Hey guys/gals. I'm working on the new WBG Core crafting system and I'm at a bit of a design delay.  I'm not sure how to design this section or what would be best design wise without confusing players. It your already confused, I'll briefly explain what the WBG Core system is etc. If you already know, please feel free to skip that section. 

What Is WBG Core System?

WBG Core system is a "Ecosystem" that allows players to access their WBG account information such as:

• Log In
• Serial Key/Product Key
• Settings (Sound, Account, Controller, etc.)
• Community (WBG News, Events, Sponsored Streamers, Apply for job etc.)

The system is in every White Box Gaming product. that is version 1.2 or higher. Basically its a website baked into all our games for players to easily access their account and items etc. Currently we are expanding this system to include several new features. 

Question Of The Day:

As stated above, we are working on adding the new crafting system so players can craft items when they play any WBG product. Which of course is awesome. However, it could be confusing to some so we need feedback. Currently, you can not craft an item until you find the recipe for that item. So I have placed giant "Locks" on the screen to indicate the recipe is locked in the crafting menu. We also added a identical Inventory system that shows all the items without locks. This is where it may be confusing. So I decided it might be better to combine player inventory with player crafting. 

So that's the big question, should we keep inventory and crafting separate or combine them?  Below are screen mockups to display the differences:

figure 1: Crafting Screen with Locks no inventory

Figure 2: Inventory

Figure 3: Combined Inventory and Crafting

 Figure 4: Combined Inventory and Crafting with small locks

I added a new version of the combined systems in figure 4. I think figure 4 has the best balance but I wanted to ask the players and other devs their thoughts before I redesign my entire craft system. It took me about 3 weeks to get everything built so far. Just wana make sure It looks good and easy for players to use/understand. Welcome your thoughts good or bad. 

Thanks for moving topic.

Hi White Box Gaming!

Apparently, your images links are broken :( 

Fix them and ping us for feedback :)

Let me see if i can upload them 

figure 1: Crafting Screen with Locks no inventory

Figure 2: Inventory

Figure 3: Combined Inventory and Crafting

Figure 4: Combined Inventory and Crafting with small locks

Are you able to see the images now?

Here is a updated image of the Runes Inventory & Crafting 

Welcome any feedback on design concept and layout 

I'm going to add a pop-up for players to 

• View item details
• Craft item
• Read

Every item will be view able. Only craftable items will show the crafting button pending the item recipe is unlocked and read is only for scrolls. Scrolls allow players to read and learn a new recipe. I might add trade as well. Trade will allow players to trade with each other of course. 

Hi White Box Gaming!

Thanks for the updated images. It seems to me that the small lock option is much better - I love your potion design and the large lock simply hides the entire sprite. So the smaller locks are much better :) Other than that your inventory looks pretty cool, if there is some kind of inventory space management involved consider adding some kind of empty slots placeholders as it is common practice in most of RPG games. Anyway great concepts, thanks for sharing!

Hope this review was helpful:)

Shifful Studio

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Thanks for sharing. This is not an RPG. The WBG Core system is a eco system in all our games. All our products use what we call the universal item drop. Basically you have a 20% chance to get an item from another game when an item drops in any game including our Hide & Find games. We built this system because its the most common components for all games in general and lump it into a single system all games use. So players can access all items for all games. They can also craft items for all games pending they have the recipe. I'm also building our in app store that uses a single payment processor. I'm a solo dev. So I need to build things that can be recycled and save me time and effort. By building a "Eco System" (described by players), I build once, reuse code and controls.  

Anyway, thanks for sharing your feedback. I'll post more picks as I get more stuff finished for this part of the system. 

I got my menu added for when you click the Item. Now I need feedback on appearance. I think the text reads well as far as explanation and direction. Now I'm not sure if its missing something. 

• Are the buttons too big?
• Should I use Icon instead of plain Image behind text?
• Should I use only Text?
• Is the button image too much? Should I use solid color instead?
• Should I change the layout? Vertical to Left & Right or something else?
• Should I add more graphics?

The main difference here is "Items" can be crafted and "Scrolls" are for reading to unlock a crafting Recipe 

I'm working on Highlighted: My artist said no to figure 1, so I made figure 2. What do you guys think?

figure 1:

figure 2:

I picked red originally because most App stores ask you use red when highlighting buttons. My artist asked I use a different color. So I went darker. I like it but not sure what's best. 

Hi  White Box Gaming, 

The menu looks great, my suggestion is to move it next to the actual item - some kind of context menu. so the user won't need to click on item and than move to a different location to click on an action button. Adding some icons near each option could be a great addition.

Regarding the highlighting, I prefer the dark one, but consider adding more contrast, making the default state lighter for example.

I adjusted the menu to layer on top of the selected item. I also made the menu simpler and removed the "quick" options. 

I think I went in order. As you can see the spell scroll shows the spell as locked but you have 1 scroll. So you can read the scroll to unlock the spell. Once the spell has been unlocked, you can craft copies of the spell in scroll form and sell them to other players or NPC's. 

Started working on the store today. Ovit of course is our official Shop Keeper. Ovit is from the Lost In Outer Space game in case your wondering, She has a ... interesting sense of humor ... at your expense lol 

I have finished building the WBG Keys screen panel for the shop. It dynamical loads the data from our database. This way if there is a sale, you will get the sale price and not a static price. We can also add new products without need of patching or updating. 

Adding Gambling system to the WBG Core

Pretty excited about this new screen:

Been waiting 3 years for this screen to get built in app. 

The new Item View screen. Gives your inventory count, short item description, Crafting Skill (if craft able), crafting level (if craft able), copper coin purchase price, WBG coin purchase price if bought from vendor.