Looking for some, game programming

[Orami]

I am currently programming a game in which I wish to include metal working.  Now if any of you are gamers you know that games make things too simple because lets face it different materials require different methods of handling and treating.  Would anyone be able to give me a basic idea of what goes into metal working?  Does heating metal too much damage the end product?  If so is there a key ratio to follow?   I understand part of metalworking is fluxing the metal to remove excess gasses, but not all metals require this especially some alloys. 

My current system requires the player to find and mine ore then refine the ore into metal.  So in short ore(weight is multiplied by purity to give an accurate end result) + flux + fuel = metal (as long as the fuel burns hot enough to melt the given ore).  My understanding is that one way to harden metal is to heat it then quickly quench it how do you know what temperature to heat the metal to so it will harden properly?  Any other insight or documents are welcomed as I would like the system to be accurate and real world applicable to some degree. 

[Glenn]

As a game developer you can make your game a fantasy of myth and misinformation or you can make it real, just as in real life. I suggest you spend the time needed to join a blacksmith group near you. Go to the meetings, meet REAL blacksmiths, the ones that actually build a fire, get things hot, and hit things with a hammer. The smell of coal smoke, the heat and radiant energy of the fire, and the sounds of pounding on hot metal, etc. can best be explained by you being there. Just ask and someone will show you how to get metal hot, give you a hammer, and let YOU hit the hot metal.

Like anything else, one taste is just that, a taste. Go to more meetings and talk with the old guys, the people that been there and done that. Still, THEY come to the meetings to learn, whether it is a trick or two, a different technique, or to exchange information. Bring a note book, pencils, camera, etc so you can record what you experience. Think of it as research, and ACTUALLY stepping into the real world you wish to recreate in your game.  THIS IS the answer to your questions.

 

Or you can pack a lunch and a cold drink and read the IForgeIron site and archive (cover to cover). Your questions have been discussed at length already. For instance there are entire sections of the site dedicated to heat treating, making knives, building a forge, etc.

 

 

[Carl Greywolf]

As a gamer I wonder what benefit this reality would bring to a game.

Crafting systems on games are often the bugbear of gamers. for example it takes 10 ore to make 1 ingot, 5 ingot to make 1 knife. That's a lot of gathering just to make a simple knife. Add the other gamers hunting ore in the same areas and you have a recipe for KSing and QQ (Gamer speak for stealing and crying/complaining to game makers/managers).

The fields around the forges would have to be knee deep in ore just to provide enough.

A way around it could be to have a NPC vendor for ore, but that introduces a whole new set of problems, IGC (in game cash) is required to buy the ore, this brings in the gold farmers and gold sellers that provide IGC for real money via out of game transactions. These can also be fraudulent transactions and can rebound on the game provider's reputation.

I've just had a quick chat with a "hard core" gamer, She said "unless this is a dedicated crafting game it'll s*ck There are gamers that love the crafting aspect but they're rare. Keep it simple and fast with minimal mats for best results" This is her own opinion and she isn't a crafter in games. 

She also said "Gathering of mats is a grind, it's just too time-sucky"

My 2cents, HTH

[Orami]

Yes, what I will call the WoW(World of Warcraft) effect... The difference between what I am working on and lets say every other game out there is that in most games dungeons and the like are all designed.  People find ways to make a shortcut here and there and it becomes just farming for endless amounts of time to get your X ore for Y ingots to make Z weapon.  I am hoping  to change this around a bit because every time you enter a dungeon it is different without going too technical I can say each time you play it is something new(I'm an older gamer and remember the roguelike games moria/angband) these levels are designed in similar ways.  I dislike WoW and similar game's crafting systems as they are not in depth in the least.  No game out there gives justice to what the actual work is in the real world.  I think by adding a little real world information to a game I could possibly teach people the basics of different crafts.  I am a woodworker as a hobby and I can say that there are not as many people crafting things as there used to be.  Metal working and forging I think is harder than running a wood lathe or a miter saw.  These are skilled trades that take years to learn and many more to master if ever.  Give people a small taste something fairly simple, but not overly complex give them the ability to make custom alloys for their gear.  Some alloys will be too soft for a weapon, but could be better used as a decoration as is with the real world I wouldn't carry a pure gold sword around because pure gold is soft and it would just do a bad job.  I am just asking for maybe some thoughts I always thought to myself crafting a sword should not be as simple as to gather up components and then 5 seconds at a anvil magically have a sword appear.  I mean lets take actual sword forging for example it takes a lot of work to make a good sword it also takes a lot of skill I want to emulate this in my game.  As for your ore problem you mentioned - my plan is to add a few different mines to the game all of which are instanced.  So when you go hunting for ores you aren't racing to it against other people since you will likely be teaming up with friends(Who I assume wouldn't steal from you or maybe you need new friends).  While instances might sound bad - and there will be some load times I feel like actually going down and clearing out parts of the mines to get ores so you or a smith can make you gear to get further down in the dungeons will give the game more playability than say WoW where you know what is around every corner and raids are just like ballroom dancing.  Randomness thinking on your feet - that is something to teach people.  I shall link to what I have been working on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LmlOIQgOrc still very early alpha. 

[Carl Greywolf]

I tried WoW and found it yawn worthy.

You have a decent idea on the mechanics of a gamer, "Must acquire!" Too easy and it's boring too hard and it's a a waste of time I'll buy it

On the whole gamers want it fast. Not too fast but faster than the other gamers.

Instances seem to work well in Lotro and other games, keep the load times low though or see above

Adding a degree of realism could be of benefit, after all it isn't a 5 second job to make anything let alone a sword. As for make 45 iron knives then unlock the recipe to make a war ballista this is laughable. (Wow taught me if i make enough clockwork toys I can make a helicopter  )

I shall hand over to the experienced Smiths who have gone before me and recommend you read,read and read this forum, Glenn wasn't joking about packed lunch and a drink, there is so much to learn and a few days reading hardly scratches the surface. I am a newcomer to metalworking and I find I'm learning something new from every thread. Sometimes it's a snippet or tip others a dire warning about fumes... 

Have fun and keep up with the ideas, the vid you shared shows promise, reminded me of Wolfenstein I half expected to see a cutout mob

Oh and a final word from my Hard core gamer, "If you have housing, it'd be cool if you could make stuff for that... or even build the house"

[Orami]

Housing will be on the "overworld" as I am calling it and yes there will be decorations.  I intend for everything to be player made aside from the most basic things.  Likely with plots of land to buy and yes the houses will be player designed/built I really hate prefabs for such things everyone in the same house except hey they are different colors.  I somewhat feel the hallways are too wide at times, but that is to be determined once everything is in and running.  Also no, making basic items will not skill you up and really all in all a sword is a sword, but if you have someone with a higher overall ability (these number based systems annoy me as well) and I define ability for a smith at least as a combination of strength, constitution, metallurgy, forging, tools you are using, and proper preparations for the job a skilled smith will do a better job than some strong brute with no knowledge(the difference between a high quality item and a low quality item is massive).  It will suffice to say that starting out even with the best materials available to you your character will still have trouble figuring out how to craft these materials into the components.   I do believe I will spend weeks on the crafting code if not more and then test it and refine it as time goes on.  I put about 10 - 12 hours into coding and creating content a day at the moment since I am between contracts, but hey maybe it will be the new game to play.

[Carl Greywolf]

Just read your post out loud... Gamer girl said "Sounds interesting, definitely sounds interesting. I'd certainly be interested in playing it"

You could have a hit on your hands, after all WoW started as a "I wonder if..."

[Steve Sells]

remember ya cant give way what you don't have, meaning How can you make a game teaching anything you yourself do not know.  One suggestion to get around  teaching things you can not actually do yourself, is what I will call the Hogworts method from the Harry Potter series.  In the books the kids are in a school to learn to be wizards, and while we never actually get to do this stuff ourselves, through the miracle of books, time progresses and the characters in the books (game players) learn things, and expend effort to get getter and learn newer skills.

This means in your game, if a player wants to make his own sword, first that player has to apprentice, we never actually discuss what that apprenticeship is, but we just state it as a fact they are doing so.  Maybe it will take X turns to find a teacher, then Y turns to gather tools to start, Then Z amount of turns to gather materials like ore and fuel.  Then W turns to produce a small sword after that.  After V number of blades player is pronounced a Journeyman Sword Smith and each one made after that has better qualities than the first ones, like a progressive amount like first 5 blades are poor and only do a D1 damage, the next 5 are D2,  the next 5 D3 +2 or somethings like that...  also add in the abuse they can take before breaking as well as the damage done,   Also the more experience at making blades the player has,  the greater value and they can be sold to other players that may not wish to make anything for themselves.  Later they may choose to learn War Hammer or Great Sword or War Axe for next kills, so once again apprenticeship and do this all over again. 

this way you do not have to actually learn to be a smith, but still can include some of those ideas, and allow those that wish to pass on this faction of your game to do so, and allows those of us that enjoy that creation stuff to do it and provide weapons to the others and income to themselves.

 

Just a thought from a dice throwing gamer

Edited March 13, 2015 by Steve Sells

[ThomasPowers]

Quite easy to do it authentically: First the person wanting the weapon apprentices to a miner for several years to learn how to mine and process ore, then they apprentice  to a coaler for several years to learn how to efficiently make charcoal used for smelting. Then they apprentice to an iron smelter for several years learning how to smelt iron from ore.  Then they apprentice to a smith for years learning how to forge iron and then to a bladesmith learning how to forge blades, then to a grinder/polisher and then to a hilter and then a tanner and then a sheath maker and Bingo you have made a blade!

In real life one person did NOT do the entire process end to end not having a long enough life to become an expert at each stage and not having the capital equipment to stand idle while they progress through different stages---why making a blade was handled by a lot of DIFFERENT people.  Much like how traditional Japanese swords are made today: the smelter is not the smith, the smith is not the polisher, the polisher doesn't make the tsuka, etc.

If you don't take the time to become an expert what you end up with is generally a blade MUCH worse than buying a cheap one at the market.  Now if you want to use a blade and survive you better dedicate a lot of time learning and keeping in practice so double all the previous times to allow for time spent on that in parallel to becoming an expert in blademaking from the ground up.

Look at "Iron Age Currency Bars"  Iron was traded from the folks who made it to the folks who used it pretty much day 1 of the iron age!  Note that the earlier works on smithing go into detail how to test new bought iron to see what it's qualities are and what it would be good for.

(And yes I studied under a swordmaker and have helped with a bloomery crew for a decade smelting ore into wrought iron and am NOT an expert in either craft!)

As for melting the metal; in western europe melting steel is associated with Huntsman in the 1700's; early smelting was done in bloomeries that didn't melt it.  Later medieval going into Renaissance used the indirect process that smelts the ore into cast iron and then they melted the cast iron and reducing its carbon content until it became iron/steel.

Crucible steel was produced in central Asia much earlier; (not all of which was wootz BTW), and was not a common item in Europe; each find of some pretty much re-writes the history books!

So given a bar of iron/steel I would check for hot shortness, cold shortness and carbon content. (S,P,C)  If produced from real wrought iron I would check slag content and "coarseness" (which can be improved by repeated folding and welding which will also reduce the carbon content!)

For sources Cathedral Forge and Waterwheel, Gies & Gies, is a good high level overview.  Divers arts, Theophilus, written in 1120 can give you a feel for how things tended to be done and described (it's where we get the "quench in the urine of a red headed boy"!)  De Re Metallica, Agricola, is a great Renaissance work on mining and smelting with cutting edge Renaissance technology and "Sources for the history of the science of steel" C.S.Smith, has a great list of renaissance quenchants in it each one supposedly making the steel stronger, harder, whiter, etc. (quench in worm water or radish juice for example)

[Orami]

@Steve Yes I can't give a game that teaches something I don't know, but that is the reason I am starting my research into this.  Someone who has been doing this kind of work or hobby for a while would have a more in depth understanding than what I can get by simply watching youtube and maybe some better ideas of how to design a system that works better than what I have in mind.   I'm not looking at exact numbers as far as make 5 and then your next 5 will be better I personally think that a combination of skills plays a role in how quickly you progress in any trade not just how many things you have made.

[Frosty]

Welcome aboard, glad to have you. Now I'm happy I didn't finish and send my first reply. Close one that! <grin>

There are a lot of factors to writing games, even dice games. We took turns DMing and I'd spend a couple weeks writing and testing before I was ready for the guys. How complex a comp game are we talking about here? RPG or visual action (whatever it's called, I used to call them simulator games but . . . )

If you're thinking of a text heavy RPG, don't bother explaining or trying to teach folk anything. Just establish a set of requirements and mods. For instance Character's: Knowledge 0-9, experience 0-9,  (type counts of course)  Ore; availability, quantity, purity, 0-9, type, 0-6, Portage cost, etc. fuel type 0-3, availability 0-9, workforce, experience and cost, 3x 0-9, Refinement, 4x 0-9, Manufacture, (see mine help) etc. etc.

Even just making a set of mods to work with a random number generator makes for a long list to achieve even mediocre realism. For example this is how I made my Ranger's armor without explaining much of anything. Bearing in mind I have a lifetime's knowledge and experience working metal of all kinds so I was able to BS the DM where I played Richard. To maintain dexterity so my boots of striding didn't suffer too much of a dexterity penalty my armor had to be very light so plate was out. That meant my hit mods weren't so great what I came up with was. Mythryl Mist. wow, I just googled it and feel I have to say this is Bilbo's maille coat mythryl inspired. Anyway, Ranger Rick had won a couple tattoos, one shrunk whatever he held when invoking it. He claimed a coat of mythryl mail owned by a giant, a big one and shrunk it to fit. Mythryl was already very tight maille and being shrunk to about 1/6 made it like a mist.

Funny thing, nobody I played Richard against ever asked what happened to the weight so I didn't have to make something up. I was able to make a tidy profit by using the tattoo to shrink other folk's items better still it made carrying loot so much easier.

What it all came down to was armor with a +8 to hit Mythryl base without the dexterity penalty. One paragraph of description to the current DM and that was it. all reduced to 2, 2 digit modifiers. Not counting a little artful BS but what's dice rolling RPG without artful BS? In two cases at tournies I was asked by the presiding DM to explain and justify Mythryl Mist. Neither knew diddly about titanium except it's space ship metal so it was easy peasy BSing. A DM at another tourney decided to disallow Richard's maille so I started packing my gear to go and left.

A DM shouldn't be too controlling, NO module survives contact with the players and a completely contrived game is zero fun.

To sumup a longness of post, my advice is reduce all the crafty stuff to a set of random number mods with only as much explanation as absolutely necessary to fit it to a realm. Let the player's imaginations fill in the details but be ready to call, "failed" when necessary to keep on track.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Charles R. Stevens]

As an old school gamer we didn't appreciate having computer "gamers" steel our tittle and even the name of our type of game (Role Play Game). This is what we call "reality modeling" and to do this right requires research into what you want to model, as well as an understanding of the issues of realism vs playability. D&D and Traveler being at the two extremes with GRPS some where in between.

A sword smith isn't much of an adventurer, so some one wanting to "make a sword" will it her commission one or be of an eccentric class (such as a wizard) who actually may need to control the creation of said sword from insertion so as to create something special (magical). Depending on the form of "RPG" you are designing, you may be god like and be creating the society that creates the sword that the king commissions or you are playing the part of the guy that needs the sword so he can go slay dragons. In any event, you need to decide what part of reality (players perspective) you are modeling and the level of detail required. Now computers make calculating things so much faster (but it makes the program so much bigger) so ask to make a game like traveler playable, but even then "sort hand" or mathematical equivalents are useful as it saves memory and processor resources, as sound and video are only expressed as changes from the last image, or last few seconds of the tune to save resources, reality modeling balances playability with the degree of realism you are after. So is this an epic quest to manufacture Excalibur or is this about using Excalibur to unite Britain? 

Understanding how the Iron Age economy (materially, labor and coinage) worked, certainly will lead to better game design, as will understanding the process that leads from ore to sword (casting a steel sword in Conan or arrow heads in Robin Hood) will make make for a more realistic story, but it will only lead to a short bit of mathematical modeling, unless you making the sword is the game.

rant over

[Frosty]

I forgot that one Charles! I've never played a module where a player had time to make much of anything beyond breakfast. I'd intended to bring it up but side tracked myself.

What rant, where is it? I have a -2 on 11 to devine on a d20.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Charles R. Stevens]

Yes Master Frost, but at our age we need dice big enough to read the numbers!