I’ve long since learned that it’s far better to present Nicholas with a fait accompli which he finds amusing to implement rather than a rational argument for a feature. Allow me to demonstrate.
NV: What am I supposed to do with ingots, herbs, and fruit?
DB: *shrug*
NV: You do this just to tempt me, don’t you.
NV: …Fine, I’ll play your little game.
[later]
NV: Fuck you for making me add smelting.
DB: You didn’t have to.
[later]
NV: What’s the coal for?
DB: The iron needs a carbon source to be turned into steel.
Just another day at Gaslamp Games.
That is indeed amusing but now you’ve got me curious, how will smelting work? Feel free to disclose any secret information :p
I have heard that it generally involves one’s nose.
Truth be told, the secrets of smelting are known only to a reclusive wizard and are written in an arcane, near-forgotten code deep in the depths of an IDE.
(Let’s just say that the system is still … fluid. Though I admit, I did get a little silly with looking up obscure alloys to draw ingots for. There’s now a flowchart much more involved than the one I illustrated above.)
That’s pretty sweet. but all I’m wondering is does this mean crafting is in? (can’t think of anything else to use it with) because that would be pretty unique for a roguelike.
I suppose we do have crafting in the game. How far we go with this depends on how much people like the idea, I guess. And it fits with the design principle of having the player focus a lot on using the many wildly varied items they find in the dungeon in clever, tactical ways.
We’ve had a system for making potions by combining gems and mushrooms via a handy portable alchemy kit for some time, but I guess we never mentioned it in the blog as-such. (Potions are due for a major revision anyway.) I think you can see alchemy crafting in one of the trailer videos on YouTube, though while recording the video Nicholas used incorrect recipes and so never actually made a potion.
Just wait until you see the marinating and grilling system! 😀
Just found your site and I think the game looks amazing! Keep up the good work guys. I will be ordering a copy for linux the day its available. 🙂
I like the idea of crafts.
I also like the idea of keeping the code as manipulatable as possible.
Keep in mind: fluid, modifiable code will allow for nice dynamic linked code add-ons in expansion packs. 😀
Also, if you could work out doing more stuff in data, that would make expansion packs and mods even easier to create, and possibly make a big market for you by providing forum for User Mods and sale of expansion packs.
We’re definitely pushing for modibility, not sure about code, that’s Nicholas’ bag, but content definitely. It is partly incidental: The means by which we make game content are easily edited so that *we* can easily add and change things. And on top of that, my perverse need to document things will probably come in handy for other people who wish to make sense of it all.
So yeah, pretty much all the game content is defined by XML (and more changeable parts are being moved there all the time; shall just have to see if Nicholas gets fed up enough to do the UI layout in xml). And for graphics, thankfully we’re moving from the awful ancient .spr format to pngs. Not that the spr format was so awful, theoretically, but the editor sure was. I swear, it belongs in DOS.
I do think we still need to set up a way to define animations properly outside of the .spr format, but once that’s done … who knows to what twisted depths the internet shall delve in the Dungeons of Dredmor?
(Personally, I hope someone makes a Doom mod.)
Delicious WADs!