Craft the World

[Rawny]

I'm intrigued.
Any feedback on this?
http://store.steampowered.com/app/248390/

[Taleric]

The art is nice and it runs well on PC.

The interface and various suspisious "coin" features leads me believe it was developed as a mobile game. The sandbox and story mode are both in place and satisfying. The mobs AI is pretty good and breaks door/walls.

Overall nothing revolutionary but very satisfying. Would recommend at 15 USD price range.

[Sarudak]

This looks interesting. Possibly a little heavy on the micromanagement. I'm not sure if I like the idea of combining recipes with a crafting grid as it seems like unnecessary busy work.

[FlowerChild]

Spent the past couple of nights playing this. In fact, I had one of those "what time is it? Oh shit...the sun is coming up" moments with it last night :)

So, obviously I like it quite a bit. I agree with Sar though in that the crafting interface involves WAY too much busy work. In fact, I think there are times when I avoid crafting equipment for my dwarves just because I don't want teal with the interface :P

Still in dev though, so I suspect that's something they can easily correct later, and really, they could do so with a single button to recreate something after the first time you make it.

[FlowerChild]

I hesitate to do this, but I'm just going to give this thread a little bump as with extended play, I'm finding this game highly addictive.

I've had a series of nights now where I've lost track of the time and stayed up way too late playing this. If you can get over the crafting interface (which admittedly sucks), there's a lot to love here.

It's probably the most successful and complete "Dwarf Fortress Light" that I have yet played, and I think I've played most of them. Up until a few days ago I hadn't even heard of this, and it has really caught me by surprise.

Anyways, if any of you are interested in playing around with the type of gameplay that largely typifies DF and IMO, makes it so good, without the hellish learning curve and nightmarish UI, I highly recommend checking it out.

[Gilberreke]

Just popping in to say that there's apparently quite a few things that aren't obvious right away, like the fact that you can speed up the game or that you can auto fill crafting recipes.

Also, FC, show us some pictures of your base :3

I love seeing stuff people build

[FlowerChild]

Just popping in to say that there's apparently quite a few things that aren't obvious right away, like the fact that you can speed up the game or that you can auto fill crafting recipes.

Errrr...I've probably played over 20 hours and I don't know either of those :)

Unless you're meaning you can double-click an individual ingredient to cause it to spread to neighboring squares as "auto-craft". That's about as automatic as I've managed to make the crafting, which isn't very much at all :)

Anyways, please do share if you know this stuff.

Also, FC, show us some pictures of your base :3

I love seeing stuff people build

Hehe...ok, I'll grab a few screens later. I have 2 bases now actually, as last time I played I completed the first world and moved on to the 2nd. I initially kinda groaned that my tech progress was reset when I switched, but then immediately fell into another "oh shit...the sun is coming up" session, so I guess it didn't actually bother me that much :)

EDIT: Ok, checked the wiki. Time accel (up to 2X) seems to be F1-F3. Still no idea about the auto-crafting thing Gil mentions though, and given that's one of my biggest peeves with the game, I'd very much like to know if that exists ;)

[Gilberreke]

Ok, checked the wiki. Time accel (up to 2X) seems to be F1-F3. Still no idea about the auto-crafting thing Gil mentions though, and given that's one of my biggest peeves with the game, I'd very much like to know if that exists ;)

The speedup part is massive to me though, since the game can be a bit slow at times :). I think I saw the LPer do 3X btw, so maybe there's another key somewhere :)

I picked up the game between that comment and now (was watching an LP to decide on my purchase strategy). All I can find is the double click too :/. I really don't get why they force you to drag anything actually, since the recipe is right there anyway.

Apart from that, been having tons of fun. I mentioned this before, but I don't think I've seen a game where full 3D terrain and a bird's eye view really work. So having a 2D, polished Dwarf Fortress game is pretty darn cool :)

[FlowerChild]

Yeah, the time accel is nice to be sure, and I'll certainly use it now that I know about it, but as I think you will soon find out in your own ongoing bout of swearing, the crafting thing is fucking huge, which is why I was absolutely beside myself thinking you may have a solution to it :)

[Gilberreke]

Yeah, the time accel is nice to be sure, and I'll certainly use it now that I know about it, but as I think you will soon find out in your own ongoing bout of swearing, the crafting thing is fucking huge, which is why I was absolutely beside myself thinking you may have a solution to it :)

I think the LPer just found out about the double click thing and that was it. I'm severely disappointed. This crafting is ridiculous.

I simply don't get why we have to manually drag the items, if they are going to show the recipes and take remembering and such out of the equation :/

[Sarudak]

If you're going to show recipes then something like how don't starve or dwarf fortress itself did it is the way to go.

In this game do you do the crafting yourself or do your minions do it? I loved the process in dwarf fortress where you would build up a weapon or armor smith's skill and then you would have a very valuable character you were attached to. And it was always so devastating when my sherriff would beat him to death for having a tantrum... :(

[FlowerChild]

Depends on the recipe and whether a crafting station is required. If not, then the item is just instantly crafted. If so, then your minions go about making it.

It's just silly at present. It feels like a designer got overly attached to their crafting system and having people manually do it, and is refusing to let go of what so obviously isn't working well in game.

To me, once you know a recipe, clicking the big craft button that you can use for creating multiple instances of the same item (at least they let you do that, which tends to make me overproduce once I drag and drop so that I won't have to do it again anytime soon) should just load up the crafting grid with the appropriate ingredients.

It really is the only downside to this game for me so far, but it's a huge one. When you combine it with accidentally clicking on the wrong ingredient or something clearing the crafting grid of items you've already placed (trust me...you'll know it when it happens by the amount of swearing that will pour forth from your lips, especially with the more complicated recipes later in the tech tree), it becomes rather infuriating.

I'll have to check out their forums one of these days to see the level of bitching about that one feature and if there's any developer response to it. It's really ludicrous.

[Sarudak]

I think that's the one thing that's preventing me from buying it and trying it out.

[Gilberreke]

I do have to say, there's one thing I like, which they hint at, but under-utilize: varied crafting. Basically, I've been going on about this for a while in terms of Minecraft mods, but I like it when there's multiple crafting mini games. Certain items require being crafted at a station, others are just instant, I dig that. But why make the instant ones extra tedious?

Personally, I love it if different items have different "kinds" of costs. The crafting station ones imply a manpower cost, ones made out of rare materials have an exploration cost, etc. This forces the player to have a certain thought-out strategy on how to run their little town.

If balanced properly, this could be a gold-mine in terms of game design.

[FlowerChild]

If balanced properly, this could be a gold-mine in terms of game design.

Well, I hear what you're saying, and I've considered similar things myself in the past, but I think "gold mine" might be an exaggeration here :)

But yeah, it's a nice little feature to be had to be sure, and you'll notice I've integrated such aspects as time being a factor into things like the Cauldron as a crafting station. I suspect with MC though, it would be more trouble than its worth to implement for standard crafting giving the effort that would be required given the existing crafting system.

[Gilberreke]

I found another thing. If you click an item in the crafting grid, it jumps to the corresponding item in the materials list. Combined with the double click, this makes crafting really fast. I can grind out tons of stuff in short order now. Not sure if you missed that one, but it's a life saver for me.

Well, I hear what you're saying, and I've considered similar things myself in the past, but I think "gold mine" might be an exaggeration here :)

I somehow feel there's more there, but I need to gather more thoughts on it. It sparks that special place of my brain every time it pops in my mind, but I haven't really ironed it into a solid idea.

[FlowerChild]

I found another thing. If you click an item in the crafting grid, it jumps to the corresponding item in the materials list. Combined with the double click, this makes crafting really fast. I can grind out tons of stuff in short order now. Not sure if you missed that one, but it's a life saver for me.

Yup, I've known about that one since shortly after I started playing. It's helpful to be sure, but still does not stem the tide of profanity :)

[Gilberreke]

Yup, I've known about that one since shortly after I started playing. It's helpful to be sure, but still does not stem the tide of profanity :)

I'm okay with it for now, but I have to admit that I'm only like 6 hours into the game. I hope it doesn't reach profanity-inducing levels :)

I like the simplicity of the enemies' behavior so far. Feels a bit tower defense like.

[DaveYanakov]

I had to restart a few times before I was able to get built up to a point where I could deal with goblin raids and monster waves at the same time. There is some stuff here that could use some work, like archers running up to melee range before running back a couple meters to shoot. The crafting system is extremely tedious as well when it could be as simple as listing ingredients and hitting craft if you have them in stock.

That said it stole 10 hours of my life yesterday. This thing has a serious flow to it and it managed to carry me along even though I set an alarm.

[FlowerChild]

Yeah, I've been thinking about the "just going to craft a couple of things and call it quits...ACK! The sun is coming up!" factor in this, as it keeps nailing me when I thought I had become immune to such things :)

I'm not sold on the tech tree in its current form, with the way it requires you to craft a bunch of aesthetic blocks in order to progress in technology. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it a lot of times.

The thing is, I think the constant sounds and popups associated with it are a big part of what's making it so bloody addictive. You're constantly feeling like you're on the verge of getting something new, and constantly being given little bits of audiovisual stimulus as bits of candy to reinforce that. You're also prompted to make use of all that aesthetic crap, so wind up decorating your base despite yourself in a "oooo...now where can I put this flower pot" manner.

I'm not entirely sure I like that part as I'm beginning to feel like a rat with an electrode stuck in his pleasure centers :)

[DaveYanakov]

The layout of the tech tree was bothering me as well until I realized something. The forced use of the aesthetic blocks are what caused me to expand my shelter beyond the big room full of beds hodge podge. It actually looks kind of decent and if it hadn't been forced on me as a way to find room for all the junk they made me build it would just be a hole in the dirt.

[FlowerChild]

Yup, I agree on the gameplay justification for doing it that way in terms of it emphasizing the aesthetics of your base (like the flower pot thing I mention above), but it pushes suspension of disbelief pretty far at the same time. I think some kind of additional balance needs to be struck between the two to get it just right, which may already be planned with other additions to the tech tree or what have you.

Like having to build a fish bowl or whatever in order to gain access to mithril weapons is a bit much a present :)

Building aesthetic additions is already heavily incentivized due to the XP and item rewards you get for building them, and my understanding is that it will be even more heavily rewarded once dwarf morale reacts to furniture, so I think it could do with a few less hard dependencies like that without it adversely impacting the overall balance.

[Gilberreke]

I'm not entirely sure I like that part as I'm beginning to feel like a rat with an electrode stuck in his pleasure centers :)

Well, I'm not sure if I like that either, but it's bloody brilliant on their part :)

This game is very interesting for sure

[DaveYanakov]

Morale does appear to react to furniture in the current version. I had it sitting at 44% for an hour and then the next time I looked after a tech expanding crafting spree it had hit 56% without any changes to the exterior walls. I currently have it up around 78% now that the crafting rooms are decorated appropriately.

Still a lot of work ahead of this team to tune things but it is a solid product as it stands.

[FlowerChild]

Just finished the 2nd world, which marks the end of this release, so I figured it would be a good time to post a screen of my base as promised earlier:

Spoiler

Show

Pretty straightforward, and there are definitely improvements I'll make the next time around, but also better than that in my first world :)