Refining and Crafting

Over the past few days I brought the refining system and the facilities used for refining raw resources to a much more robust and interactive system. Though the basics of the refining system were in and working, setting up all the ifs ands ors and buts required quite a bit more time. It's always amazing how simple a concept can seem until you really start hammering it out. Even now there is a fair share of things put off for later.

As all facilities, items, buildings and everything are player crafted in Solace Crafting, there needs to be a recipe, a model, icon art, defined capabilities, and other settings for pretty much everything. If Smithing was the only profession just programming a forge and an anvil wouldn't be that hard, but we've got
Hunting / Skinning / Leatherworking,
Forestry / Woodworking,
Reaping / Tailoring,
Quarrying / Masonry,
Divination / Enchanting,
and Mining / Smithing.

Starting out we're allowed to do pretty much anything besides Smelting, Smithing and Enchanting with just a workbench letting players get early armor, weapons, and tools before the night gets cold. This only works with the first Tier (levels 0-4) of resources and limits item quality to a maximum of 40%, so getting proper facilities setup can make a big difference, but isn't required early on.

Refine raw wood into lumber for building your first house and some chests. Refine raw stalks into yarn for clothes and a new bag. Gather enough stone to build a forge and refine ore into metal for a shiny sword. A level 0 sword isn't an awesome weapon, but it's a lot better than no weapon. Or maybe your more of a magic staff kind of person. And there's sure to be some enchants waiting to be found just over yonder.

Once you're equipped well enough to handle the first few kilometers of the enormous world that is Khora, the starting dimension, you can head out to find rare resources and recipes, special encounters and quests. A flaming weapon enchantment from the desert towers, or maybe an ice reflecting shield from the mountains? With 10,000 visible kilometers the freedom of what to seek and where to look is yours.

Setup your Solace (your main Dimension Crystal) and travel as far as you want, knowing you can recall home at any point. That way you can work on upgrading your base if you like rather than building new ones as you go. I personally like to build bases all over, next to waterfalls (we don't have waterfalls yet), atop mountains (we have really big mountains), one can be a castle, one can be a summer cabin.

Ahh for the days when I get multiplayer working =]

Tools and facilities

I got the basics of harvesting tools and processing facilities in and working today.

Harvesting tools are like any other recipe meaning they can be upgraded to any level, any rank, any tier, and socketed with enchantables for customization. This lets us harvest higher tiered resources and at a faster rate. Later on they will also be able to help boost our harvesting spells and talents for much more engaging harvesting.

Once raw resources are harvested they need to be processed, such as when ore is smelted into metal. Facilities are also planned to be upgradable and customizable, mostly for quality control, but also for some forms of specialized crafting.

As I mentioned yesterday all of these system are the foundation for adding additional items in. Once one tool works a dozen more can be quickly added in for further customization, and/or more stuff to find exploring!

The biggest problem with adding new items at this point in development is art. As a solo, and part-time, developer I don't have the time to model, skin, and create 2d art for everything I put in. Hopefully when we go live we will have funds in the form of sales that will allow me to outsource original artwork. I'd very much like to be paying young aspiring artists in the online gaming community, I know there are a lot of them out there!