Item Creation Process

Overview
This page details the process outlined by the UI team.

The item creation process has four stages, three of which will be implemented in the demo. These four stages are 1) choosing a blueprint, 2) choosing material for the various parts of the item, 3) editing the shape of the item, and 4) embellishing the item.

Choosing a Blueprint
Throughout the game, the player will collect various blueprints that will allow them to craft new classes of items. These might be awarded by completing certain quests, fulfilling a commision from an NPC, etc. and will specify the “starting point” for crafting. Blueprints belong in classes; each class will contain multiple blueprints for variations on that item. For example, the Sword class might contain specific blueprints for a Rapier, Broadsword or Katana. Thus, the first step in crafting will be to select one of these blueprints from which to craft an item. The interface for this selection will be to display a list of classes in a column on the left side of the screen. Selecting one of these will populate a second column to the right with blueprints that belong to that class. Finally, highlighting a blueprint will display a generic version of the finished item in the remaining screen space.



Selecting Materials
Once the player has made a blueprint selection, they will be able to select specific materials to use for each part of the item. Blueprints will specify multiple parts that belong to the finished item as well as the class of material that can be used to forge each part. For example, a spear might have a spearhead made of metal, a wooden shaft, and a cloth grip. Selection of materials will have a direct effect upon the stats of the finished item. The UI for this phase is similar to that of the blueprint selection stage. The far left column will contain the parts of the item, the second column will populate with the candidate materials from the player’s inventory that apply to the highlighted part, and the remaining screen space will contain a model of the generic version of the item with those materials used. In addition, a small display in the bottom of the screen will show the stat effect of choosing the highlighted material.



Shape Editing
Upon selection of materials for each part, the player will be able to do shape editing. In this stage, the item will be shaped by the user to its custom shape. This stage deals only with shape of the item; color and various other embellishments will occur in the next phase of forging. The ability of the player to change the shape of the item is bounded by a bounding box of dimensions specified by each blueprint. The extent to which the player can change the shape will also be bounded by the amount of material the player has. The volume of material used will be calculated as the shape is modified and the player will only be able to use as much volume as they have in their inventory. The interface for this phase is different from the previous two. The majority of the screen will contain the 3D model of the item with toolkit items (actions which the player can take in shape editing) will be displayed to the right of the screen. Because of the number and complexity of these tools, they will be described in another section of the wiki. Ideally, the player will edit the model in the fore screen, and the background will be animations of the avatar doing generic actions in the forge (similar to forging in Skyrim). In order to handle the complexity of having multiple parts to edit, parts will be edited in isolation from each other (though all parts will be visible throughout the process) with a layering system similar to Photoshop with each part as its own layer.

Embellishing
Finally, the fourth phase will be to embellish the item. This stage will contain adding features (spikes, jewels, etc), fine engraving, coloring, tempering/heat treating, gilding, enchanting, etc. This phase may not be implemented for the demo, and thus has not been explored for the current iteration.