A little later than I would have liked, but Woodworking as a feature is now complete in FORGE v2!
The original version of this feature took nearly a full week when I made it in v1 approximately 3 years ago. To have this feature done and dusted - including the UI and associated quests - in a single night is astonishing.
Want to know more? I'm gonna dive a bit deeper after the cut.
Full Resolution
I really enjoyed in v1 how fluid the act of woodworking was. Your player character didn't stop. The animations were always janky (and still are in v2 - I ran out of time) but overall this is a huge improvement.
The biggest change is actually the woodworking UI itself. It's using a dedicated State Machine state to disable player controls, and keep very specific UI elements active (such as the Resource HUD showing you how much Wood you have in your inventory.)
With the Inventory rework, I think the new layout style is worlds above what the previous version was. I'm still actually kind of on the fence about all of the critical window controls being at the bottom. In normal UI/UX design, your overall controls are on the bottom right corner - such as OK and Cancel. I'm kind of having the bottom sector of the UI layout do a little more heavy lifting, which established design principles also sort of allow (See also: Windows UI with Apply-OK-Cancel.) I also opted to have the crafting windows in a modal window rather than a full-screen window like v1 had. While I liked the idea of having a thing that grabs and demands your entire focus, it created some really awkward transitions. With a modal in this format, I can still showcase @LurkinPandaNSFW 's art (well, a placeholder in this instance) while keeping the player's attention.
I also decided to use color a little more aggressively. I'm not really that smart when it comes to "color theory," much to the chagrin of my art friends and my wife, but red seems to be a clear color to me that says "uh sorry, no." The button colors I'm trying to find some consistency with in that red buttons are ones with more "destructive" operations, such as closing a UI window or consuming items to craft. Yellow seems neutral so a help button that's yellow felt right - it's more of an inviting color.
The UI panel is green because it's a easier color on the eyes, and it seems to draw you to it. It's dense with information so I think it should be nicer to look at.
Of course, I'm talking out of my arse here, I really don't have any formal UI/UX training aside from a consultation we got once for Salt of Man.
These are all prefabs anyway, so if I decide to just completely redo everything I can do so without having to retool or REWRITE THE WHOLE GAME LOL.
Deadlines :/
I hit my deadline hard. I didn't finish woodworking until past that deadline which I guess is fine but I'm still a little bummed that I let my scheduling and motivation dictate my progress here. I saved too much for the 11th hour and it sort of shows. Even though FORGE v2 is a lot tighter and feels so much better - all I can really see is how much I have left to do.
Even though that gap is closing.
Really fast.
WHERES THE DAMN BUILD
I want to get a few more bugs (such as UI hide/show weirdness and animation errors) resolved before launching this. I'll be making v1 and v2 live for you to play after I consult with my team and present v2.
Also there's still some lingering weirdness with the woodworking quest that I need to finish. Keen-eyed amoung you may see a difference between the intro quest (Where you hit the points of interest in the village) and the woodworking one - it seems quest objectives like the amount of wood you need to chop and the amount of boards you make at the mill aren't tracked. Debugging time!
Please be patient a bit longer!