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In this update I present the new design workstation, recipe trays, and crafting workstations. In the month of July I plan to have a "Content Month" where I focus on creating more content for our newly added game systems.
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For the past couple months I've been working on Antilia's crafting system. It features a customization system similar to what was present in the Antilia MMO, but with a separation between designing and building.
The first step in crafting, creating a new design - is optional. If you wish to craft something original, you'll start by creating a new design at a design workstation. The workstation provides an easy and fun interface for designing new item types through a series of selections.
Designing a new item isn't always a requirement, as there will also be common recipes that are added to the player's inventory or recipe book through interacting with NPCs. Some of those recipes may be a single-use reward, while others might result in common consumables.
Design Workstation
The player can create new designs at one of the new Design Workstations. These should be fairly easy to find in most guild halls, and if the player owns a house they should be able to purchase and place one there.
Click on a design workstation to start designing anything!
After clicking on the workstation the player is prompted to choose what kind of item they wish to design.
The new design selection screen. This is a work-in-progress - the selections in this shot are from brainstorming and are not all functional.
After choosing a type of design the creative fun begins. The player steps through a few pages of options, choosing from different parts and styles, material options, and customization sliders. The final step is entering a name for the new design and clicking 'done'.
Creating a new design is simple! Just select from a list of parts and then customize them!
Technical: This is the part that's taken the most time, and frankly still needs work. The editor is fully flexible, with a lot of data files powering what options appear in the editor, how the mesh and materials are composited, what ingredients are required in the final recipe, and how the item's statistics are affected by material selections and sliders.
Recipe Trays
After creating a new design at the Design Workstation the player will receive a recipe tray. The new recipe will also be added to the player's recipe book, should they need to craft the design multiple times.
A recipe tray is an inventory tray that has a design associated to it and inventory slots reserved for the required materials. Only items of the correct type can be placed in the reserved slots, and I plan to add a function in the future to auto-fill recipe trays from inventory and containers. Having a way to pin a recipe onto the game screen while gathering items would also be handy.
A sample recipe tray. (Work in Progress. In the future there will be a count indicator for required items and empty slots will be removed.)
Recipe Trays can be used in the following ways:
- Craft It Yourself - Fill in the tray with the required ingredients and take it to the appropriate crafting station to craft it! The skill of the crafter and performance in a minigame will likely come into play for the final stats on the item!
- Hire a Master Crafter - Take your design to a NPC blacksmith and pay to have it crafted.
- Share your Designs - Share a design tray with a friend in multiplayer and then they can craft it. (There may need to be some limitations on duplicating and/or limited number of uses on shared designs.)
- Quest Objectives - Quest characters might request you create a design for them, or they could request that you craft an item for them based on a design they provide.
- Automate it! - Characters with the appropriate skill cards may be tasked with automatically crafting an item when the materials are available.
Crafting Workstations
The final component of the crafting system are the crafting workstations. These will appear as workbenches, anvils, stoves, etc. Recipes can only be crafted at a workstation suitable for the design, and the recipe tray will indicate which workstation in the future.
I've started work on the crafting workstations, such as this workbench for simple items.
Crafting an item will require a recipe tray that has all the required ingredients filled in, and will likely involve a small mini-game. The skills of the crafter and performance in the mini-game will factor into the final stats of the crafted item.
Content Month
Starting tomorrow I plan to take a little break from programming and instead focus on creating more content for all these recently added game systems. I don't expect I'll get to everything I want to work on, but the new content may include:
- More NPCs with conversation trees
- New quests
- Shovel mechanic working on more terrain styles
- New material items such as metals, cloths, and dyes
- More "craftables" and parts for craftables
- Improvements in the World Editor to incomplete regions like Maulei Beach
That's all for this update, thanks for reading!
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