The Connection Is Made

As we’ve talked about in previous Thursdoids, a large part of the crafting overhaul revolves around creating a unified, powerful and expansive system for machines, crafting stations and appliances. This covers all the different things you find around the world, and those crafted by yourself and your friends.

A primary piece of this puzzle has been in the creation of dev systems and methodology that allow for the hugely swifter implementation of far more varied/interesting crafting and devices – which in turn is a big thing for modders, and for the nu-medieval post apocalyptic society gameplay we will now cater for.

This has also been built, however, with a framework that will allow for a wide variety of other gameplay aspects – some of which will be a part of the initial 42 release, while others will be drip-fed into future 42 builds, and more still in the mainline builds beyond that. (The underlying systems will be available for modders from the word go, however.)

One of the advantages that the crafting revamp brings with it is the opportunity to provide engineering and electronics gameplay with a ton more depth. This system revolves around the concept of components.

An example of this would be a ‘power input’ component, which provides electrical power to a machine from an external wire. Another would be a crafting component, which would undertake a crafting recipe that can make use of any liquid or item within a machine’s resource component, that can store items, liquid or power. Importantly, every component also has an associated UI that’s been designed for player interaction.

This will mean as our library (and the community’s library) of components grows, we can quickly put them together to create all sorts of in-game machines and appliances. It’s also relatively easy to slap a UI skin on to each component (perhaps something already existing from the game, perhaps something new) to make them appear in the most appropriate way.

Components will also be moddable, so modders will be able to add new components that could then be used as parts of a machine’s in-game functionality and UI.

The end goal is to open this up to the player in-game, having these components as items obtainable through disassembly.

A burglar alarm for example will be comprised of a speaker component, as well as a battery input component and a motion sensor component. A player could feasibly go around collecting the components, removing the motion sensors and installing them around their base, wiring each of them up to lights to act as an early warning system.

Meanwhile the speaker component of the burglar alarm could be similarly wired up to a switch to allow people in the base to create a distraction sound to lure zombies away or into a trap.

These are just two potential gameplay moments plucked from the air, but good examples of a believable utility of scavenging components from real world items.

Putting aside all the new professions and skills coming to B42, this will finally provide engineering and electronic skills with a lot of cool utility – and make anyone with these skills a valuable asset to any survivor group.

This system will also be the bedrock for the crafting tree, providing functionality for the various profession workbenches, crafting stations and more primitive machines. For example, for the more medieval constructions, one form of power input available is rotational