Carry On Crafting!

What a week! I have finally finished the tome entitled, Enchanting Recipes of the Past and am at last seeing the light at the end of the tunnel of this quite long stage. This 70 page tome is clearly laid out and has a quick access contents guide to help every player manage their crafting needs. No longer will they have to rummage through many tomes just to find the one recipe to check if they meet the requirements. Set out by both category and level, the player will know if they are able to craft a given item in seconds, and easily spot what else they may be able to do as they increase in level.

What has slowed me down a bit has been the number of alterations (and some corrections) I have had to make to the 2da's along the way. It was simple enough to do, but just a bit boring. Along with adding all the TIMBERS and INGOTS to the COST column, I also did the following:

NX2_CRAFTING.2DA ALTERATIONS:

Recipe 11 - Capitalised Gold Necklace tag in 2da and added DIAMOND to recipe description.
Recipe 94 - Corrected Craft Alchemy to 3 to match description.
Recipe 100 - Corrected tag of item made to match 2da: nx2_r_w_bolt_poison
Recipe 110 - Still needs silver weapon adding. (Work In Progress.)
Recipe 116 - Added Silver Battleaxe recipe.
Recipe 122 - Still needs silver weapon adding. (Work In Progress.)
Recipe 128 - Still needs silver weapon adding. (Work In Progress.)
Recipe 146 - Added Silver Dagger recipe.

NX2_ENCHANTING.2DA ALTERATIONS:

Added sfx_conj_magic to sound for all Incantations.

Incantation 10 appears to be Profane Weapon. (Recipe Removed)
Incantation 11 appears to be Sacred Weapon. (Recipe Removed)
Incantation 24 - Made level required 6 as per recipe description.

CRAFTING.2DA LEVEL REQUIREMENT ALTERATIONS:

811 - Leather Armour 2
812 - Leather Armour Salamander 14
813 - Studded Leather 3
814 - Studded Leather Salamander 15
826 - Hide Armour 3
827 - Hide Armour Salamander 15
828 - Padded Armour 1

NB: Let me know of any other "errors" that would be worth knowing about!

Renaming Equipment

I have also been working with the code around the crafting of these items, including reworking the renaming facility that I originally had in place for just the weapon held in the right hand. Now, I have extended a fourth tab on the Main Menu that allows the player to rename any equipment that they can equip. One of the reasons for this, is because it is easy to make a mistake when finishing the crafting process and name the finished product with an error in it. This system allows the player to rename the item at any time. (See the screenshots.) UPDATE: I just discovered that there is a variable that can be set on the module that allows the smith hammer to be used on items to rename them. Checking the smith hammer script, you will see:

int bSmithHammerRenameItem = GetGlobalInt(CAMPAIGN_SWITCH_SMITH_HAMMER_RENAME_ITEM);


If this variable is set to true, then the hammer can be used to touch an item and the rename GUI text box appears. I am in two minds as to whether to include this option or not though, as it could be dangerous if a player was to rename an item that I have set script to check. It's ability to rename items is indiscriminate at the moment, but I may change it to check for items worn, like my own script currently does. This would then allow a player to rename items a couple of ways.

Enchanter's Satchel

As most players will probably know, the Enchanter's Satchel allows the PC to craft items in the field without the need to have access to a workbench. However, in the Althéa Campaign, this item requires the PC to use one more item in the process: Life Essences. Regular readers of this blog will know that the Life Essence will play a prominent part in the campaign and is an item that can be used in many ways and so it will be up to the player if they want to take advantage of crafting in the field using the Enchanter's Satchel and expending Life Essences. Alternatively, they can just wait until they have access to a magician's workbench where they can craft without any Life Essence requirements.


Mold Information

On the back of a previous post, I also took the trouble to rename all the molds to show at a glance what the minimum Craft Armour or Craft Weapon skill had to be to use them. E.g. Mold(CA1): Light Shield and Mold(CW2): Club, require a Craft Armour skill of 1 and a Craft Weapon skill of 2 respectively to create these items with the most basic of materials.

(*) ADDITION: I will also be adding a level indication for all newer (SoZ) recipes as an indicator of what minimum level is required to craft an item. The figure will either represent the lowest rank in the appropriate skill or the lowest caster level for the catalyst spell used in the recipe description. E.g. Recipe(8): Amulet of Health +2 means the lowest caster level is 8th level as a catalyst spell is used here. Recipe(8): Acid Flask means the lowest Craft Alchemy skill rank required is 8 points.

Another Craft Tome

I am now looking at writing at least one more book for crafting. This book will contain all the recipes that use the greater essences (brilliant and pristine) at a glance. Again, the idea is to take away the need for the player to rifle through various collected essences to find a recipe they wish to follow. Essence description will be made much simpler, and the prospective crafter will refer to the tome instead when wanting to see what is required for crafting with these essences. I had considered a possibility of a third tome that covered the new style recipes that come with the SoZ expansion, but due to the way they are gathered already (as if in their own tome), I decided against it. ADDITION: See the comment above regarding SoZ recipes under "Mold Information".

I am also going to make the usage of Enchantment Recipes single use only. Therefore, finding and collecting more than one of the same recipe (which can be done) will be beneficial rather than sit inside a tome alongside a duplicate that does nothing more than duplicate the same information. Making these recipes single use only feels more appropriate to me, especially as there are other ways to craft items available. UPDATE: I have decided to make the Creation Recipes single use only as well. As these recipes greatly reduce the requirements to create certain items at the cost of only a small amount of gold, I considered that these should be "consumable" during item creation as well.

Specialist Bags

Another section of items I have been setting up are specialist bags. Those who have played SoZ will probably be familiar with the concept already: Bags that are designed to hold certain items only and reject others. To this end, I have created two to date:

1) Treasures Bag: Gems and jewellery automatically go into this bag.
2) Crafting Satchel: Some may know this as the Bounty Bag, but I have renamed it as it will accept a number of other crafting ingredients as well now, like molds.

There may be times when an item is not automatically placed in the bags, such as when a piece of magic jewellery is made. Furthermore, I have made it so items can be removed from the bag again if need be. This may be obvious, but was not the case in practice.

Second Computer Dies

On a personal note, I had the frustrating experience of having my second computer fail on me yesterday. This is a pain, as I test all my multi-player code with this computer on the LAN. After checking around the prices (and discovering everything has gone up due to the exchange rate being so bad), I have decided to just to patch the computer up as cheaply as possible. Therefore, I ordered the following at a total price of just under £185 from ebuyer:

1) Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 2.8GHz Socket 775 1066MHz FSB 3MB L2 Cache Retail Boxed Processor
2) ASROCK P45DE P45 Socket 775 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard
3) Crucial 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 Memory Non-ECC Unbuffered CL6 Lifetime Warranty

Hopefully, I will have the energy to fix it when the parts turn up next week.