One of the recent features I’ve been programming has been the crafting system! After a lot of consideration, I came up with a list of features that were important for my vision of how crafting could work:
- The player can make and place things like workbenches, watering tanks, etc. Making and placing these objects is both a way for the player to advance, and it allows customization and ownership of the world.
- Crafting can take time, so players have an incentive to plan and prioritize what they are making. If they’re planning on making a lot of something, additional workbenches/ovens/etc will speed the process.
- Different crafting stations can be used to craft different things.
- Aid usability by limiting the number of craftable items in a single crafting station. (No huge lists that scroll forever)
So here’s what we’ve got mocked up so far:
The UI still needs some clearer labeling, but the bottom row is the output, products that have been made. The large item above that is the one that is currently being crafted. The items to the right are the queue of items that are in progress. It flows pretty well when you see it in motion.
When you mouse over the item you want to craft, it shows a description of the item, and what it takes to make that item.
There are a few things I haven’t figured out yet:
- Will there be a crafting mini-game? The mini-games in Fantasy Life were great and really well done. The better you did on the mini-game, the higher the quality of the item produced. One thought is that you only need to do the mini-game the first time you craft something. Or you can skip the minigame to craft at the highest quality level you’ve achieved so far.
- Do crafted items have a meaningful quality level? This goes hand-in-hand with the above question.
