Hi there, everyone!
This is the first post in a series of sort of devlogs where I try to share a bit more about details on how Craggenrock is developed, my thoughts behind some of the decisions I made for the game and how I plan to move forward with the game’s development in the future. One of my goals for writing these is mostly to chronicle my thought process while developing the game as it is getting closer to release. Aside from that, I hope that these posts will give you some idea of how Craggenrock came to be, how I hope it’ll be and how things will move forward from here on out.
These posts will most probably be long and rambly. I tried my best to preserve the way I would put my thoughts into words as much as possible, so what you’ll be reading more or less highlights the way I would normally think. Just to give an additional idea on what kind of monster developer would make such a game.
In this post, I want to focus on the primary focus of the game which is crafting.
How it Started
If you got the chance to try out Craggenrock in one of the couple irl events I’ve presented it in, you’re probably aware that the game stemmed out of my fascination with crafting while I was playing Divinity: Original Sin several years ago. (Check out this wonderful game if you still haven’t!)
It all started one night: I was just randomly organizing my inventory in the game and got pleasantly surprised you can drag-and-drop items on top of one another in your inventory to craft things. I was even happier when I realized that you can also drag items out of your inventory into the game world and craft items that way. I got so obsessed with discovering recipes for the game that I studied wikis to memorize some of the recipes, until the point I eventually dropped playing the game and focused on reading up on the recipes instead. That night, I opened up a word processor and just started typing some of my ideas away.
Wouldn’t it be cool if you could do this, or maybe do that?
How about if I do this instead of that; would that work?
There are a lot of possibilities for combinations.
Days from that night, I continued writing down ideas for what I thought would be a cool game.
The Hands-On Experience
Fast forward to a point where my ideas were more refined (and a bit more grounded), I began working on a small prototype to test my ideas out. Early on in the development, I already wanted to focus on crafting as the main mechanic in the game. Emphasis on the word focus. My personal experience with crafting in games at the time made me feel like crafting was more supplemental rather than a core experience while playing. It felt like crafting was just a means to accomplish something that when it’s removed entirely from the game, the game would still feel “complete”. It was like just an add-on. Certainly, there are games where crafting is more prominently highlighted in the gameplay and feels vital to the game experience as a whole, but it still wasn’t the headliner. In Craggenrock, I wanted it front and center.
I’m sure you’ve heard of a variation of the saying “Maybe the real treasure was the friends we made along the way”. Sometimes, there’s more joy to be had in the process itself more so than the final product. I think that it could be true in creative endeavors and for the skilled crafters out there. I wanted to highlight that kind of experience: getting into the nitty-gritty of how to go about making something, all of the nuances of using technique X instead of technique Y, the level of expertise required and involved, etc.
I thought of integrating this in the game by 1.) wrapping its whole premise where it can shine the most, by being a blacksmith, and 2.) making the whole crafting experience “hands-on”. In Craggenrock, you craft the materials that you use to make the items that you sell. By that, you work for it. You play minigames to craft your items: pressing, holding and timing buttons and clicks. There’s active involvement in the process. I find that it makes the experience much more satisfying and engaging rather than just placing items on a grid, pressing a button and boom– done.
There are a total of 6 crafting stations in the game:
- Furnace
- Anvil
- Crafting Table
- Workbench
- Spinning Wheel
- Tanning Rack
Each of them involves some kind of minigame except the furnace. (I get that crafting in the game starts out exactly like placing-items-on-grid-then-press-Craft, but I’d like to argue what happens after is the important bit.) All of them are controlled differently so there’s plenty of variation and the routine/order you’ll be playing them will depend on which recipe you’re following. So far, based on playthroughs I’ve watched and feedback I’ve received, some of them are pretty straightforward and relatively easy to understand like the anvil, furnace and crafting table. The rest might need some getting used to, but I did intend for them to have familiar controls to minigames from other games.
Furnace
It works exactly like how one would expect an oven to work. You put items in, you wait for things to finish then take them out once they’re done. If you put something in that easily burns, it’ll burn; otherwise, it’ll be fine to leave it there. It’s the crafting station where you just leave stuff in while you do other stuff.
Crafting time depends on the size of the ingot you’re trying to craft as well as the kind of metal you’re working with. You can combine smaller ingots here to make larger ones (however, you cannot split a large ingot to smaller ones). The furnace is also useful for re-smelting your failed crafting attempts on the anvil back to ingots. Aside from that, you can also craft alloys here once you have access to them. Lastly, it also produces a by-product called “slag” when smelting something, which can initially be useless early in the game but might be of use later on.
Anvil
The only crafting station with no menu and probably the poster child of the crafting stations. You put something you want to work with on top of it and hammer it out until you’re done. One unique thing where the anvil shines is when you’re working with metals; the sizes and the kind of metal matter. Some metals require more presses to get to the next form, and larger ingots have more stages than smaller ones.
Crafting Table
This is the most important crafting station as this is where your final item comes out of. The minigame is a timing-based one where you press a button as close to the center to make some crafting progress. The closer you are to the center when you press the button, the more progress you’ll make in the item you’re crafting.
Timing your presses here is important as it could affect the final quality of the item you’re crafting. Initially, the starting quality of your item is based on your crafting level, but it could still go up (or down) depending on how you perform in the minigame. This is the meat of the entire game. Other things like your fatigue levels and your skill sublevels also play a factor here. You can always aim to make high quality items if you want or mess everything up if there’s some need for it. It’s up to you.
As this is a timing-based minigame, it could be a bit frustrating to keep missing a lot. Don’t worry, missing still adds some progress to your crafting and at higher crafting levels, the less it’ll matter at affecting the final quality of your item.
Workbench
It works by holding down a button and releasing it once you’ve reached your desired shape. I based the idea on wood lathes that require holding down a chisel near the wood as it whittles it down to the right width or shape. It has 2 modes that you can switch between: poles/grips and discs/soles. You select a mode before starting the minigame and it will dictate what shapes the wood will transition into.
Poles/Grips
- Wood
- Pole
- Medium Grip
- Small Grip
- Sawdust
Discs/Soles
- Wood
- Wooden Hammerhead
- Wooden Disc
- Wooden Soles
- Sawdust
Like the anvil and furnace, the time it takes for wood to change shape is based mainly on the type of wood you’re working with. Some may take longer while others are relatively quick. This can be affected by your Woodworking sublevel.
It also produces sawdust as a byproduct of crafting every time you use it. Unlike the furnace though, you can intentionally craft sawdust by just holding down until the end. It is also virtually useless early in the game, but you may find it extremely useful later on.
Spinning Wheel
The crafting station for making cloth and yarn. The way it is controlled is based on how sewing machines use pedals and how some bikes need some extra effort to get things moving until you get some kind of momentum, where you can focus on maneuvering instead.
Like the references, to start crafting here, you have to continuously press a button to get the wheel going until it gains momentum. Similar to the workbench, the spinning wheel will go through multiple stage transitions. However, it’ll only do so as long as its wheel has momentum. You can leave it spinning if you want, but if you let it spin too much, it might make a much larger item than you would have wanted (provided you used enough materials). Once the wheel stops, you can either start it up again by restarting the wheel’s spinning or finish the crafting if it’s in the stage you want. It’s sort of a hybrid of the workbench and the furnace.
Here’s its uses:
- The spinning wheel can be used to craft yarn by using the appropriate materials.
- You can use that yarn to craft cloth which goes through from Small -> Medium -> Large stages for as long as you have enough yarn.
- You can also use it to piece together small strips of cloth or smaller cloth to make larger ones when combined with enough yarn.
- You can create cloth strips instantly by using any cloth; no minigame involved.
The effort it takes to get the wheel spinning depends on the kind of cloth you’re trying to make.
Additionally, the maximum stages the spinning wheel will go through depend on the materials you used to start the crafting process. That means, for example, if you used enough yarn to craft only up until Medium cloth, the spinning wheel will only transition from Small cloth to Medium cloth and that’s it.
Tanning Rack
The minigame is played by holding down a button until it is within a “crafting region”. Crafting progress is only gained while the minigame cursor is within this region, so you need to follow it around by holding down and/or releasing a button. Admittedly, this was the last minigame to be implemented and was mainly based on the usual minigame for fishing present in other games. (Fish leather exists, so I guess there is still some kind of connection here.)
It is mainly used to process hides to convert them to leather. You can also create leather and/or hide strips here instantly, skipping the minigame.
Hand-Crafted vs. Mass-Produced
So far, I think I’ve shown the level of involvement I want players to experience while crafting by enumerating the crafting stations in the game and how they each have their own unique way of working. I hope that this could give a general sense of what kind of experience you’ll be having while playing the game. Now, to maybe close things off as this entire post is getting longer than I anticipated, I’d like to answer a question I get quite often:
Would there be automation in the game?
The short answer is no.
I understand that automation is convenient, not just in games but also in real life. I know that it makes things easier and makes things go faster, but I think that it goes against the experience I’d like players to have. I think that it takes away the sweat-and-tears aspect of finishing something you’ve created, in a way that it depersonalizes the process. I’m sure some of you have your own favorite meals that come in packs or cans, but you believe nothing beats a home-cooked meal by someone you care about. Or, you find it much more satisfying when you worked hard for something rather than it just being handed to you. It just hits different when it’s made for you or by you.
Despite this though, I understand some conveniences may be in order to cut some of the tedium off. I have plans of introducing shortcuts in crafting like auto-crafting, but this will still need some sort of input from players. Nothing set in stone yet, aside from one thing: there'll be no systems/machines/contraptions that can or will craft things automatically for you.
Wrapping Things Up
I think that’s enough for now. On the next post, I’ll discuss recipes and the items and materials available in-game.
If you have any questions you'd like to get answered or if you want to know more about something I've discussed here, hop by the Discord server. You can also follow the game on Twitter/X.
Until next time!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1889160/Craggenrock/