Hello,

We're making a sandbox game (inspiration minecraft, terraria) and we're not sure how the beginning of the game would work.

The game is top-down with a little perspective (pokemon style) and we work with a system where the basic workbench can be made by placing 5 wooden planks on the ground like:

ppp

pxp

where every p is a grid tile with a plank on it. when you click on it with a hammer kind of thing you get the basic workbench.

But how do you guys think people should get thier first planks? They have to cut down trees somehow and ge the logs into planks. Also they should get some kind of hammer tool to create the first workbench.

Giving an axe and a hammer to the player would be possible, but how can they make planks out of logs. We prefer that players cant craft in thier inventory.

Here are some screens of the game so far:

It is a typically chicken-egg-dilemma (which I encountered in my crafting system too). My solution is to give one workbench and all necessary tools to start with to the player at the beginning. If you don't like the tools, you could use bare hands or some stick as primitive starting tool. Nevertheless, adding a workbench in the environment helps your design and it really isn't necessary to make everything plausible, eventually it is just a game with lot of design freedom.

Instead of "how can the player turn logs into planks," how about you just turn trees straight into planks.
If you want the player to have logs sometimes and planks other times, then whenever a tree is harvested, use context and turn the tree into whatever's needed at the time.

Early man started doing stuff on the ground (and their lap) and on rocks (with incremental improvements) til they could make the tools that allowed them to cut and shape wood to make better tools and then 'large' wood for "the First Workbench" that helped remove that aching back and applying more physical force in the close work (and tie down things that want to move from that increased force).

So drag a rock over first or a lap pad of leather for making crude tools and thence to your tree cutting and wood shaping (and whatever is supposed to hold these planks together (rope/pegs/glue ... nails later)

But how do you guys think people should get thier first planks? They have to cut down trees somehow and ge the logs into planks. Also they should get some kind of hammer tool to create the first workbench.

Don't be overly granular. If you feel there needs to be an in-between step just because that's how it works in real life, skip it altogether.

The faster people can get done with basic resource and materials (planks) the faster they can enjoy what your game has to offer in terms of advanced components, or creative landscaping (placing walls, etc.)

Let them just make planks by putting down a log and clicking the axe. Yes, this isn't realistic (making planks as we know them requires a rift saw, a circular saw for format cuts, and a thickness planer) but who cares.

If you want more realism, give them a drawknife for making planks, but I wouldn't do that.

Simpler is more fun (to the majority of people), and simpler means more accessible to a larger audience. Log+axe = plank works for most. If that isn't acceptable because it's "too trivial" place a level-0 workbench which cannot be picked up and can only be used to make planks somewhere near the initial spawn point.

Giving an axe and a hammer to the player would be possible, but how can they make planks out of logs.

One way of making planks out of trees using fairly basic tools.

edit: If utilising a system such as the one in the video - you might give consideration to your crafting system having time and outcome penalties associated with the tech level you have achieved whilst making planks i.e. as you develop technologies enabling saws, splitters etc., your time penalty and tree waste (how many planks you could obtain from a tree) would diminish

But how do you guys think people should get thier first planks? They have to cut down trees somehow and ge the logs into planks. Also they should get some kind of hammer tool to create the first workbench.

You could just give them beginning, low quality tools like Terraria. Or do something like Starbound, a "Matter Manipulator" capable of breaking anything. It just takes a REALLY long time. Another idea is do what minecraft did. Allow blocks to be broken with fists. Or you could do what is used in Don't Starve: Instead of using an ENTIRE TREE (Think about that. An entire tree to make sticks to make an axe/shovel/whatever?) you could make it so you collect twigs from the ground and combine it with flint or rocks to make a simple axe. You could also just have random chests with loot spawn in the world, and have one spawn very close to the player with an axe or something like that. There's tons of ways to go about doing this. It just depends on whether you want realisitic, or simpler and easier to understand.