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Author Topic: Sand Splitter please!  (Read 630 times)

lonnarin

Sand Splitter please!
« on: July 11, 2008, 12:11:38 am »
Oi! I am attempting to split 30+ bags of sand into 7-stacks of pinches to make sandpaper.  I can freely type afk, because the task of pinching the bags and placing them into a bigger bag for crafting will take almost half and hour.  Please, could we have a sandsplitting option on a CNR station to split these sandbags into 8ths for crafting?  The orphans need docks and I got the sand, just it needs to be in one big bag instead of 30 small ones. :P

*desperately pinching the 30 bags into one big big bag*
 

Masterjack

Re: Sand Splitter please!
« Reply #1 on: July 11, 2008, 06:39:53 am »
Yes, this would be good. I've had to make large quantities of sandpaper before and this would save a lot of time.
 

Nehetsrev

Re: Sand Splitter please!
« Reply #2 on: July 11, 2008, 07:49:10 am »
Sand pinches can also be found as naturally occuring CNR on it's own, so perhaps if you don't want to spend time to convert sandbags into pinches you ought to harvest it in the form of pinches to begin with?  Though personally I find digging sandbags and then converting them is faster than harvesting the pinches directly myself.

Maybe we could ask that the direct 'sand pinch' CNR spawns be removed while we're at it since they're rather redundant when you can dig sandbags.  This could free up some space in the module for something more unique, hmm?

Something I've been frustrated by is that the drops of water for casting certain spells can only be obtained from expensive bottles of water sold by magic suppliers, yet one might think water would be an easy resource to obtain with all the lakes and riviers and cave pools, etc.  But I digress...

Maybe one could *gasp* RP seperating the needed sand pinches out from the bags and sprinkling them on the pieces of parchment covered with gum arabic prior to baking them into sand-paper.  Then one wouldn't need to pre-seperate all the sand pinches (for easy carrying since sand bags weigh more than the combined pinches that come from them) before beginning to make their sandpaper.

I think the team has enough work on their plate right now.  While this suggestion might sound like it would provide a needed convenience, I argue that it isn't a nescessity.  There are surely more important things the dev team could be spending their time on.  Like maybe adding the in-game rewards of historic lore in the Hall of Lost Heros in Willows Weep regarding permed heroes, something that's been neglected for ages and that would add depth and immersion to the game tinkering with the crafting system won't.
 

Hellblazer

Re: Sand Splitter please!
« Reply #3 on: July 12, 2008, 03:33:38 am »
Not to sure since I haven't coded for nwn, but I think its a matter of a few new line of codes into the already existing crafting station (bakers oven) so it's not really a big ordeal.

lonnarin

Re: Sand Splitter please!
« Reply #4 on: July 12, 2008, 03:25:38 pm »
Why does mahoganey or yew wood explode when touched by hickory sandpaper?  Isn't it just kind of silly to assume this?  Or further, that not a single solitary CNR store sells sandpaper?
 

lonnarin

Re: Sand Splitter please!
« Reply #5 on: July 12, 2008, 03:45:46 pm »
Quote from: Nehetsrev
Sand pinches can also be found as naturally occuring CNR on it's own, so perhaps if you don't want to spend time to convert sandbags into pinches you ought to harvest it in the form of pinches to begin with?  Though personally I find digging sandbags and then converting them is faster than harvesting the pinches directly myself.

Maybe we could ask that the direct 'sand pinch' CNR spawns be removed while we're at it since they're rather redundant when you can dig sandbags.  This could free up some space in the module for something more unique, hmm?

Something I've been frustrated by is that the drops of water for casting certain spells can only be obtained from expensive bottles of water sold by magic suppliers, yet one might think water would be an easy resource to obtain with all the lakes and riviers and cave pools, etc.  But I digress...

Maybe one could *gasp* RP seperating the needed sand pinches out from the bags and sprinkling them on the pieces of parchment covered with gum arabic prior to baking them into sand-paper.  Then one wouldn't need to pre-seperate all the sand pinches (for easy carrying since sand bags weigh more than the combined pinches that come from them) before beginning to make their sandpaper.

I think the team has enough work on their plate right now.  While this suggestion might sound like it would provide a needed convenience, I argue that it isn't a nescessity.  There are surely more important things the dev team could be spending their time on.  Like maybe adding the in-game rewards of historic lore in the Hall of Lost Heros in Willows Weep regarding permed heroes, something that's been neglected for ages and that would add depth and immersion to the game tinkering with the crafting system won't.


Sounds like you have another suggestion.  Please make another thread for it.  Willows Weep's timetable has nothing to do with sand and is an entirely seperate issue, Though I do admit, it could use some addressing. heheh  Just dont want to bog down or mince issues unrelated here.
 

Nehetsrev

Re: Sand Splitter please!
« Reply #6 on: July 12, 2008, 04:44:45 pm »
Okay, other areas that could be worked on aside, what truly good reason (when there's already a manual but time-consuming way pressent) would there be to facilitate turning heavy sandbags full of sand instantly into relatively weightless sand pinches?  Stacks of which would cause more lag on the server when folks signed in and out with them in their inventories than the heavy sandbags do.

Why should making sandpaper be made any easier than any other craft?  Can we just mine ores straight into ingot form then too?  Really, it could be said that smelting nuggets into ingots sure is a pain and time consuming too.  Maybe we could ask to mine gems that're already cut and polished while we're at it?  Maybe we could remove the requirement to actually have spells needed for enchanting & infusing prepared when the attempt is made, and set up the system to just check if the needed spells are in a character's spellbook, rather then making enchanters & infusers rest after nearly every attempt or two?

I think part of the reasoning behind current systems for crafting is that it is supposed to take time, but that as your reward for spending that time you can make things that you aren't able to buy from NPC shops, or that your'e able to make some items that are sold in the store for less monetary expense than if you just bought that same single item.  Sure, there're a lot of things in some of the crafting recipes that don't make much sense from a 'realism' view, like the one you pointed out about not being able to use hickory sandpaper on other forms of wood.  From my understanding those things are like that to make crafters either invest time in learning multiple crafts, or otherwise depend on other crafters to work the parts of the process they don't want to train themselves up in.

For what it's worth, I'm sure the team has learned a great deal from the workings of the NWN version of Layonara and it's crafting system and it's limitations, and they're likely to develop a much better crafting system for the MMO as a result from the lessons they've learned.  Likely as well they're considering this suggestion too in perspective to the MMO's development.  My point remains that the current NWN system works, even if it takes some time, and that changes at this point to the NWN system in regards to sand-splitting really aren't nescesarry, nor probably worth the time and effort of implementing when that time and effort could just as easilly be spent on developing the MMO.  Call my view defeatism if you like, but it still doesn't change it's validity.
 

lonnarin

Re: Sand Splitter please!
« Reply #7 on: July 12, 2008, 08:57:52 pm »
To each their own.  Thanks for the input.
 

Pen N Popper

Re: Sand Splitter please!
« Reply #8 on: July 13, 2008, 09:19:21 am »
I learned only recently that the numpad on your keyboard can be used to drive the radial menus.  This helped a lot for sand splitting:  Right click then 3 on the numpad.
 

Eight-Bit

Re: Sand Splitter please!
« Reply #9 on: July 18, 2008, 12:52:10 am »
Any crafting system in any game that forces extra steps is detracting away from the fun of crafting in general. It doesn't need to be an overly deep or complicated system when it's the user doing the work via his/her mouse, and not the character.

The key to success in item management (which is a huge part of CNR) is streamlining the process. This would take very little code, when really all the code would need to do is check if it's a bag of sand, check how many "pinches" are left, then create the pinches and destroy the bag.
 

 

anything