Do you like the crafting grid?

[burli]

Shaped crafting is an interesting feature... for about 20 minutes. With increasing amount and complexity it becomes more and more annoying. You need to search in wikis for the recipe or you install a crafting guide.

From now on the crafting grid is more or less useless because it is just one more step for crafting, but it doesn't has any more use than store the items.

What do you think about the crafting grid?

[Enrikoo]

I don't like it because it needs a recipe book in inventory (must be in minetest team mods).

[burli]

I would like to know why you like the crafting grid

[Enrikoo]

I don't need to say that i like it but its a nice grid but no people can work in inventory with 9 crafting square, only with 4 and it needs a work bench to get 9 crafting squares.

[zing269]

I like the simplicity and uncluttered interface of the crafting grid. Everything I've seen suggested as a replacement seems overly complicated.

I dislike how a recipe book mod is almost required once the number of recipes grows.

[AccidentallyRhine]

Relevant issue #1435

I cannot find the discussion anymore but there was dev talk about implementing a crafting guide. Not one that takes space in your inventory but just a UI tab or something similar.

That said, I like the crafting grid as is. It works because it is simple. However, like with many other aspects of Minetest Game, the craft grid has been made too easily accessible (from a game design perspective) in the name of player convenience. An obvious reference level is the workbench 3x3 & hand 2x2 dynamic from Minecraft . The manufacture of complex 3x3 items could probably benefit from a specialized crafting node.

[Linuxdirk]

I always imagine how much benefit it would give if – in addition to the 3x3 crafting grit MTG would have a 5x5 crafting table.

[burli]

Where is the benefit to have more and complex recipes you can't remember?

[AccidentallyRhine]

Where is the benefit to have more and complex recipes you can't remember?

The benefit of Linuxdirk's suggestion would combat mods accidentally using the same craft recipes (ex. advtrains rails vs boostcart rails were a near miss). It would also be really helpful to create recipes for big items that need to be expensive to make, using many materials. Currently, to do so, mods must resort to a matryoshka doll solution of crafting sub-components out of raw materials and then the final item/node out of those sub-components.

[burli]

Well, how should this work on mobile devices? It is difficult to place a recipe in a 3*3 grid. A 5*5 grid would be only annoying. Or if someone wants to play with a gamepad.

[Linuxdirk]

Where is the benefit to have more and complex recipes you can't remember?

You can have a wider variety of recipes mods can use without interfering with existing mods. More variety in general regarding recipes. More realistic recipes etc. It just would help mod makers to use more advanced recipes without nasty hacking.

Imagine a chest mod allowing small, medium, and large chests. Instead of surrounding a chest with wood which would make it thicker but not larger, imagine

Code: Select all

x x x     x x x x     x x x x x
x   x     x     x     x       x
x x x     x     x     x       x
          x x x x     x       x
                      x x x x x

... or build a furnace like it really is:

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x x x x x
x       x
x v v v x
x o   o x
x   o   x

Where x is cobble, v is stone and o is iron ingots. You need cobble for the outer case of the oven, then you put in stone to get a clean surface you can put the goods on and at the bottom you create a pan where you put the coal.

[v-rob]

So, to make a furnace, it would require 16 cubic meters of stone/cobble, not to mention some 1/3 a cubic meter of steel? 8 square meters is bad enough to make one cubic meter, but 16 1/3 meters? I would much prefer placing one cobble in some input slots and have a bunch of output slots showing my possibilities. It would be much cleaner and simpler. Of course, there's a mod for that, and I would use it, but it requires a crafting table.

[Linuxdirk]

So, to make a furnace, it would require 16 cubic meters of stone/cobble,

Since you can carry around 3168 cubic meters of cobble 16 cubhic meters for a furnace are absolutely reasonable :D

I would much prefer placing one cobble in some input slots and have a bunch of output slots showing my possibilities.

Yes, this is how most crafting systems in games work nowadays. Or simply pick stuff from a list and have the needed materials automatically taken from your inventory.

The API should support both systems. Games or mods then could decide what to implement.

[Sokomine]

Since you can carry around 3168 cubic meters of cobble 16 cubhic meters for a furnace are absolutely reasonable :D

Don't tell anyone! But...furnaces are a good way to dispose of cobble. Just leave the middle slot empty and craft 8 stacks of cobble into 1 stack of furnaces. And then dispose of the furnaces. No more black holes created due to all those piles of compressed cobble!

Back to topic: I prefer "machines" that take materials and turn them into something else. As far as crafting is concerned, unified_inventory with its integrated craft guide and copy-to-craft-grid-function is extremly useful. For some often crafted items (chests, tools, doors, ..), crafting directly may sometimes be more convenient. In singleplayer, I usually play in a survival world but without hostile mobs and with creative priv so that obtaining entire stacks from unified_inventory provides the materials.

Regarding gameplay, I'd prefer the player to have a book where the player automaticly stores craft receipes which he/she has learned from mobs. Crafting could then work similar to the anvils in RealTest: Insert material and book/blueprint (=select receipe in the book) and get crafted item.

[dawgdoc]

... or build a furnace like it really is:

Code: Select all

x x x x x
x       x
x v v v x
x o   o x
x   o   x

Where x is cobble, v is stone and o is iron ingots. You need cobble for the outer case of the oven, then you put in stone to get a clean surface you can put the goods on and at the bottom you create a pan where you put the coal.

For the player to build his first furnace, is he required to depend on mob drops or an initial inventory supply for those first three iron ingots?

[firefox]

Currently, to do so, mods must resort to a matryoshka doll solution of crafting sub-components out of raw materials and then the final item/node out of those sub-components.

i like this system, it feels like actually constructing stuff.
well, it's annoying if it used for everything, like making a tool head, handle and string/glue,
but it makes sense to be used for complex items that would otherwise require a larger grid.

especially for clockworks it's the best solution, since you can make different kinds of gears and then put them together as usual.
that's just like crafting bricks from stone and then use the bricks to craft a wall block.
better than putting lots of stones in a large 8x8 grid :P

[Linuxdirk]

For the player to build his first furnace, is he required to depend on mob drops or an initial inventory supply for those first three iron ingots?

Think further :) This could be part of a completely new subgame.

Code: Select all

x w w w x     Fire Bowl
x       x     x = Cobble
x x x x x     w = Wooden Planks

This can be used to smelt any type of stone and any type of ingots but breaks after smelting a total of three items.

[Byakuren]

If crafting items that are solely there to be crafting components for other recipes are actually a good thing, you could still have them in non-shaped systems.

One thing they are good for is making automation take more engineering effort in mods like pipeworks that add automated crafting.

[burli]

Imagine a chest mod allowing small, medium, and large chests. Instead of surrounding a chest with wood which would make it thicker but not larger, imagine

Code: Select all

x x x     x x x x     x x x x x
x   x     x     x     x       x
x x x     x     x     x       x
          x x x x     x       x
                      x x x x x

Well, you can also have recipes like two chests to make a double chest or two by two chests to make an even larger chest or 3 by 3 chests to make a mega chest, which doesn't really makes sense at all.

... or build a furnace like it really is:

Code: Select all

x x x x x
x       x
x v v v x
x o   o x
x   o   x

Where x is cobble, v is stone and o is iron ingots. You need cobble for the outer case of the oven, then you put in stone to get a clean surface you can put the goods on and at the bottom you create a pan where you put the coal.

Yeah, but why? Who can remember all these recipes? There is a point where this shaped crafting gets ridiculous and annoying. It will be just an additional step between the recipe book and the crafted item.

And as I mentioned before: try to use a 5x5 grid on a mobile device or try it with a gamepad. That's not fun at all

And btw: if you want to build a bigger furnace, how about to actually build it? Like the tinkers smeltery or a blast furnace from some Minecraft mods

[TechNolaByte]

for crafting guides use unified inventory which offers the best crafting guide as of now
it even has an api so mods can register new crafts for machines(like for example say a grinder which putting in 1 cobble gives 1 gravel)
if crafting feels time consuming install unified inventory plus which helps crafting become MUCH faster

[BBmine]

I don't see anything wrong with the crafting grid. I like it.

[JTE]

I utterly detest the crafting grid in general.

Aside from the obvious completely oblique shaped crafting recipes you were originally intended to blindly guess at until something makes sense, there is also the other matter of how much material is required being entirely dependant on the aesthetic whims of the recipe. In real life, you could take the same block of wood and shape it into any kind of tool you want. In Minecraftian worlds, you need two more blocks of wood for a pickaxe, and either two or three total for an axe -- it varies!

Contrast that to a system which simply requires an arbitrary amount of each material. Sure, it might take ten or more ingots to make a piece of armor if the crafting system doesn't have to adhere to a specific grid or shape -- but that's actually a good thing, because it means the crafting recipes CAN be more properly balanced to the actual value of the materials being used and the item being created. The need for over-crafting in recipes where you get 6 to 8 items for a single use of the recipe would be completely eliminated, as would adjusting the worldgen to make things more rare or common based on how many of them the crafting recipe requires. (Or even adding sub-materials like shards and sticks, just because a whole unit would be too much!)

Ideally, I would replace the crafting system entirely with a recipe book. You've got ten wood in your inventory, just press a button to turn it into a boat. Or a door. Or a chair. The recipes don't even need to be unique anymore, they won't override eachother just because they use the same exact materials and amounts sometimes. Might even turn it into a gameplay element where learning or trading for new recipes is a part of the crafting system and you only know how to make some basic tools to start with. Encourages commerce that way too -- You don't know how to craft something you want? Either buy one from someone else's shop or trade an extra recipe you don't need to someone else who has the one you're looking for.

[hajo]

a system which simply requires an arbitrary amount of each material.

There is a mod easy-crafting-table - you put in some materials, it shows all items
that can be crafted from that, then you select & take out one of that.

[rubenwardy]

Something I'm working on:

[texmex]

This is so great, rubenwardy. Keep developing!