Personally, I would say make crafting very limited and very simple.
In general, it seems that the reason people like crafting is they want items with: 1) different appearances, to match their aesthetic preferences 2) different attributes, to match their preferred play style
A simple system that lets you mix and match parts (generally by taking apart existing items and reassembling the parts) would allow both aspects. If you need a place to insert character skill in the process, you could make both steps (taking apart and reassembling) have different results based on some skill. For example, a low skill in disassembly might mean you generally can't reliably preserve bonuses and often add penalties on each part of the item when you take it apart. If you keep the right stats, you can even make it so low skill means there is a good chance to change a highly-desirable-in-appearance part into something less desired (based on player preferences discerned through the price various appearance combinations are being sold for). If your game includes magic, maybe a low skill means the magic is usually lost, and worse it sometimes turns into curses (though it'd be interesting to make curses not visible without using some costly ability/item/whatever).
A high skill would mean you can generally keep whatever bonuses are on an item, you can usually extract the part without altering it, and magic is usually preserved.
A very high skill might mean you can not only preserve bonuses, but you can pick which part they go with, so an "Axe +5" can become "Axe Blade +5"(plus normal haft, etc) or "Short Haft +5"(plus normal blade, etc) or maybe something in between (depending on how you weight various bonus amounts and types).
When combining items, perhaps there is a chance of failure based on the appropriate skill, and a failure could range from 'you still have the parts, but used up some of your binding material' to 'you made a low-bonus axe instead of the high-bonus axe you were trying to make' to 'you turned 10 high-bonus parts into a a trash heap'.
As for the interface, I say just make it a simple point and click system, perhaps somehing like the Horadric cube in diablo 2 where you drop the parts in a dialog and click 'craft' and instantly have the result.
You could also make a skill tree for crafting similar to what often happens for combat skills, and that would allow crafts-only characters to emerge since nobody else could get high enough at all the other skills. The gameplay would be social instead of mechanical, though, because the challenge would be getting the right parts in a timely manner to satisfy customer requests. The problem with this is that it would require trust, since clients would likely have to pay craftsman some of the cost up front to help afford the parts (at least for beginning craftsman - maybe a good reason to form craft guilds, so well-known people can do business while several apprentices run around and buy parts, etc).
"Walk not the trodden path, for it has borne it's burden." -John, Flying Monk
So far, i've got: Creating with products with the 'trace the outline' technique with a drill press. This would be used to carve wood items, possibly molds, and whatever else need be carved.
Mixing and matching parts for differant look and abilities.
Would anyone have any specific items on how to make crafting differant parts with metal better? I expect most metal crafting would have to do with melting it and pouring it into molds. Any ideas?
Same for creation of clothes, I was thinking maybe a whack-a-mole type minigame with thread and needle in place of hammer. :P
Quote:Original post by ScottC Thanks to everyone for their input.
So far, i've got: Creating with products with the 'trace the outline' technique with a drill press. This would be used to carve wood items, possibly molds, and whatever else need be carved.
Mixing and matching parts for differant look and abilities.
Would anyone have any specific items on how to make crafting differant parts with metal better? I expect most metal crafting would have to do with melting it and pouring it into molds. Any ideas?
Same for creation of clothes, I was thinking maybe a whack-a-mole type minigame with thread and needle in place of hammer. :P
If doing something on an iron (for example), have spots appear that you have to "click" (like temper). You only have X amount of seconds to click a spot, and if you're too slow then it'll be weaker.
Have em appear randomly/chaotically and change colour over time if not clicked on.
I, personally, wouldn't both crafting if it was like you want to make it. Can you imagine how much fun sitting at a drill press, tracing a pattern over and over and over would be? Maybe it sounds like fun to you, but it sounds like a crappy assembly-line job in the real world to me.
For crafting to be fun for me, you'd have to make the actual act of converting materials into products pretty much action-free. More than dragging the parts to a box and clicking 'ok' sounds like it'd be exceedingly boring.
I wouldn't want to dedicate to crafting anyways, but at least with the other system I'd be interacting with others and could do quests based around crafting that make more sense.
Building things in real life is generally pretty boring, so doing anything based on reality isn't a good idea. It's generally the final product we're proud of, and if you make finding materials difficult then there is still a lot of room for challenge and pride, and it gives more room for character skill to have an influence. You don't want to make FPS players do better at your RPG simply because they have better reflexes - it'd alienate those that generally enjoy RPGs.
"Walk not the trodden path, for it has borne it's burden." -John, Flying Monk
I think Extararius brought up a very good point. What if you had two modes... "Manual" and "Automatic".
Automatic - builds the objects instantly, you fail / succeed based on skill, nothing special about it.
Manual - you have to do these special tasks to produce the product, but you have the opportunity to produce top (or above) line products every time in a row if you really are skilled at it.
I think Morrowind's alchemy system isn't too bad if you have large batches of identical materials. If I have a variety of materials it's too much work to figure out what can be combined to make potions, though.
I'd say make the minigame optional or nonexistant. Allow batching, and use sorting to give a list of materials that work. I.E. if the user clicks a box, display a list of only the items that can be put in that box and make it easy to see what item has what effects.
To me, it's not the crafting that's fun, but the crafting an awesome item, figuring out what items to collect and use in its creation. If you want to have an optional minigame to take out the random numbers and let the player do the work that would be OK, but please don't make me play a boring minigame if I'm trying to mix 50 potions or fix up some stuff to sell. I think that if there was interest in the product it might be better, though: if I'm taking the best plain sword in the game and customizing it, I won't mind taking my time to do it carefully.
Quote:Original post by ScottC Thanks to everyone for their input.
So far, i've got: Creating with products with the 'trace the outline' technique with a drill press. This would be used to carve wood items, possibly molds, and whatever else need be carved.
Mixing and matching parts for differant look and abilities.
Would anyone have any specific items on how to make crafting differant parts with metal better? I expect most metal crafting would have to do with melting it and pouring it into molds. Any ideas?
Same for creation of clothes, I was thinking maybe a whack-a-mole type minigame with thread and needle in place of hammer. :P
If doing something on an iron (for example), have spots appear that you have to "click" (like temper). You only have X amount of seconds to click a spot, and if you're too slow then it'll be weaker.
Have em appear randomly/chaotically and change colour over time if not clicked on.
Creative Crafting from DevIMG ? :P
Clicking on spots wouldn't really make sense, less it were a medieval game and objects were being molded by hand.
