Dynamic Crafting Menus

[FreedomsFlame]

With the close of first semester on the horizon, I was looking at revisiting FO4 modding, specifically an older mod of mine called Emergent Properties which allows you to construct complete weapons from loose mods that you have lying around. My initial implementation of this was by only allowing the players to construct base weapons because I didn't want to flood the crafting menu with recipes for every possible variation of a weapon.

I was wondering if with the release of F4SE, anyone had managed to make a dynamic crafting menu system that only shows you recipes for which you have either one or all the ingredients for, reducing the need for more and more subcategories in the crafting menu systems?

[steve40]

You will need to have those menu subcategories regardless of whether you have all the ingredients or not.

[demonofsarila]

There's a UI framework mod. I haven't looked into it much, but you might be able to make your own menu, one that is more similar to the vanilla weapon modding menu, where you can pick and choose each different piece of the gun, then say craft and get that gun. You saying horizon made me think of the way the mod Horizon uses the normal message system in the game to present new option for doctors and traveling, and steve is right. Even if you filtered it down, you would still need subcategories. But there's just so many different possibilities from any base gun, it would be more user friendly if you could find a way to pick the various parts of the gun individually like when you're changing an existing weapon.

 

If that's a dead end, what about picking a few useful combinations of mods, for example the hunting rife is best put to use as a sniping weapon, and making an easy way for the user to craft that. And if you want to accept multiple mod pieces that are close enough to get that useful combo, then maybe try something like script your own container that the user tosses everything into.

 

Another thought, using a terminal / holotape to let the user pick what to craft and just use scripting to put the finished product in some container.

 

Or maybe skip the recipes all together. Custom container thing that you trade with to give it mods, and when the player has the pieces of the gun they want, they activate the container. A script runs a check (like data validation) to make sure there's like 1 receiver, 1 barrel, 1 scope/slights, etc. and either tells the player they goofed or says congrats your gun is ready (again having the script dump the gun in this magic container).

 

Ok I think I'm out of random ideas. I like my last one the best.

 

----

 

edit: I lied. Expanding on that last idea, the container could just be a place to store mods and when the player activates it, it runs a check to see just how many different guns it can make. Though I don't know how to many a message box that has custom choice in fallout. Anyway, even if you don't do that and it just comes up with what the first kind of gun it can make from what's in the container, you should try to find a way to show the player the name of the gun about to be made in infamous "are you sure?" style.

Edited November 17, 2017 by demonofsarila