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Crafting

Crafting is what we call the process where users can create/alter objects inside the game. Ie, the miner digging for ore, the smelter extracting metal, the smith forging swords.

Currently the AlchemySystem is the only crafting we have in the game. This should change.

• BaseMaterials

Here are a couple of articles explaining what crafting is all about.

• I want to bake bread - http://www.stratics.com/content/editorials/articles/bread.shtml
• I want to forge swords - http://www.stratics.com/content/editorials/articles/swords.shtml

Brief summary of 'I want to make swords'

I. Resources -

• How do we get them?
  • Gathering: providing raw materials.
  • Looting: requires slaying something.
  • Purchasing: purchasing resources for crafting from computer controlled characters should probably be avoided. Purchasing resources from computer controlled players also has the potential for introducing artificial floors and ceilings on the price of resources.
• Where do we get them?
  • First of all, make locations meaningful. If movement between two locations is quick and easy, then they are --for all intents-- the same location.
  • Make some resources location specific.
    • Trade, Trade Routes, Trade Houses, Pirates, Bandits, Wagon Trains, and Mercenaries

II. Subtypes & Properties

• hides -> rabbit pelts and raw hide, snake skin and dragon scales.
• straight progression in quality -> everyone will be wearing armor that is made of the same material.
• material properties -> object properties

III. Quality

• resource quality
• sifting normal quality -> higher quality
• Many things affects the quality of the produced item. Resource quality, equipment used to make the item, the quality of that equipment, the crafter's ability, the item's difficulty, the location where it was made, the phase of the moon(s), etc.
  • Do I:
  • make this as quickly or as well as I can?
  • want to take the time to have the quality of this item ascertained before I sell it?
  • use high quality resources on an item for this newbie I just met?
  • pay this player more for these resources since they are separated by quality?
  • want to use these high quality resources on an item that I can't sell quickly just to raise my ability?

IV. Blueprints

• To create an item you need to have a blueprint for that item (recipe, manual, drawing, textbook, knowledge, another similar item, etc).
• Blueprints have quality and 'experience'.
• Blueprints can have extra properties, like the certain incremental bonuses (+5%) or a cost savings (10% less materials consumed).
• How to get blueprints?
  • Purchased from guildmasters
  • Found as loot on "monsters" (those crafty orcs)
  • Created by players (if you allow research in your game)
  • Copied by other players (if you allow blueprints to be copied by someone with, say, the literacy and crafting ability)
• General blueprints
  • For generic items, uses generic materials, by altering material/tool-use can you get items with different properties
• Specific blueprints
  • For an object with certain properties

VI. Item Creation

• Project
  1. select the blueprint
  2. (general blueprint -> the resources/tools used)
  3. number of items
  4. options
  5. item, resources, ability, blueprint/tool quality, phase of the moon -> length of time
  6. invest that amount of time
  7. produce result

-- PumaN - 11-20 Jan 2003

There should be a smith/forger to repair weapons.

You could pay him to repair the weapon or learn a skill ( i'd think one would have to heavily invest in time and money etc.. ) to repair it themselves. I think it's kind of ridiculous how you can use a piece of armour or any sword with 80+ edge all day with out them ever getting damaged.

-- EmbeR - 15 Jan 2003

I think everything should be damagable (excepting possibly some magically protected items). You enter combat and get walloped a bunch of times then half your gear has been hit and should be accordingly in need of repair.

Repairing gear, not just weapons, should then become part of the game. A smith could repair weapons/armour but I'd say you need to visit a tailor and a leather worker for other items. Self-repairing would require tools and materials, and in the case of metal working a smithy. You'd either have to provide these yourself or 'rent/buy' them for the job. Eg the 'fix' command when used in a smithy would incur a fee needed to cover the materials and time used.

• Player owned smithys, and smithys to hire (loan key from NPC for a certain amount of time).

-- FantoM - 16 Jan 2003

Crafting is something I've always seen as a very important part of a mud. Generally the scope of things usually involves just quests, exploring and exp. The first of two can be accomplished in a few months of playing as the mud is still relatively small. Then only the latter is left, leaving all the players to resort to becoming killers/achievers. This is where a crafting system could be of great use to implement.

The way I would like to see things as, is that crafting should be tied in with the new guild concepts. As smithing, weaving or carpentry could be possible sub guilds to which players can learn gcommands from. So a player goes to the smith and applies for an apprentiship, he works with the smith daily untill he learns a few smithing commands. Now he can repair weapons, but still needs practice until he becomes good at doing so. Once his smithing skills improve, he begins to repair weapons to other players and teaches smithing to other players, so he becomes a smith as well.

This opens up a whole new concept of jobs and economy in the scope of things. That multiple smiths can arise and each have competitive prices/skills to appease the masses who have damaged gear or need things forged. Then this concept can be applied to all sorts of crafting, weaving for baskets, clothing. Carpentry for furniture. House making for um, house making. This way it allows the players a new reason to play and new ways to gain money.

This sort of system works well in a game called Ultima Online. Where everyone has a job of sorts and earns money to pay for housing, food and general life. A similiar concept to this game could be adapted to Tg one day.

-- PyrO - 29 Jan 2003

For the crafting system, I think it would be better if we can like save the recipes instead. Then we can do a known recipes kinda thing. And also it could be random for each player... So that people won't cheat on the recipes. Regarding the smithing system maybe you can have it like in runescape? I like runescape :)

I don't know runescape at all, describe it here for me: RunescapeSmithing -- FantoM - 04 Apr 2003

-- UnknownKnight - 04 Apr 2003

I'm in favour of recipies for Alchemy, these should show up as things in the "known" command. You could feasibly teach someone a recipe, and be taught one by your guild trainers or other NPCs as part of quests, or find them by experimentation.

I had someone once suggest that you should be able to call anything you like a recipe - eg mix beer and water and ginger and call it a "nasty stuff" recipe. Our current system says "if it doesn't match a known recipe it will give you a random result when you drink it". This might have to be changed a bit under such a situation.

If we don't follow that route but say that you can mix anything you want and then 'study' it to see if it's worth keeping then you could learn new recipies that way instead.

The idea of making recipies different for each player is a good idea for stopping cheating but a little impractical for us to manage - consider we want to make things slightly logical, so potions of poison could require components with varying degrees of lethality - to enforce this means we can't easily make recipes have random components.

-- FantoM - 04 Apr 2003

-- PelemoN - 13 July 2006

Ah, the elusive crafting, mining, alchemy, forging, refining, smithing, and baking systems.

What if you could code them with an open ended systems allowing for new material additions?

Here's an easy base-format, set in an easily understandable format

Mining (random)

(You may notice the hp removals were set, but this could easily be set to a random roll of x_hp or y_hp. Random mining commands (without defineds) would just add a step at the beginning, {{then query mining table_#, then set query_table=var_table, then random var_table... in this way any number of possible finds would go through the normal setup and people could find odd objects new in a realm (possibility of making a random probability give a modifier to normal roll, since randomly digging would most likely give you a better chance of finding something... instead of just throwing away all but one type ) ====================================================================================================

(bars might make more sense than ingots)

more to come, falling asleep and don't have time to format the rest for twiki ====================================================================================================

Comments by FantoM - 26 Jul 2006

The commands for mining and smelting are a necessary addition if we with to support smithing your own gear. The specifics for messages/number of types of damage/etc don't have to be sorted here.

The thing I'd comment upon most is your statement of "What if you could code them with an open ended systems allowing for new material additions" This is an ideal we've been aiming for in the rest of this discussion. The difficulty is in handling what happens when someone puts something we didn't think of into a mixture. How could we come up with a potion/whatever that makes sense. IE - if someone manages to smelt normal iron ore along with some wierd gem that they picked up in harn, how should it effect the end product?

===========

*Comments by -- PelemoN - 31 Jul 2006

This setup was designed to work of a number of tables that could be added to and reworked based on additional materials. The "forging" of weapons was based almost entirely on randoms of skills and the item values to form a product that would go through a value check to define what would showup (the only optional edge to this system would be recoding a new build for seperate objects, ie standard axe formation but blade and hilt and wrap made of entirely seperate builds themselves).

I had hoped that gem additions and other such extras could be used to enchant or imbue specialty alterations and coded entirely seperate from base item formations as gems would be devoured by a forge and possibly only useful if of sufficient size to work as an arrowhead on an easily damageable arrow. Magical imbues of base metals could be used to improve values before subpiece formation but due to any inbalance this could cause, being able to before and after enchant, the improvement should be minimal or result in a slight improvement or a complete ruining of ore or whatever subpiece is being "improved". Particular classes of objects would have to be revised to what they could possibly add to an object formation, and if at all possible either a value tag for a particular build or a multiplier of a given sell value devised. Metals would be straight forward enough as most forageables and extra items currenlty in the mud would not be of any value while at temperatures for melting metals, although while setting and cooling particular liquids would form different crystal structures and while sharpening certain herbs might be of more worth along with a wetstone.

Personally I don't like a blueprint formula, with the ammount of commands done in sequence within the mud to get above level ten people are use to setting up aliases and such to do the "hard" work for them. Also, the usage of a set build would cut down on our variety beyond the originating base code form of the commands. Certain things should burn if burnable, certain things would have to be voided as sharpening tools, and some objects would not be of use as formative ingredients.

With all this said, I hope the murky waters don't deter the production.