This thread is intended to be a discussion of deep and complex crafting and what kinds of interesting things we can do with the crafting medium in games. This does relate to the current iteration of the TTS crafting system I am dealing with. However there is no reason to confine the discussion to TTS stuff.

In any case here we go:

I am attempting to create a property based crafting system, in the sense if physical(extensive and intensive) and chemical and electrical properties. Don't worry, this won't be as complex as actual physics.

I learned my lesson there when I was trying to design the sailing system ealier this weak and it turns out that there is no software to aid in any sort of realistic sailing/ship simulation. In fact according to some of the scientific papers I ended up reading on this topic the scientific community doesn't even really understand the whole process and we certainly can't simulate it with graphics and physics engines.

In any case here are the properties I have so far been working with:

properties:
extensive: mass, volume, charge
intensive: density, hardness, melting point, boiling point, elasticity, malleability, ductality, magnetization, viscosity, resistance

I avoided properties that are too complex or not relevant and I also avoided dealing with supervenient properties. For instance I will deal with colors only in the artistic sense, that is red green blue and not deal with frequencies and crap. That adds nothing to the end experience.

In any case all objects in the game have each of these properties. These properties determine in what processes and constructions it is useful to use them.

I was thinking that in the case of materials which are absolutely not useful in some properties I will have them automatically excluded from the list.

For instance concrete cannot be used to channel mana/heat/electricity and so forth. Wood will not be an option as a resistor, presuming I even have electrical resistors. I might just kick resistence into mana transmission or something.

I am going to provide some examples of what properties do.

Suppose I wanted to pick a material to be used as a blade in a wood plane. I could probably use any material with a hardness higher than wood but I would probably want to pick one with a much higher hardness so that it could be sharpened really sharp and thin.

In this case I may start with stone, but later as my ability to process materials increased I may want to use a metal and farther on I may want to use a gem such as diamond.

Although common real world materials will have properties that line up with our perception of them, such as diamonds making good blades and drills, many materials will not be so obvious. What is the weight and hardness of a dragon bone? What is it good for? Each item will possess a list of its property values, with irrelevant ones excluded.

For instance it costs energy to heat a metal, whereas heating wood produces energy through combustion. In this case metal would not have a combustion property. You are never going to heat a metal for fuel. At least I hope not. That would be dumb.

Similarly if a fluid material such as some animals blood did not have poison properties you would not see:

Poison value: 0

It would just not have such a value. I want to simplify the front end for players as much as possible.

So basically if you wanted to make a poison mixture for weapons you would be given a list of all the materials with a poison score that you had access to at your current location.

There might be some hidden properties as well. For instance if you mix two poisons that have a combine property related to each other your poison may be more powerful than you expected.

I was thinking of maybe only listing properties and then getting the players to actually experiment to see what the actual values are. For instance you may have a list of items with the poison property but no actual score and you would mix them to see what the resulting poisons were like.

Which system would you as a player prefer? Hidden property values or displayed ones?

You can actually use a metal for fuel. Magnesium is a good example but natrium would work as well. It is not really that practical but if you need a very high temperature fast it would probably be worth it.

I think I at least would need to see the basic stats. You could hide some, like magical properties though but the physical ones really should be there. When a real smith get a material he can test it himself, but we will just see the name and not much more.

When you talked about sailing I remember a game that kinda have the physics right. It is really a WW1 doghfight game but they have put a lot of work into thermo dynamics. It is called: "Rise of Flight: The First Great Air War" and might be worth a look, I remember watching a vid when they showed how the wind hit the plane and a bit of the things that impacted how the plane reacted. It is a little more advanced then what you would need for sailing though.

Originally posted by Loke666

You can actually use a metal for fuel. Magnesium is a good example but natrium would work as well. It is not really that practical but if you need a very high temperature fast it would probably be worth it.

I think I at least would need to see the basic stats. You could hide some, like magical properties though but the physical ones really should be there. When a real smith get a material he can test it himself, but we will just see the name and not much more.

When you talked about sailing I remember a game that kinda have the physics right. It is really a WW1 doghfight game but they have put a lot of work into thermo dynamics. It is called: "Rise of Flight: The First Great Air War" and might be worth a look, I remember watching a vid when they showed how the wind hit the plane and a bit of the things that impacted how the plane reacted. It is a little more advanced then what you would need for sailing though.

Well technically we could use magnesium and other metals to create heat and late, but that is only a few that react with water or air and so forth. I doubt you will be mining magnesium. I dunno I may decide to add it now. :)

Originally posted by Cuathon

For instance I will deal with colors only in the artistic sense, that is red green blue and not deal with frequencies and crap. That adds nothing to the end experience.

Do any of these things add to the end experience? I mean, sure, let's say that you allow people to craft using a wide variety of materials and all of their relevant properties match their properties in the real world. Are players really going to go craft a sword out of... tin instead of iron or steel, just to be able to say "Wow, it holds an edge as poorly as a real tin sword!"

I say this because the challenge of "what should we make our swords/clothes/houses out of?" has already been solved in real life centuries ago. You don't make a blade from tin or silver or brass, you make it out of steel. Go through all the trouble of implementing true-to-life materials all throughout the game, and you're just going to see people making steel weapons, wood furnaces, and diamond drill bits.

What I'd recommend is just tossing out density, ductality, viscosity and the rest to make way for susceptiveness, ætherity, equilibrium, and syncretism. Naturally, these are the properties of materials such as felstone, dreamwood, ghost quartz, and even dragon bone. Instead of programming a simulator for a Science of Materials class, make up a new list of properties and decide how they interact. This gives you full control over how your materials work and what their strengths and weaknesses are, so that you are not locked into an obvious and uninteresting correct answer to the crafting puzzle. (Protip: Steel swords!) This ensures that players are much more interested in weighing pros and cons of various exotic materials, and gives you much more control over whether or not there is truly an all-around best material for a given purpose.

Originally posted by Disdena

Originally posted by Cuathon

For instance I will deal with colors only in the artistic sense, that is red green blue and not deal with frequencies and crap. That adds nothing to the end experience.

Do any of these things add to the end experience? I mean, sure, let's say that you allow people to craft using a wide variety of materials and all of their relevant properties match their properties in the real world. Are players really going to go craft a sword out of... tin instead of iron or steel, just to be able to say "Wow, it holds an edge as poorly as a real tin sword!"

I say this because the challenge of "what should we make our swords/clothes/houses out of?" has already been solved in real life centuries ago. You don't make a blade from tin or silver or brass, you make it out of steel. Go through all the trouble of implementing true-to-life materials all throughout the game, and you're just going to see people making steel weapons, wood furnaces, and diamond drill bits.

What I'd recommend is just tossing out density, ductality, viscosity and the rest to make way for susceptiveness, ætherity, equilibrium, and syncretism. Naturally, these are the properties of materials such as felstone, dreamwood, ghost quartz, and even dragon bone. Instead of programming a simulator for a Science of Materials class, make up a new list of properties and decide how they interact. This gives you full control over how your materials work and what their strengths and weaknesses are, so that you are not locked into an obvious and uninteresting correct answer to the crafting puzzle. (Protip: Steel swords!) This ensures that players are much more interested in weighing pros and cons of various exotic materials, and gives you much more control over whether or not there is truly an all-around best material for a given purpose.

As I said there will be plenty of properties aside from the regular ones. Also most materials will be combinations. So you could make a sword from iron, but its not going to be as good as imaginary alloys and materials. Real materials make sense so that you have a reference point for what shit means. If iron has hardness 8 and copper has hardness 4 and iron swords are stronger and sharper, then you can extrapolate that such and such metal with hardness 12 is even better for strength and sharpness. Or if copper has a lower resistance than iron and copper conducts better you know that lower is better, since most players a re not electrical engineers or chemists or w/e.

Regular materials are mainly there for reference points. The game isn't flawlessly scientifically accruate. Its a video game.

There ARE properties such as you listed. Aether is both a basic magic type and the corresponding affinity score. Ie, tin has an affinity for aether and iron has an affinity for earth and so forth.

I was more concerned with the idea of properties as opposed to the properties of a specific real world material.

Disdena sort of has the right of it here.

That said, you could also co-opt  things like ductility and conducivity if you have a crafting system in the appropriate genre, or if you allow similar metals sourced from different areas in the world to have different stats.  When I was playing SWG, I got the best possible CDEF pistol reaction chambers from nonferrous conductive metals on Corellia... finding the best ferrous framings that kept my guns sturdy, I had to go  to an entirely different planet for.  So sci-fi has a place for things like ductility or hardness or what-have-you.

That, and the methods of -creating- iron or steel weapons are very different.  You could conceivably take iron, charcoal and coke straight up to Damascus, but it's quite ordinary for folks to just make regular old steel out of the stuff, and how much carbon you get into your steel makes a big difference.  That said, what if carbon is a magical insulator?  What is a good, high-carbon blade doesn't hold an enchantment well at all, so you're forced to look to platinum or gold or meteoric starmetal to get the kind of magical capacities you'll need for an endgame item?  Do inlay.  Make pommels and hilts and crossguards out of less high-impact-resistant metal while the working surface is all that great, high-carbon steel, and the spine of the blade is a more flexible, lower-carbon sort with inlay?

There're lots of things you could do.  I like the idea of having analogues to real crafting methods in games, although I also kinda like the idea of having sympathy or aether or other properties attached.  It's possible that those properties would be more obvious (read: viewable) to folks who knew what they meant; blacksmiths see ductility and carbon content, enchanters see aether, sympathy, or equilibrium.  Jacks-of-all-trades perhaps see a less informative version of each; maybe skill in particular areas improves your ability to assess the content of the things you're looking at in one context or another.

Originally posted by KirinRahl

Disdena sort of has the right of it here.

 

That said, you could also co-opt  things like ductility and conducivity if you have a crafting system in the appropriate genre, or if you allow similar metals sourced from different areas in the world to have different stats.  When I was playing SWG, I got the best possible CDEF pistol reaction chambers from nonferrous conductive metals on Corellia... finding the best ferrous framings that kept my guns sturdy, I had to go  to an entirely different planet for.  So sci-fi has a place for things like ductility or hardness or what-have-you.

 

That, and the methods of -creating- iron or steel weapons are very different.  You could conceivably take iron, charcoal and coke straight up to Damascus, but it's quite ordinary for folks to just make regular old steel out of the stuff, and how much carbon you get into your steel makes a big difference.  That said, what if carbon is a magical insulator?  What is a good, high-carbon blade doesn't hold an enchantment well at all, so you're forced to look to platinum or gold or meteoric starmetal to get the kind of magical capacities you'll need for an endgame item?  Do inlay.  Make pommels and hilts and crossguards out of less high-impact-resistant metal while the working surface is all that great, high-carbon steel, and the spine of the blade is a more flexible, lower-carbon sort with inlay?

 

There're lots of things you could do.  I like the idea of having analogues to real crafting methods in games, although I also kinda like the idea of having sympathy or aether or other properties attached.  It's possible that those properties would be more obvious (read: viewable) to folks who knew what they meant; blacksmiths see ductility and carbon content, enchanters see aether, sympathy, or equilibrium.  Jacks-of-all-trades perhaps see a less informative version of each; maybe skill in particular areas improves your ability to assess the content of the things you're looking at in one context or another.

In previous crafting threads I did discuss other aspects of the system. You can do all sorts of things with crafting. Everything you described was talked about more or less.

you can find the other threads at http://www.lordofthedawn.com/GameInsRef.php and the titles will let you know which ones are crafting related.

The game possesses the same material quality system as SWG. So each material has a base stat selection plus you can get a higher or lower quality version. You can do all sorts of enhancements. There is a complex magic interaction system for enchantments and so forth as well.

The game is actually classless but I had been thinking of having skills relate to what you can see of an items stats. I discussed this in various threads in the link.

The game doesn't have endgame per say nor does it have any sort of group cap.

The game possesses a theoretically infinite number of planets accessed by world gates. Resources are spawned based on world and also latitude, longitude, and altitude.

Originally posted by Cuathon

Well technically we could use magnesium and other metals to create heat and late, but that is only a few that react with water or air and so forth. I doubt you will be mining magnesium. I dunno I may decide to add it now. :)

It is the eight most common element on earth... But you don't mine it, someone with alchemy will need to purify it. Regular soil would be good enough to get it from (it is the 4th most common element in soil).

I think magnesium powder would make an excellent spell component and something to use as component for magical items. It was used in old camera flashes so it would be a good component for stuff light lightning bolts.

Using alchemy to create components for crafting is actually pretty fun. :)

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by Cuathon

Well technically we could use magnesium and other metals to create heat and late, but that is only a few that react with water or air and so forth. I doubt you will be mining magnesium. I dunno I may decide to add it now. :)

It is the eight most common element on earth... But you don't mine it, someone with alchemy will need to purify it. Regular soil would be good enough to get it from (it is the 4th most common element in soil).

I think magnesium powder would make an excellent spell component and something to use as component for magical items. It was used in old camera flashes so it would be a good component for stuff light lightning bolts.

Using alchemy to create components for crafting is actually pretty fun. :)

I haven't studied chemisty for years, so I will defer to you. Very well, we can use magnesium in the game. Its not like there are limitations as long as we remain in the sphere of abstract math and not functional physics.

The game has real magic which isn't drawn from components, but you could certainly use science magic or alchemy as the aspect of the system that deals with magnesium effects.

You absolutely use alchemy for crafting components. You can use chemical processes in both real, in the case of gathering magnesium, and imaginary, aligning the magic matrix of an item(letting you use better enchantments) alchemical processes.

The property system can encompass pretty much anything you can think up. Go crazy with suggestions.

I already detailed dozens of crafting profession interactions in a previous thread. So I would check those to get an idea of what I am thinking of. You could springboard a suggestion of of that and if I think its awesome I'll probably see if there is a way to integrate it.

Just so I can understand where this thread is coming from, OP....what game is TTS?  My mind was grasping...."The Elder Scrolls?  No....The Secret World? No...."  Help me out here, please.

TTS is a game that I am making myself. Is that relevant to the discussion?

Originally posted by just1opinion

 

Just so I can understand where this thread is coming from, OP....what game is TTS?  My mind was grasping...."The Elder Scrolls?  No....The Secret World? No...."  Help me out here, please.

He likes to post his development threads outside the developer forums for more views, surprised the mods don't badger him about it.

Originally posted by Cuathon

TTS is a game that I am making myself. Is that relevant to the discussion?

Thank you for clarifying that, and yes...to ME it's relevant.  I know we're not criticizing a game that is presently out and "fixing" it.  Man, for someone making a new game and probably trying to attract people to it, you kind of have an attitude.  Most people don't ask questions if they don't think they're relevant in some way.  Now I can go back and read the thread and it will have a specific application and more meaning.

Again...thank you.

EDIT: Upon re-reading the thread I can see that people with an interest in geology, chemistry, and sciences would probably be more interested in the topic and in this sort of crafting system development.  I apologize for randomly reading something  posted in GENERAL DISCUSSION and interrupting your thread flow.  Maybe you should consider posting in the developers' forum.  But you say you have your reasons, so don't be surprised when someone randomly reads one of your threads and has a question.  It's the price you pay for posting in the wrong forum.  I apologize for MY attitude now.  Sorry.

Originally posted by jusomdude

Originally posted by just1opinion

 

Just so I can understand where this thread is coming from, OP....what game is TTS?  My mind was grasping...."The Elder Scrolls?  No....The Secret World? No...."  Help me out here, please.

He likes to post his development threads outside the developer forums for more views, surprised the mods don't badger him about it.

My threads and long and in depth and they allow plenty of space to cover general topics. Plus most of them get a lot of hits. Alternatively I crit them for 9999999 with wall of text :)

Just remembered something. They have kicked 4 or 5 of my threads back into the dev corner. I think there is some arcane scale and then put a thread on there and weigh whether it should be allowed in the Pub. I am happy that most of my threads fall on the side of the line I desire.

Originally posted by just1opinion

Originally posted by Cuathon

TTS is a game that I am making myself. Is that relevant to the discussion?

 

Thank you for clarifying that, and yes...to ME it's relevant.  I know we're not criticizing a game that is presently out and "fixing" it.  Man, for someone making a new game and probably trying to attract people to it, you kind of have an attitude.  Most people don't ask questions if they don't think they're relevant in some way.  Now I can go back and read the thread and it will have a specific application and more meaning.

Again...thank you.

I do have an attitude I guess, I'm sorry. Although here I was just curious. I'll try to appear more civil.

Originally posted by Cuathon

Originally posted by just1opinion

Originally posted by Cuathon

TTS is a game that I am making myself. Is that relevant to the discussion?

 

Thank you for clarifying that, and yes...to ME it's relevant.  I know we're not criticizing a game that is presently out and "fixing" it.  Man, for someone making a new game and probably trying to attract people to it, you kind of have an attitude.  Most people don't ask questions if they don't think they're relevant in some way.  Now I can go back and read the thread and it will have a specific application and more meaning.

Again...thank you.

I do have an attitude I guess, I'm sorry. Although here I was just curious. I'll try to appear more civil.

It's less about appearing civil and more about being genuinely receptive to valid feedback.

Every valid criticism ever aimed at your game is ignored (Disdena's very valid criticism in this thread), met with attitude (countless examples), or misdirected ('Oh you just don't understand my game, go read all these blog posts').

If you really just want to ignore common game design knowledge and useful feedback, just make the game and stop pretending you want feedback by starting threads.  I assure you, with as much time as you've spent on the forums, spending that same amount of time actually making your game will help you achieve your goals far faster.

Originally posted by Axehilt

Originally posted by Cuathon

Originally posted by just1opinion

Originally posted by Cuathon

TTS is a game that I am making myself. Is that relevant to the discussion?

 

Thank you for clarifying that, and yes...to ME it's relevant.  I know we're not criticizing a game that is presently out and "fixing" it.  Man, for someone making a new game and probably trying to attract people to it, you kind of have an attitude.  Most people don't ask questions if they don't think they're relevant in some way.  Now I can go back and read the thread and it will have a specific application and more meaning.

Again...thank you.

I do have an attitude I guess, I'm sorry. Although here I was just curious. I'll try to appear more civil.

It's less about appearing civil and more about being genuinely receptive to valid feedback.

Every valid criticism ever aimed at your game is ignored (Disdena's very valid criticism in this thread), met with attitude (countless examples), or misdirected ('Oh you just don't understand my game, go read all these blog posts').

If you really just want to ignore common game design knowledge and useful feedback, just make the game and stop pretending you want feedback by starting threads.  I assure you, with as much time as you've spent on the forums, spending that same amount of time actually making your game will help you achieve your goals far faster.

You are wrong. I incorporated a change into the magic system based on the feedback of a poster here. This change allowed that part of the system to more effectively accomplish its purpose. I have incorporated plenty of feedback.

The Disdena issue was a lack of information/result of miscommunication.

Disdena suggested I incorporate imaginary properties and I had already done so. I merely explained that I had. Also if you read the previous threads, yes threads on this very forum not blog posts, I discussed this.

The fact that there are at least a dozen examples if not more of me taking some posters' advice invalidates your ridiculous criticism.

In fact in this very thread I believe I deferred to Loke666's superior knowledge of magnesium and conceded that you could in fact use it as a fuel or heat source.

I am doing some code work on the property system right now and I wonder if anyone has an opinion on this specific question:

I am trying to decide whether to assign each material 1 element/non real world property or more than one. Also how do I deal with combining 2 materials with separate elements.

I was thinking that I will just set the base material class with all the elements and set the value of elements a certain material doesn't have to 0. And when I combine things I can just set the value to 1 for each element the initial materials had.

I was also thinking of assigning some properties based on element. For instance an item with type light could have the property glow. And an item with type air could have the property float.

So a steel that was produced with iron that had type float would be much lighter and steel that was produced with an iron with type light would glow with light.

Alternatively imaginary metals could have properties and mundane metals could be infused with those by making an alloy.

So mundane metals would have the basic properties they have in the real world. Like copper for wiring and steel for strength. But you could use metals infused with magical properties to add affects. Probably at the cost of averaging the stats. So if you use a metal with the glow property but it had a hardness 6 to irons hardness 10 and you used 1 ingot of glow metal and 3 ingots of iron you would have a hardness of 9 total. However there may be metals with the glow property and a hardness of 10. So then you could get an iron sword without and failing.

Thusly we could desire to have a number of materials and pick the materials that would produce the desired qualities of the item we wanted.