I'm muling over some ideas for certain sections of my game while I wrestle some code together (my 1st 3D project). And there is some crafting I want my players to be able to do... except I dont want the player to be able to directly control thier character in this particular part of the game.. To give an example. The character has in his inventory a peice of sharp metal and some wood. The player places these items in the characters "work area"... in time the character works out: "Sharp metal cuts wood" and fashions a crude woodworking tool. So now the player takes the characters wood working tool down to the beach and places it next to some drift wood...In time the character works out wood floats and that he can shape that wood into what he likes so makes a crude canoe. But how random or how obvious should i make this proccess... If I add some random elements the character could end up making a bench or a doll out of the drift wood or not even get that far and make a knife out of the sharp metal and wood and use it to eat/hunt with, and this may encourage the player to experiment and enjoy the "what will my guy do next aspect"... On the flip side the character constantly making unexpected or seemingly unwanted items could annoy the player to the point of them giving up. But if there is no randomness or uncertainty to it ... it will just seem like a very slow way of going through the motions of "use item X with item Y until it works" One of the key elements to the concept is the player waching and encouraging the character to learn (not in a clever AI way but in a simple, pick the best way to combine 2 items based on thier "need" way). One thing that may help deter frustration (or even incurr it) is it will be very freeform in as much as the player will not know what he needs or indeed what each item will do until he gets his character to "play" with it... so no item is a must have and no item is a "duffer", though some will obviously bring more enjoyment than others. Any input would be nice, thanks.

OK, wasn't the canoe a "must have"? One way to handle "must have" misfires is to have the raw material show up again...as in try again. I really dislike games where I have to restart it because I blew my materials on something useless. At least let them give the doll away or something useful with whatever they make.

I agree with Cybergrape about not letting players hose themselves. Make resources renewable.

In all honesty, I have never seen a more delightful, intuitive or effective indirect control system than the one in the Super Nintendo game "Wonder Project J". I played it on an emulator, and it's in English, and you should play it right this minute. It is brilliant.

In case you don't actually care enoug hto go play it, I'll extend my post to a ridiculous length explaining a little bit about it. Stop reading now and go play the game.

You have a limitted control over the main character, who is a robotic kid (It's basically a Pinocchio story, the character's even named "Pino"). You use a mouse cursor (which happens to be a little Tinkerbell-looking thing. The Japanese get strange compilations of Disney movies, I guess) to tell Pino to walk or run in a given direction, and to interact a little with the world. If Pino's morale gets too low, he'll reject your instructions or behave inappropriately. He will definitely eat the cat the first time you play.

You can draw his attention to an item, which he will use in a random way. He'll throw things, eat things, study things, kick things, etc. You offer positive or negative feedback, and can train him to throw a ball, read a book and swing a stick. Sometimes, you have to untrain one behavior and replace it with another in order to get past an obstacle. There are scripted sequences that require a specific set of behaviors, and there are "dungeon" sequences that require more active intervention to get him through.

The game is sweet. I stayed up all night on three seperate occasions to beat it, since the save and freeze states didn't work right on my emulator. I'm not sorry.