Work continues on the crafting system, world generation, and renderer. This post will focus on the progress we’ve made on crafters. The very basics of the system are pretty much done. We can write a recipe for an object, specify the ingredients, and instruct the crafter to go build it. Now we’re moving towards actually doing something with those crafted objects.
This screenshot is a nice summation of crafting so far. We’ve got:
- The Carpenter, in his Carpenter outfit
- His low-level, work bench. For now nothing more than a glorified stump, but it will be upgradeable!
- The “out box” stockpile, where the Carpenter will drop off the goods he crafts
- The crafting window where you can select objects to craft
- And lo’ a whole pile of crafted objects on the right!
As you can see, the chairs, beds, tables, etc. in the pile are all minified. That’s how your crafted items will look when they’re not actively in use. The next step is to build the system that takes the minified object and expand it out to it’s full form when you place it in the game. So at your command, a worker will run over to one of those mini-objects, say the bed, haul it to your desired placement location, and drop it in it’s fully expanded form.
It’s been a lot of work getting the core crafting engine in place, but we’re definitely closer to the end of the work than the beginning. The good news is the whole system is data driven, so adding new crafters and craftable items is very straightforward. In other words, adding the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th crafter will be WAY WAY less work than adding this first one. And of course all of these APIs will be available to you as a modder, so you can make your own crazy crafter.