Shortcuts

[woodspeople]

Having discerned that a big issue right now is finding ways to implement things quickly so they can get out there and be played, with relatively few implementers among the lookers-on: I have started thinking if I can help reduce implementation work by coming up with "shortcuts." Meaning, ideas that reduce how much work is required to complete a particular functionality, while simultaneously creating interesting user experiences that differentiate gameplay from other blocky games. I have come up with two so far.

Shortcut 1: GUI-less crafting. What would happen if crafting had no GUI? What if you placed the items in "real" space to put them together? This would totally remove the task of creating a crafting GUI, replacing it with rules for block and item placement which are far easier to write. I mentioned this idea to the child, and he reminded me that in MC you build an iron golem by placing three iron blocks in real space, then putting a pumpkin head on top of them. I wonder what would happen if that sort of crafting was the way to craft in TS?

It has several advantages.

• No GUI to write.
• No comparison with MC. No "clone" of its crafting system.
• Much higher flexibility in terms of components (I am just randomly choosing a non-mods name) being able to specify requirements for recipes that include the size and shape and composition of the fabrication space.
• Because the "fabrication space" is in the world, such spaces could remain, so the player could set up factories with workstations dedicated to the creation of particular items. If this was combined with the blueprint tool, one could set up a whole self-creating factory, still with no GUI required.
• Because no component would have to build a GUI either, but would only have to write a set of rules, component makers could build more elaborate systems with a smaller barrier.

Examples:

• To craft the dreaded Sword of Sorrow, you must build a flat 2x6 fabrication surface, with stone in the top two blocks and iron ore in the bottom four. On this surface you must place an item of "steel composite" on each of the bottom four blocks, and a gold ingot on each of the top two blocks. As soon as the last item is nudged into place, strike any item in the recipe with another Sword of Sorrow, and they will all disappear and voila! A Sword of Sorrow will appear. (You need one to make one.)
• To create a steampunk power plant, you must build a 4x4 pyramid. On the top block you must place a uranium ingot. On the second tier you must place alternating purple firestone and yellow feldspar. On the third tier, reinforced stone. After all items have been placed, they will disappear and a "power plant" item will appear, which you can then carry and place.
• To create a simple stone pick, just heap two stone and three wood on one block of stone. (That's simple but its only for noobs!)

Potential difficulties:

• Would have to change items so they don't hover but sit and can be pushed around (like NPCs). I don't know how hard that would be to make these things pushable. But in terms of gameplay, I don't think the hovering of items is any great wonderful thing, it's kind of annoying in MC, so why keep it?
• Keeping track of whether things are on top of things all the time would slow processing down; but the user could easily trigger an evaluation by doing something like touching any block or tool involved with a wrench (mods in MC have lots of wrenches). What "finishes" the recipe could be a tool that is itself hard to get. Or, the player could do a little "I'm done building" jig. One thing I've noticed about MC is that the game itself makes no use whatsoever of rhythmic player movements, but people have come up with several cultural movements that have meaning. The shift-key jig is one; nodding one's head in multiplayer is another; jumping up and down in excitement is a third. So why not make moving in some particular way mean "please evaluate this area for completed fabrication recipes now"?

Shortcut 2: Hot bar = inventory. To avoid having to build a separate inventory screen, what if the inventory was implemented simply by having the hot-bar expand up into a larger HUD display on touching the e (expand) key? This would sort of be a "looking more deeply into the bag" action.

Benefits to this:

• No GUI to code. (I know there is a fake one now, but it is the most clone-seeming part of TS so far, IMHO)
• More natural interaction; lots of people get confused by the repetition of the hotbar in the inventory GUI in MC.
• Less disruption of "real" game play. A HUD can be partially transparent and game play would continue on behind it. This would make for more interesting combat.
• It would be easy to add an option of how many lines to show in the HUD, making the size of the inventory easily configurable. If you want only one line above the hot bar (to simulate things being heavier, or for a challenge) that's easy. If you want lines up to the top of the screen, that's easy too.

Potential difficulties:

• You would still have to suspend the mouse pertaining to movement in the world when the HUD was up, so the player could move things around in the inventory. But I would think you could piggyback more code on what you already have for the toolbar.
• Partial opacity could make tiny items hard to make out; but the user could set the degree of opacity and the size of the items shown. People at different ages can see different things on a screen.

Now: are these "shortcuts" helpful? Should I keep trying to think of more? Or am I off base? Tell me truly.

 

[Cervator]

This is great - exactly the kind of design thoughts we need to get closer to implementing. The more I think about it the more I want a design forum for established suggestions

(Although, I suppose design and implementation might go hand in hand within any forum that's "beyond" general suggestions)

And yeah, the shortcut factor is probably valuable for getting content into the game. You can always add fancier systems later.

On recipes - I figured we'd have a few different systems to combine things (mainly "items", "custom blocks" and "structures"). Placing things in the world was my thought on making custom blocks - build an appropriate workshop with a work area, blocks placed in the world area can dynamically be shrunk down to create a brand new custom-shaped block with the appropriate textures also shrunk.

For creating actual items you really could do the same thing - primitive manufacturing could simply align full blocks of material (don't really need the tiny hovering sprites) in an appropriate shape, then do the magic dance and turn it into an item. For some reason I'm seeing players jumping on top of all the blocks, maybe with a certain tool active, making them light up one by one, till all done... or I guess they could just click the blocks with the magic tool, even if boring

After you have a created item you could then feed it to a workshop/minion as the "recipe" to recreate at a far lower material cost (prototypes are more expensive). Could still be UI-less at this point.

Fancier crafting or items with expensive materials not readily (or sensibly, like diamond) provided in full block form could then come with a UI, maybe tied to specific workshops. But at least we'd have a quick start, like the ability to create new copies of the current in-game pickaxe (or the railgun, somehow..)

Main thing holding us back from block-based crafting is a multi-block Component in the ES. One of the things I've been trying to get to for a while now, but super low on time. I know Immortius has tinkered with the design potential there too.

I like expanding the hotbar into the common inventory. Bag-based non-cell inventory can come later or build off that. A character's equipment could come later as a separate UI element. I'd like to see the current placeholder UI screen go poof as soon as possible, since indeed it is straight up MC.

 

[overdhose]

well in the spirit of reading this, and this might be totally whacky and up there, what if you completely dropped the concept of being able to craft yourself and let the minions handle it for the time being?

You would just need a bench with some components in it, have the minion bang it around for like 10 seconds or so, and poof you can pick up your "crafted" item. I think that could be an even shorter shortcut, just to provide "some" way of making items without answering the how and why immediately. All I need is a block I can add as a "Patrol" point, but labeled as a station and a way to determine if some components are available in it. Could even use the minions invent as a container, and even add the result to the minions inventory, would just be a matter of dividing it in "IN" and "OUT"

 

[glasz]

Overdhose : But then you will need some kind of interface to tell the minions what to do ?

 

[Cervator]

Yep, the primary topic at hand here is providing shortcuts to easily implement functionality just so we have something early on to look at. Crafting is just an example

Minions helping out is a tad bit further down the road.

 

[eleazzaar]

For the shortest crafting shortcut (in my non-programmer's guess), just have a scroll-able list, that pops up:

• Wood Pick
  Stone Pick
  Iron Pick
  Diamond Pick
  Adamantium/Unobtanium Alloy Pick
  Wood Shovel
  etc...

Select one, and the neccesary materials are deducted from your inventory, and the new item added.

More discoverable and friendly than a console command but probably not much more work.