Crafting Meta-Thread
There have previously been a few threads related to crafting, instructions, the furniture API, etc but I feel that they've all fallen out of date with my current thoughts and need to be recollected and updated. Thus this issue instead.
Crafting
The plan for the crafting system has undergone several different iterations over the past year or two, with ideas ranging from the Nodecorean grid or puzzle to the absolutely insane notion of allowing anything to be crafted with mesh generation during runtime. In the end, our crafting system needs to fulfill the following:
- Allow the player to produce the different kinds of furniture they find throughout the store
- Be rewarding and engaging enough to encourage players to craft
- Be time-consuming enough to slow down the production of items
- Not be so time-consuming so-as to make it impossible to build up a defense before closing
- Allow the player's skill to increase over time to get better at it
- Allow scalable difficulty
- Provide some means of customization
The challenge with this is that it's a fundamental game mechanic, so any advantages one material might have over another (aesthetics aside) has to be invented. These don't need to be extraordinary, but having something in mind even if not fully realized in the Minimum Viable Product would be nice.
If we (I) go the route of not giving the players much choice, and this is instead just a system to represent the time and effort required to build the necessary furniture, I would likely go the route of having each package be for a specific piece of furniture and showing the player some kind of puzzle in a formspec.
While I like the idea of giving the player's more options when crafting, I fear that any choice will be somewhat lackluster as I have yet to come up with any good ideas for such mechanics.
Furniture System/API
Currently, this is just going to flow with whatever the crafting system needs. However, two things that must be done are to get rid of the oversized nodes (not filling all the spaces taken up by a piece of furniture screws with pathfinding) and to disallow the picking up of furniture off of the display shelves on warehouse racks (otherwise there is no reason for the packages).
Current TODO
-
Integrate Boxgen/Autobox -
Reduce meta usage -
Limit player's inventory to 2 slots (one for each hand) -
Remove crafting grid -
Add "Hex Key" tool (see below)