Crafting

[JollyGreenGiant]

I haven't played a character with crafting skills in a while, but the last time I did, I never was any good at figuring out the formulas for things.  I tried trial and error, I tried analyze, I hit people up in game for formulas, but still didn't get a whole lot done.  I know that some people manage just fine the way things are, but for the rest of us, I was thinking it'd be helpful if assess (or assess -v perhaps) would show that something can be used in a craft, if you have that skill.

Let's say I have ropemaking.

assess -v vine

This vine can be used in ropemaking.

Now, even if > craft vine results in "You don't think you could make anything from that," at least I'll know to try a few other things, or wait until I'm better at ropemaking before I can use this vine.  But now I at least know to try this vine in ropemaking at some point, or in combination with some other stuff.

Thoughts?  Comments?  Flames?

[jhunter]

I think this is a great idea.

[Koala]

I agree with JollyGreenGiant and would like to see an upgraded version of skill_anlayze sometime in the future..

[wizturbo]

Completely, totally, 100% agree.

I want to know if items MIGHT be part of the recipes, so I can at least try combinations.

[Lazloth]

While I agree this is a nifty idea, I don't think implementing is feasible.  I believe you'd either have to modify every recipe item with the range of output [laborious, need for upkeep], or perform the equivalent of a full table scan against the craftable result sets every time assess is invoked [resource intensive].

[Bestatte]

Why would it be so difficult? If I understand it right, DIKU is written similarly to C (though obviously it isn't the same thing).

Is it truly that difficult to add a new global line of code? Something like this:

define craftable_flag
1) Add an echo, hidden from anyone who doesn't have the skills necessary.
2) an echo to the crafter PC using the analyze skill which reads, "This item might be useable."


if item = craftable, then add craftable-flag
endif

The definition and criteria of the flag itself would probably take up another dozen or two lines of code, but I'm sure any proficient coder would have no trouble figuring something out in a few hours time.

criteria involved:

1) does the person using the "analyze" skill have the crafting skill that uses this raw material, code-wise, in any possible way?
2) does the person using the "analyze" skill have enough ranks of their chosen crafting skill to recognize a useable item?

possible additional criteria and results:

1) if the object can be used to create other things, and the PC does -not- have that specific skill, but -does- have good skill in other crafts, maybe he would recognize that it's useful, but have no idea what it can be used for.
2) if the PC -does- have the specific skill to use this raw material, he might see a more decisive echo, such as "You think you can make something using this item."
3) if the PC has the skill, but the skill isn't good enough to make any finished product using that raw material, he might get yet another echo: "You think this might be useful to you, but you are not entirely sure."
4) if the raw material can only be used in conjunction with other raw materials, you might get the same echo as #3 above.

[Tamarin]

I think DIKU -was- written in either C or C++.

[Xygax]

Lazloth's guess as to the difficulty of this is closer than Bestatte's....  still, it's a pretty good idea that could be solved by adding a sort of "inverted" version of the crafting table.  Incidentally, I think we do full table-searches quite a lot...  it's actually pretty harmless, the crafting table only contains 3500 records or so, and O(n) isn't terrible for a structure that small.

-- X

[Raesanos]

Diku was written in C.  Unfortunetely, adding something like this would not be as simple as it might seem.

[edited to clarify]

[My 2 sids]

I realize how difficult this might be to code, but I think this issue should at least be addressed more because of its importance.  The more knowledge the player has, the more knowledge he/she can use to help role-play their character.  

One, I really rely on the skill help files when I was playing a crafter.  Simply by giving more examples I think it would help players have a better idea of the raw materials in the game and what "recipes" can be used.

Two, currently the Imms are accepting talk responses to match with NPCs.  It'd be great if the merchant NPCs dealing with raw materials could give some advice/insight on what one could do with a "thin piece of bone."

[sjanimal]

Spectacular idea.

[Rhyden]

This very same post came up three or four months ago...the responses were the same as well...I'm completely for it.  :wink: