
• Normal battles will range from a couple of easy enemies to lots of and/or harder enemies. This works with the above idea of your MP being stored-up quick extra firepower.
• I'm toying with the idea of making it so in order to cast the more powerful spells, you first need to cast a "field" of that element around yourself. My idea here is to add a tactical / positioning issue to your strong abilities -- if you get knocked out of position, you can't do what you were planning to.
• In general, I think it's interesting for battlefield positioning to be tactically important. Nope, no more detailed thoughts on that, just a principle on my mind.

So my goal last week was to get the design document started and make a schedule. Fail. So this coming week my goal is to catch up on that, and also get a decent start on a combat mock-up in TGB. (Decent start = player character able to fight and defeat at least one enemy, enemy able to fight and defeat player.) But before that, I have to fix our main computer, so I'll bid you good night.