Two hours. That's how long my interview was with Salim Grant, Senior Game Designer at Sigil Games Online - and designer of the crafting system in Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. In this interview Salim covers housing, boats, crafting, and tons of little bits and pieces:
When I saw Vanguard’s crafting last year my initial reaction was that the system was very complex.
Complex, that’s not a positive word. Crafting is immersive.
I didn’t find it very positive when I came here last year. It scared me; I thought “Oh my god, I need to have a knot specialist when I’m cutting down a tree!”
Oh, well cutting down a tree, that’s a completely different system. That’s the resource gathering system.
Oh right! So you have nothing do with resources?
I have plenty to do with making them in to stuff.
So wait, are you agreeing with me that the resource gathering system is complex?
The resource gathering system has been change dramatically. It’s a lot more user-friendly now. Last year the harvesting system was young. It’s got legs now. We’re not demonstrating harvesting right now… I don’t know why, but it works fine. Ever since we’ve refined it people have been enjoying it. There are no more harvesting classes anymore. It’s basically an attributed skill set now. Basically you have some skills and traits (which used to be attributes). Three of the traits go to basic resource types and the other traits are general traits and we have obvious things here for particular resources. These little skills here let you harvest particular resources. They’re pretty self-explanatory. A particular resource requires a particular skill to harvest. These other ones here are for things like cave-ins and things like that. You use demolition to get through cave-ins for example.
Cave-ins have been used as examples of how the user can affect the world. Are there any other examples where users interact with the world?
You can break vases, chests, and things like that. There will be breakable objects throughout the world.
What’s the crafting system like now?
The crafting system has been refined from what it was last year. From last year the system ideal hasn’t changed at all, it’s still the same idea. We’ve done a lot of user interface work and added a lot more visual cues and functionality so it’s easier for a person to get in. The system has always been met with a positive response, but these changes have prompted a very positive response. When we finish up the user interface changes we’re anticipating an even more positive response because it’ll be easier to use.
How does the housing system work?
Basically we’ll have a number of plots in the world. You walk up to a plot, purchase the plot, and buy the house.
Can you actually build the house?
Right now, no. That stuff has not been worked out for housing. This system went in recently so there’s still a lot of stuff to work out.
Are there varying house sizes?
I believe this one here is one of the largest ones right now. There’s a smaller house that is essentially a one story that is the same size. As a matter of fact, let’s go back to my house. I can pretty much show you the layout of the inside. So basically the smaller one is like this without the upstairs.
How do you decorate your house?
Our placement system is really sweet. We’re still got some bugs to work out, but basically what you do is grab stuff out of your inventory and use your mouse wheel in conjunction with the ctrl and alt keys to rotate it around and change the axis. Oh why did I do that? One of the current problems is that you can half-way place objects in to something.
Can you sit down in chairs?
Not right now, no.
Can you place things on the walls?
Yes, you can. Where’s my axe? There you go!
Do you have any trophy examples?
Yes, I actually have a bear head.
Let me see… Trophy… Trophy… All right! NOW I can show you the trophies! All right, so back to my house. My wife is the interior designer, not me. So let me go upstairs. There’s my boar head, there’s my bear head. We actually want to explore this even further. We’ve got dragon heads and such. One of our trade skill classes will be able to do a form of taxidermy. We want to see how far we can take it. It would be really cool if we could do a full-on thing so if you kill a squirrel and decide you want to mount it than you can stuff it. Give me the remains and I’ll craft it up. Give me the remains and I’ll stuff it so you can put it in your house. It would be a cool, and relatively easy, thing to put in; it’s just that that’s for a later time.
Every weapon that you equip you can actually place in your house if you want to. The axe here is potentially an example of that. We’ve got food; we’ve got all kinds of stuff that you can imagine. The majority of this stuff is crafted. We’ve got a chest that actually has some inventory in it right now.
How many craftable objects are there in the world right now?
Our system uses a grade system: A, B, or C and each grade adds or removes certain statistics to items so each of those graded items are technically the same item even though they’re a variation of a base item. And those items even have varying levels depending on a number of factors. You may have the Black Blade of Death and the Ultra Black Blade of Death, but they are different blades.
How many base objects do you have right now?
Let me see… I’d say maybe there’s about 48,000-50,000 items that you can craft with variations. So you’d have to divide that…
Well, if you divide by 1/3 would be the grades.
Well, not for everything. Something that’s very rare requires grade “A”. Something that’s middle-rare requires grade “B”. Something that’s common requires grade “C” and grade “D” is a failure. So dividing it by 3 wouldn’t work. So I would say the base item count is around 12,000 or 15,000 and that number is ever-increasing. In one month I’ve made items to the tune of 20 grand. Unfortunately all of those items need stats applied so it’s a lengthy process.
Do all of those 12-15 thousand base items have a different visual look?
No. That would be an artist’s nightmare, and arguably if everything looks unique in the game than nothing is special. We have very sweet looking weapons. Even our base weapons look good: well, this game looks good. We have some special stuff that’s just like “Oh my god”. When we look at artist daily’s we sometimes look at the stuff they’re doing and say “No way”. We also have a really cool particle system where a designer can take a weapon and apply a particle to it. So when you see like a fire sword with a particle than it’s because one of our designers put the particle on the blade. So we have a lot of flexibility with this that let’s us take a base item and add many variations to it. There are still a few things that are really rare looking stuff.
Let’s get back on track with housing.
Furniture right now pretty much has no function other than I can place furniture in my house. The desire is that we can figure out certain benefits from furniture in your house. But ultimately people are going to be excited to be able to do that. Especially since I killed that bear, right? Especially in things like guild halls. You could mount the head of every dragon that your guild has killed. People just get really excited about that stuff and I can understand why.
Another really neat thing is that you can place logs and thus get a fire. These fires will have their own independent light sources – though they’re not currently working. I could buy lights right now and place them, but they’re not currently hooked up. So unfortunately it’s not something that made the E3 demo.
More questions, you’re good at questions!
I asked this one last year and you didn’t answer it.
Me not provide an answer, no way!
If you had to sell Vanguard in one sentence, what would it be?
One sentence. "The game that everyone is going to want to play." Huh? You like that!?
As far as housing goes can you set permissions?
We have a full permissions system for houses.
Can you set up vendors and stores?
That type of stuff still needs to be worked out.
Can you customize the exterior?
No, it’s a set house. Right now there are three of them.
Is item placement strictly to the interior?
We’d eventually like to… Actually we have banners! We’re selling banners. It’s something that’s not implemented…
Do you have things like utensils?
Yes, we have plates. You can stack the plates and stuff like that. You can place books on the bookshelf. You can create a whole kitchen and stuff. Jeff was an avid Star Wars player, as was I, so we really understand the social aspect of the games and how successful it was in Star Wars. We certainly want to carry that on. We put social clothing in for example, we need more clothes and we’re not near done, but people just like being able to mix dye colors and socialize things. They don’t give you anything except for visual enhancements, but we understand that people want to enjoy their social life especially when you really want to live in this type of world.
Have players made any decked out houses?
Unless you’re a developer you can’t see this stuff. This island is actually off of one of our starting cities.