This reminds me of a fun thing I hacked up at a game shop. We were implementing some new feature involving a probability distribution and were somewhat stumped on how to make sure it worked right.
Eventually I setup something simple to exercise most of these functions, as well as most other balancing code, plot their results and send the results to the balancing team a week or so. For example, using D2 terms, it would run 1M item drops at different magic find levels and plot the resulting item level distribution, graph the implemented level -> hp/mana/... curves and such.
That little thing caught so many implementation issues at first and we'd regularly have balancing poke us because someone "optimized" some code in there.
Eventually I setup something simple to exercise most of these functions, as well as most other balancing code, plot their results and send the results to the balancing team a week or so. For example, using D2 terms, it would run 1M item drops at different magic find levels and plot the resulting item level distribution, graph the implemented level -> hp/mana/... curves and such.
That little thing caught so many implementation issues at first and we'd regularly have balancing poke us because someone "optimized" some code in there.