A HUGE New Feature for my 2D RPG...

Welcome to another devlog for Dauphin! In this episode I kick off development of Dauphin's crafting system. This will be a large gameplay mechanic that allows the player to craft their own gear and supplies, as well as campsites on islands they discover! Hope you enjoy.

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[DannyDeer]

I just realized that the game looks extremely coherent now. It's inspiring to see your progress over the years.

[timothymclean]

One suggestion for the crafting system: Some indication of how many input resources you already have would be nice, especially when you don't have enough and need to know how much to gather. Lots of games use a #/# sort of display for this—e.g. 5/2 Plastic would indicate that you have five plastic, but only need two, so you have enough plastic to craft two crab armors if you wanted.

[matthewparker]

Before watching you explain your reasoning, the compelling reason to include crafting that I can think of is to provide an aditional incentive to collect rubbish cleaning the environment, as well as thematic tie ins with recycling/reusing.

[sosasees]

some people find pixel text hard to read, even if they can recognize pixel art, so i would add an HD text option.
even better if it's not just on or off, but these:
• all pixel text
• small text in HD
• all HD text

[nathanrankin]

Great first step of this new feature! Two things I like in other crafting games you might want to consider are the incorporation of time as a crafting ingredient (building a tent timelapses the game time forward more than building a simple piece of armor) and different sized items for the inventory, so a tent takes up more slots than a smaller item.

[xaviervitor]

About the small text, I personally think that such a small size should be avoided as much as possible... a player could be playing your game in a big TV, be visually impaired, or be me, who would really not be bothered to squint to read the smaller texts. Increase the size as much as you can, that's my suggestion! Great devlog as always.

[embersworkshop]

10:58 May I recommend making the disabled craft button even darker, or some means of lowering the contrast? Just a tiny accessibility boost.

[NeizooMusic]

Been quietly following all the dev logs, always a relaxing and enjoyable watch. The introduction of a crafting mechanism is a huge milestone imo, keep it going!

[noontimedreamer]

Your devlogs always inspire me to work on my own projects. I love watching your progress with every new video.

[hakonmarcus]

I love following these devlogs but I can't really recall that you ever explained the core gameplay loop? Would it be possible for you to go a bit in depth on that for a devlog?

[BrandonShep]

Nice work Ben! Crafting will definitely add in a ton of variety to the game. The Object Placement system should be a nice little challenge to make. Keep it up!

[NikolasH]

feedback: the red numbers when you dont have enougf items really blends in, i would reccomend making the items icon that is missing also black and white so the red text on it stands out more
also, you definitely need some sort of notification to the player when they learn a new recepie, an idea i had for this is to display a ui like when you pick up a item but have the icon a green exclamation mark with text next to it "new recepie" or something like that

[datdev]

I find this update really interesting and cool!!

[MeccGG]

Just an idea you should add boats where you travel to different islands with biomes with harder enemy’s- and add a recipe book as an item where you can see everything that you could craft

[ebbmo]

Very nice update. Well done!

I would love to see items with penalties as well (slowing you down in water, but giving you very high resistance to corruption).

And for the crafting menu I would like to see current items next to the necessary ones. So 2/4 meaning you have 2, but need 4 to craft that item. In your video you have the items on your bar but I imagine you will most likely have actual usable items on your bar instead so tracking your progress is tricky. That’s why I would love to see the craft menu with this addition of information.

Yet as always: thanks for the inspirational video. It’s like a meditation session :)

[brxathartic]

Personally, I enjoy leveling up skills vs. a general "level". I like being rewarded for the things I enjoy or am required to do anyway and be better at that skill. That said, Skyrim's "smithing" skill was too much of a grind and had me making tons of stuff I didnt want or need just to level it up. Its a great system, as long as it rewards the player for doing what they would have done already with an added incentive to do a little bit more.

Love these videos and I really look forward to them. Great work!!

[Selrisitai]

Idea: Instead of doing the standard crafting thing, I have two ideas, both of which could be used, or either one:

1. Normally, crafting is done the way you're doing it there. Have items, press craft button. It takes away all tactility from crafting and turns it into basically numbers. Instead, maybe make it where you have the items and you break them into parts. You go to the crafting table and, like a jig-saw puzzle you set the parts onto a "plan" in their correct place and once all the items are placed, the item is created.
This would be slower, yes, but it would be more interesting and you can compensate by making crafting more powerful, so it can be done less often. Imagine you want a fishing pole. You find line, a reel, a handle and a shaft, and you drag them onto a grayed-out "recess" and when it's done you have a pole. You can finish it in parts too, so you don't have to do it all at once, and you could keep returning and seeing your grand new pole developing. But in return, the pole you make is VERY good. You don't need to make 25 fishing poles throughout the game.



2. Second idea, which works whether you implement my previous idea or not, is that you could make these items customizable, so instead of having a crab armor, a coconut armor, _et cetera, _ each being more powerful than the last, you could have these armors all be of the same quality, but you can level them up/improve them through more crafting (or just a level up system).
This way you can have the coconut armor from the beginning of the game to the end of the game if you like the way it looks, and different armors will ALWAYS be potentially interesting because they can all be used equally, and you can use them to customize the character instead of ignoring a perfectly cool armor because its stats are low.
This might also REDUCE creation time because you could make, say, five armor sets and all of them would be useful, _and_ they could all look really cool and you could dedicate time to making them look good if you wanted.

[aSimpAtAM]

Very glad to have seen this in my notifications

[eboatwright_]

This is looking great! Although that intro screen / title definitely needs a touch up 😅
I love your aquarium by the way :)

[JessesIndieView]

The progress is looking awesome! I am also currently working towards the ability for players to place items on the map in my 2D RPG. I incorporated player made changes to the tile map with hoeing land and planting plants, but I also want to incorporate the feature of a green or red "silhouette" of a deployable item to indicate if the player is trying to place it in a valid location. Keep up the amazing progress!