Cortman by Night

As such please forgive us if things are a little ‘bullet pointy’ and expanded info on things you’ve heard about before. It’s all stuff that needs doing.

CRAFTING

Some of the things we’ve been doing this month on the crafting revamp includes:

• On-boarding three of our friends from TEA games to add some firepower to the crafting team and get it all out of the door. While they’ve been getting up to speed with the code they have also been documenting it all with its latest implementation, which in turn will become our guidance for modders upon release.

• Working on crafting station animation interactions. In Build 42 you won’t see direct physical movement of player and crafting station when you interact, for example a potters wheel won’t spin. Until we, potentially, one day include 3D models on the map furniture will remain as static sprites as they always have been.

What we do need, however, are natural player movements towards the crafting stations – that will in turn open up their individual crafting menu accompanied by a familiar crafting SFX, and potentially an on/off state dependent on what sort of crafting station it with lights on and glowing etc. They also needed depth textures added to avoid clipping and such, which have now been implemented.

• Working out how best to separate out the new skills. We became concerned that we were introducing too many ‘portmanteau’ skills simply for the sake of keeping the skill list slimmed down. There’s still some folding together of craft skills when there’s clear similarities in tools and techniques, but overall it felt wrong to lump too much together.

It won’t be necessary for players to dedicate time and effort into building out these skills for the mostpart, unless they are trying to make a civilization on a forest map and other survivalist circumstances.

• Making sure that there’s sandbox settings that cater for faster progression. Sandbox and settings now include settings for Skill XP multipliers for individual skills, so your speed up each different ladder can be directly adjusted.

• Addressing undesired and unfun gameplay loops. A common server admin complaint is that the map swiftly becomes barren of furniture and loot containers due to players chasing XP. As such, in B42 scrapping, dismantling and ripping items will no longer grant XP.

We no longer want progression in a skill to involve destroying piles of items or trashing the map; and instead to concentrate on making things. XP for actions such as building structures and repairing clothing has been boosted to adjust for that, and the individual skill XP multipliers in the sandbox settings also offer more means to compensate. (This said, as things stand, XP for dismantling electrical items or wrecked vehicles remains.)

• Adding skills for wilderness play. Knapping and Carving have both been added. Knapping is used for fashioning stone blades from the pieces of flint you can find in the world, for making knives, spears, axes, scythes and other tools. Carving involves carving wood and bone for similar purposes.

Some carving will also produce decorative items, especially at lower levels, with more artistic and aesthetic crafting recipes due to be added to help you level up without making the same sharp stick over and over again.

• Improving how recipes work and are learned. There are a great