A Rhythmic Crafting System?

[HexMozart88]

One thing I've always enjoyed in games is rhythmic button-presses. I play games with a controller, and I like when you can press buttons in a rhythmic sequence. So what do you think abut a crafting system that includes this?
Here's what I was thinking: A to select an item, Y to cook/craft, X to remove an item, B to cancel crafting.

Anyone have any ideas for this?

 

[ZombieKidzRule]

I would love to give you good advice, but there are a few games that I actually don’t like. Bullet Hell and Rhythm games happen to be two of them.

I can tolerate pattern games, but I skip right over rhythm games.

Hopefully other people who like them can give you some great advice!

 

[AquaEcho]

It would probably be similar to Fantasy Life's crafting system

 

[Iron_Brew]

One thing I've always enjoyed in games is rhythmic button-presses. I play games with a controller, and I like when you can press buttons in a rhythmic sequence. So what do you think abut a crafting system that includes this?
Here's what I was thinking: A to select an item, Y to cook/craft, X to remove an item, B to cancel crafting.

Anyone have any ideas for this?

AHEM

The only idea for this:

You must craft



B e e t s

 

[TheAM-Dol]

As a once-upon-a-time addict of Project Diva, rhythm games are just addicting to me. However, it's about perfecting timing and feeling cool while doing it. My inner rockstar wants people looking over my shoulder being like, "whoa man! You press those controller buttons so skillfully!"

Rhythm mini-games in games...don't usually achieve that kind of feeling. It's just a distraction.
If I were to put a rhythm crafting game in, I would maybe do something vaguely like the Atelier series, but rather than the crafting ingredients increasing the item quality, it could be the performance that increases the item quality.
The problem is that - just like Atelier - after you have crafted an item, it really starts to be come a real chore to have to constantly play a minigame just to craft an item (especially in a game where crafted items are used regularly and are important to the overall game).

Spoiler: Some ideas in mechanics

For example, at first it can be difficult to master button mashing correctly, and not everyone has a sense of rhythm. So I would provide "difficulty modes" with every crafting recipe. Higher difficulties would reward better quality/higher quantity of said item, encouraging perfection.
I would also tie a score with it and a score tracker so players could also have that feeling over reaching a new high score or tracking their improvement over time to see that they are actually getting better.
Higher scores could also also lead to better quality/higher quantity items. In fact, you could make the quality/quantity thing based solely on score, and difficulty just adds more buttons to press to give the player more opportunities to gain higher scores.

Since it is only a mini game, I would never make a long song for any of this. Maybe 30 seconds at most as we would want to make sure players can get back to what they were doing.

For accessibility (and so players don't feel like they have the potential of wasting their ingredients if they give a poor performance) I think it would be important to offer a "practice mode" or a "high score mode" as well where players can play any of the item songs they want without ingredient requirements so they can learn the songs and hopefully provide a better performance once it comes time to craft the item for real. Allowing players to still set a high score in this mode would also be encouraging to players who just enjoy this game mode and don't want to spend time gathering ingredients just to play this mini game. (though this will also contradict with the song-skip mode I describe below. You'd need to work out the kinks.)

As for the Atelier problem, I would maybe allow players to skip it either once they have completed the crafting once (this is likely the most accessible for players, but pretty boring) or only allow skipping the song once they have managed to complete a certain difficulty of the song - such as completing the song on hard will allow you to skip the mini-game (I think this one would be more engaging for players since it provides a goal for them to attain.)
You could just give players a "default" quality/quantity of an item if they skip, but I think this actually will be counter productive to the whole purpose of skipping. If the purpose of skipping is to get players back to the part of the game they find the most interesting (exploration/combat/whatever), then only giving players default quality/quantity items is still going to make them feel forced to still engage with the mini-game because the best way to maximize their item production is to play the game properly and not skip it. Basically, skipping becomes a punishment.
Instead, I would opt for providing a quality/quantity based on their most recent high score. This way, if players are satisfied with their current score, they can continue to receive items of that quality/quantity. However, if players wish to improve the quality/quantity of the items they are receiving, they can play the mini-game more in order to improve the item.

One of the important things with problem song-based rhythm games is timing. I've played a few small-production rhythm games on the stream a few times and the "notes" the player had to press never felt connected to the song. They didn't feel tightly bound to the music, which in a game all about your timing, I think this is problematic. I can't say for sure where this comes from, but if I had to guess, it's because the logic of the notes is often just like "map data" and the music is "frame data", so if the game loads the map faster than the music then everything goes out of sync - even if by a few milliseconds (but those milliseconds are important - again, it's a genre all about timing). I don't know how "professional" rhythm games do it, but I theorized in the past you would want to sync the game somehow to the sample rate of the audio. Rather than syncing the game's logic to the frame rate (the visuals), you'd sync the game to the sample rate (the audio). If you did this seriously, I would invest a lot of time learning and reading and experimenting with making rhythm games to ensure timing feels tight every time.

 

[gstv87]

wouldn't this be like the music puzzles in Ocarina Of Time?
the spells in Constantine also come to mind.

 

[NamEtag]

So are you talking cooking mama, or Atelier? Or maybe that fishing game that has cooking in it.

Overall, I think there's potential in a crafting system where you queue multiple items in one craft, and juggle them all as the rhythm game. Different items affect the quality and rhythm of items near them, and you can build entire "recipes" to maximize quality or byproducts and deal with the mass production issue.

 

[ShadowDragon]

I didn't know any rhymtics crafting unless I saw the video AquaEcho posted.
it can be intresting for it, the better you do, the better the outcome.

the worse you do, the worse item you get (or none).

if it fit the game mechanic you build, go for it, it looks intresting though.

 

[HexMozart88]

Oh boy, so it seems as though a couple of people have misunderstood me. I'm not making an actual rhythm game with songs and stuff. What I mean by rhythmic is sort of how a fighting game is rhythmic. You get into the flow of button presses.

 

[gstv87]

What I mean by rhythmic is sort of how a fighting game is rhythmic. You get into the flow of button presses.

so... Constantine?
you speak the incantation by syllables much like charging a hadoken?

 

[HexMozart88]

I suppose so? I haven't played the game, LOL.

 

[gstv87]

quick show of it by the 5 minute mark


additionally, it could be more like Hogwarts Legacy:

 

[NamEtag]

I suppose so? I haven't played the game, LOL.

So.....whether or not you've played the games, I think you should move the topic forward.

 

[HexMozart88]

I don't know what that means.

 

[NamEtag]

Discuss the ideas in the thread? Elaborate on the kind of system you want? Format a new system that you or someone else could implement? Piece together relevant plugins that could make it?

 

[HexMozart88]

OK, so I really like the ideas of the two games that were proposed. I feel as though this idea might not work for keyboard unless I stick to one area of the keyboard, like the arrow keys, or the numpad (which might be a problem for laptops).

An example of something I was thinking, at least graphically, would be this:


But instead of drag and drop from all of your items, you use the left stick on your controller to scroll through a limited list of items pertaining to the recipe you've selected. Press A on each of those items, and then Y to craft.
And of course, it's not just cooking. If you're making a weapon, you'd see an anvil, stuff like that. As far as scripts for this, heck if I know because I'm not using RM.

 

[NamEtag]

OK, so I really like the ideas of the two games that were proposed. I feel as though this idea might not work for keyboard unless I stick to one area of the keyboard, like the arrow keys, or the numpad (which might be a problem for laptops).

An example of something I was thinking, at least graphically, would be this:


But instead of drag and drop from all of your items, you use the left stick on your controller to scroll through a limited list of items pertaining to the recipe you've selected. Press A on each of those items, and then Y to craft.
And of course, it's not just cooking. If you're making a weapon, you'd see an anvil, stuff like that. As far as scripts for this, heck if I know because I'm not using RM.

The video was primarily focused on the recipe portion, but if you're talking about multiple valid ingredients, is the selection going to change the properties of the final product?

Also uh, is there going to be more to the rhythmic portion? A single timed press is pretty standard, but it's got its pros and cons related to monotony and mass production.

 

[HexMozart88]

There probably will be more to the rhythmic pressing, I just haven't gotten that far yet because I'm not working on that game at the moment.

As for the first question, it might. That's something I'm going to need to play around with.