Updating the crafting system

Hey there, time for another update about what i did for “Old bones” over the last week.

Last time i mentioned that i’m improving the usability for the player by combining the most important interfaces into a user panel with switchable tabs. This part is now finished and inventory, quest log, map, skilltree and settings are now all combined and you can easily switch between them. While i was at it, i streamlined most of the sub tabs to make them easier to use. You can now easily see the open quests and missions in the quest log, and if you are searching for a certain NPC (i. e. to talk to him because of a quest) you can now even live track where they are currently one the island in the map overview tab.

One of the key aspects while redoing the user interface was, that you can at any time switch the input type as you wish. You don’t want to play with keyboard/ mouse anymore? Just take the controller and continue with it. The game adapts on the spot and changes i.e. the focus behavior. Of course this works in both directions.

Another focus of the development during the week was to redo the crafting interface of the furnace. This one was one of the earlier crafting stations in the game and desperatly needed an update compared to the metal station, wood working station, cooking station and the others. I even included a little minigame (which you can turn of in the settings) to make it a little more interesting. The changes to the furnace interface are designed to make the crafting of metal bars (and other resources) smoother and more intuitive. You now need to refill the fuel (for now wood or coal) to make it work and push the bellows to start crafting. It includes a production queue and continues while you do other adventures on the island.

Furthermore, i just started with the combat system and for this i needed at least one type of enemy. So we now have this cute little slime monster which is first enemy in this game. You can already attack it and it fights back. But i will write more about this topic in the next blog post.

If you want to see the development live, i stream almost daily on twitch.tv/b4zzzing.

Until next time

Bazzzing