by DatOneGuy » Tue Oct 05, 2010 3:02 am loftar wrote:As for a new crafting system, I only have very loose thoughts. I imagine that, when crafting something a bit more advanced, such as a stone axe, bucket or, in the extreme end of the scale, a sword (but not when crafting really simple things), one would get an incomplete crafting project as an inventory item (kind of like a signpost for building projects, that is).
Such a crafting item would have certain variables that would need to be satisfied in order for it to become completed, and to satisfy such conditions (or at least bring them closer to satisfaction), one would be able to apply certain effects onto the crafting item. If one compares such a crafting system to a fighting system, it would be kind of like using attacks to bring the opponent's defense to zero, and then bring his HP to zero, with some other effects and variables playing into it. I haven't really been able to think of any such effects or variables, however.
It could potentially be fun, though. I imagine one could insert some other actions into the system -- for example, given a gemstone or something, one could craft it into an unfinished sword and perhaps gain some extra benefit on that sword; or one could fail some operation and have the sword drop in quality, which could be "repaired" by using extra raw materials or somesuch; or, perhaps, crafting one's name into the sword as some kind of "proof of ownership (or origin, at least)". One could imagine quite a number of interesting such effects.
It would also make some things more meaningful -- right now, it isn't very meaningful to implement different kinds of steel swords, since one can make any one of them as long as one has steel, and it isn't really reasonable for the great sword of Loftarian fury to require 50 bars of steel or something like that. If they were vastly differing in their difficulty of crafting, however, that would make such variation much more meaningful.
That is also how I imagine such things as guns to become truly rare. If they require different mechanical parts that are so difficult to craft that only highly organized villages can do it (that is, have any practical chance of actually doing it), then they would become truly extraordinary.
Oh I love the way you explain these things, I just dream of trying out systems like that, so interesting, and new, and shiny...
