RadianHelix
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Early Layout of the Crafting Menus
🕑 Added 2021-06-16 03:26:47 +0000 UTCThis is our *Experimental* crafting system. Really early, not remotely working yet, and might end up a cut feature depending on a lot of factors later on in development. But it's a feature we'd like to try.
It has a trait inheritance and mixing system where each ingredient is tagged as a type of substance. A <bulkIngredient> forms a base, and donates some properties like a base nutrient value and a trait like "bland food" or "dry powder." Those combine with other tagged traits when put through a workshop that provides some mutually shared modifier to result in some item.
In this case it's: Ashes, Flatbread, Wheat Bread, Herbal Wheat Bread. More ingredients equals more work and more cost to make, but if you combine them right you'll get cool results.
This will be especially useful in Food and Medicine, where you can improve mood and prevent boredom, or craft more or less powerful fever reducers and painkillers.
We can ensure that mutual traits also produce more or less byproducts as well, so you're looking to maximize your results while eliminating unwanted side effects.
Fessik Bane for instance is a poisonous weed freely growing in the grassland biomes of the Fragment, and will kill you if ingested raw. But put it through a distillery and you separate the <bitter liquid> and <painkiller rank 1, nerve toxin rank 1>.
Filter that again with Salt and you get <painkiller rank 1>, which you can then give to people safely to reduce pain when they are injured, which can mean the difference between life and death when people are sick or recovering from combat stress. (Or if you have crimes in mind, hand craft it with Pine Resin to keep that <painkiller rank 1, nerve toxin rank 1> and off you go to apply it to your knives & arrows.)
Since this is pretty complicated stuff, it really depends on how people respond to a system like this.
So just in case that complex top layer is cut, we still have the much less complicated bottom layer where simple standard issue items can be crafted simply and quickly with no hassle.
There are even a bunch of Quality of Life features built-in, based on experience from other games where crafting became an unwanted and annoying chore *cough*Minecraft*cough*RimWorld*choke*.
My favourite is the ability to set Input and Output for each workbench, and copy/paste it to other jobs in other workstations.
Say you have a bunch of Large Wooden Storage Crates in a room in a building you've designated as your warehouse in town. Select that Stockpile Zone the crates are in, and then select which job it is to feed, then select some empty crates in another building you've designated for your Merchants, and set those to be filled with the product.
Now the whole thing is automated, and you never have to futz with it again. You've set up an engine.
Your characters will haul the raw ingredients bought or stolen or mined, etc, and put them in the warehouse. Your crafters will get the goods and take them to the workstation, produce the item, and drop them off at the storefront, where your merchants will sell them, and put the money in another box.
You set it up once, and off you go.
At least -- that's the plan.
As always that's subject to change, but it's cool enough that I think it brings a lot to the table compared to games in a similar genre, and gives enough depth to be exciting and get your brain going, but simple enough that new players can pick it up and dip their toes in without drowning in it.
Comments
Yeah, it's all in the balance. :) We'll have to see how it patterns out. If it's not as fun as we hope then, no sacred cows. Everything has to serve the fun.
Factories should be possible. :) We're obviously a long way from adding any electrical and industrial era tech, but we do plan on having at least some of that later on, after vertical slice. I think RimWorld really focused on having high-tech solutions like solar panels and batteries and coolers up front, to accelerate the early game for beginners, because it is so harsh on new payers. Morningstar is a lot kinder up front and gets harder as you go, so we decided to really focus on the setting of fairly primitive and medieval era civilizations in line with the lore first, get that gameplay really fun, then move on to the more industrial and high tech stuff as an end game option. Because if the bottom tier is fun, the stuff above will be fun too. Keeping a town kinda like one of those "deck building / economic engine" styles of game I think sets Morningstar apart from RPGs and Colony Managers. Automating that to get you back to your globe trotting adventures is a big help. Especially since you're leaving companions at home where they live out their lives away from the battlefield, which is an interesting thing to see.
Sandwich247
This is definitely looking very cool indeed! One of the things I really like in games is the kind of freedom and flexibility to do stuff like that, and it would be great if it could be brought to a working and enjoyable state in the future :o
Hpf3
For a moment there when reading about the advanced system it brought back memories of overly annoying modded Minecraft tech recipes, but with automation it sounds closer to something like big pharma (medicine factory game) which to me sounds fun. On a less serious note, the currently described crafting system causes a strong desire to hack together a factory mod when the game is eventually out(I used rim factory alot when I played rimworld and was thinking similar), though it wouldn't really fit in the theme of the game... But... THE FACTORY MUST GROW *Cough* sorry I think I have a case of factorio-itisπ
