Crafting

System Summary:

• Crafting in Homestead Arcana is fairly standard; collect items and use recipes to create better items.

• The game has several crafting stations, including a Cauldrun, Grill, Windmill, and more.

• Each station has its own collection of recipes and can even be upgraded to expand that collection.

• Recipes are found either by collecting new items or purchasing/finding the recipe in the world.

Contributions:

• Primary owner of the system after inheriting its proof-of-concept.

• Worked closely with design to flesh out and iterate on Crafting Stations, the Crafting UI, and the Recipe systems.

• Ensured the crafting system could save and load.

Porter Shop

System Summary:

• The Porter is a character who comes to the player’s homestead once a day to collect and deliver mail and buy and sell items to the player.

• The items Porter sells range from a random collection of consumables to essential upgrades and recipes.

Contributions:

• Wholly owned the Shop functionality of the Porter from initial ideation to finished implementation.

• Worked closely with design to implement system and UI design docs and perform iterations.

• Worked very closely with a paired designer to determine the needs of the system

  • This system was added late in development so a lot of time was spent to determine how it fits into the game and economy.

Broom Races

Contributions:

• Fully owned from initial concept to full technical implementation

• Worked very closely with a paired designer to determine the needs of the system and aid in content creation

  • Assisted in the creation of 50% of the races (8 races)

• Developed tools to aid in the creation of races

System Summary:

• Once unlocking the Broom, Huckleberry will guide the player to any of the nearest race bells found at the player’s main homestead or base camps.

• Each race bell has its own location-specific collection of races for the player.

• The player must complete races to unlock the full location collection.

• Once races are completed the player is given a reward.

Miasma Stashes

Contributions:

• Fully owned from initial concept to full technical implementation

System Summary:

• Miasma stashes are a collection of randomly spawning chests that the player can find while exploring the Miasma.

• Each time the player enters the Miasma a random amount of stashes is activated and populated with random items.

• Each stash is assigned a loot pool that it can pick items from with a variety of rarities and drop chances.

Storage Containers

Contributions:

• Fully owned from initial concept to full technical implementation

• Worked closely with design to implement system and UI design docs and perform iterations.

System Summary:

• Storage Containers are a way for the player to take items from their inventory and store them for an indefinite amount of time.

• Standard Storage Chests simply hold items and cannot communicate with any other systems.

• Upgraded Magic Storage Chests have a larger capacity and are able to be accessed from the Crafting UI for either ingredient collection or putting crafted items directly into storage.

Inventory Management

Contributions:

• Taking a basic player inventory grid and extending it to work across many different interfaces (Crafting, Porter-Shop, Storage Chests, etc.)

• Adding polish to item movement and controller support

• Extended inventory grid functionality including sorting, visual item filtering, and cross-inventory drag-and-drop

Character Creation & Wardrobe Customization

Contributions:

• Took existing back-end functionality for changing active character model pieces and developed the full system surrounding it.

• Worked closely with design to implement system and UI design docs and perform iterations.

• Created both new game Character Creation screens as well as Wardrobe Customization

• Created functionality for unlocking new customization pieces and crafting clothing recipes.

• Ensured Customization options save and loaded properly

System Summary:

• When starting a new game the player is able to customization the appearance of their character.

• These options range from hair color, eye color, hairstyle, and gender presentation.

• Once in-game, the player eventually will be given a Wardrobe which allows them to customize the clothing options their character is wearing. These options include Hats, Hair, Outfits, and Shoes.

Pause Menu Pages

Contributions:

• Finished the creation of the main player inventory page including adding stat, currency, and name info.

• Created several pause menu subpages

  • Map UI

    • Displays the current location of the player on the map, the location of Miasma scars, and the location of the fast travel positions.

    • Respond to player game progress by showing areas of the map still affected by the Miasma.

  • Options page

    • Implemented the UI for the pause menu Options page as well as much of the options functionality.

  • Recipes page

    • Implemented the Recipes tab that is used to display the recipes the player currently knows

Misc Gameplay and UI Contributions

During development, I also assisted in feature additions, refactors, and bug fixes for several other systems and gameplay elements that weren’t necessarily owned by me.

These include:

• Huckleberry homestead behavior and Conversation POI

  • To assist in the development of AI in the game I took charge of several aspects of the development of Huckleberry’s behavior.

  • Added to Huckleberry’s state-machine behavior for the homestead to have him react to the player tending plants or placing crafting stations.

  • Added conversation POIs as a way for narrative design to have Huckleberry lead the player to certain locations for dialogue.

• Mail and Package Hutch UI refactor

  • Took an existing pair of UI screens and refactored their UI and back-end behavior based on new design requirements.

• Plant Tending Upgrades

  • Added to the existing plant system a way for the player to upgrade the tools they use while tending. Each tool upgrade has a different effect ranging from a growth modifier buff to a chance to not consume compost when applied to plants.

• Fast Travel