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Design-It-Yourself Equipment: Difference between revisions
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In many video games, you often are tasked with completing given objectives with the tools, equipment, units, or vehicles that are given to you by the game's designers. Often this can be an inflexible situation.
Not so much with DIY, or [[Design-It-Yourself Equipment]], as the game designers give you, the player, the power and ability to craft your own instruments of destruction, typically with some form of in-game editor. Generally, any game that allows (or in some cases, ''requires'') you to create your own tools for your use in the game environment falls under this trope.
Used frequently in serious racing Sims, Real Time Strategy, First Person Shooters, and many other genres, and ranges from purely cosmetic design choices(such as different custom paint-jobs on a vehicle) to customization of existing items, to being a critical and integral part of gameplay with designing equipment from scratch.
Depending on how well it is implemented into the game, It can be a unique and refreshing way of playing the game. Done poorly, and it may result in an utter [[Game Breaker]].
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{{examples}}
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* The old tabletop games ''[[BattleTech]]'' and ''Car Wars'' both used this. In both, you picked a basic chassis/frame and then added whatever you wanted, up to weight and money limits. For example in ''Car Wars'', you could mount an Anti-Tank Gun on a compact car, or anything larger, but not on a subcompact.
** Correspondingly, ''[[BattleTech]]'''s PC incarnation, ''[[Mechwarrior]]'', features the MechLab as an essential part of gameplay. The decision to remove it for the ''[[Mech Assault]]'' spinoffs was... [[Ruined FOREVER|controversial]], to say the least.
* ''[[Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay
** ''[[Rogue Trader]]'' runs on "no two Imperial ships are the same". Navy can maintain something like standards under command of one admiral and within reach of one supply chain, but beyond this jury-rigging and opportunism begin. Anything goes, as long as you got hull space, power supply and funds for it, and it's actually available at the same place where your ship is docked… A wild array of weapons goes without saying, but there are 10 types of bridges, and as to the non-essential components, everything from [[Asteroid Mining]] Facility and/or [[Mobile Factory|Manufactorum]] to dedicated hospital deck to temple-in-a-can that can be deployed on a planet of choice and then picked up when they'll build a permanent one - if you're in [[The Missionary|that line of work]]. And those components have different grades of quality with variant adjustments (e.g. it may take less space ''or'' need less power, and Morale is +1d5 rather than fixed bonus).
*** Then there's random artefacts generation system from ''Stars of Inequity'' — roll "unique" personal equipment and vessel components by combining tweaks for origin, random quirks and random quality level, then see if it's worth having and what needs to be done to compensate for its drawbacks or make good use of advantages.
** ''[[Only War]]'' pays a lot of attention to [[Iconic Item]]s, so it does this more. There are specific patterns (e.g. Elysian Drop Troops use Accatran weapons) or variant patterns (differences between similar equipment built by different manufacturers) used by a given regiment, and on top of that, individual weapon customisations (e.g. making a stock from wood of the soldier's homeworld improves morale; giving a lasrifle longer barrel won't make it a long-las, but
* ''[[Alternity]]'' got vehicle and spacecraft design. The design system as such is fairly straightforward and has decent level of detail without drowning in them (see e.g. expansion ''[https://www.alternityrpg.net/resources.php?cat=spaceships&rid=177&detail=1 Starship Perks & Flaws]'' from [[Dragon (magazine)|Dragon]] #255 — you can see what these options do without looking into the core rulebook), and then got a better one (''[http://www.alternityrpg.net/books.php?bookid=45 Warships]''), which takes scalability support built into ''Alternity'' and runs on a rampage with it; this could handle lots of [[Rules Conversions]] without breaking, but between ''Alternity'' being discontinued and its less strong sides, only managed to prolong the game's "unofficial" life.
== [[Video Games]] ==
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* ''[[Sins of a Solar Empire]]'' plays with this somewhat, even more so in its recent expansion ''Entrenchment'', with the ability to highly customize starbases.
** Ships and economy buildings are stock, though.
* ''[[Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas]]'' featured the ability to customize some vehicles to enhance their performance and appearance: Usually your car would only really benefit from the nitro speed boosters, but feel free to blow money on the golden dollar-symbol hubcaps and pimp hydraulics.
** As ''[[Saints Row]] 2'' can be considered the spiritual successor to San Andreas in its general tone and gameplay, it also has rather crazy customization options for vehicles (SWAT tank with nitro and spinners? You betcha!)
* The main selling point of ''[[Impossible Creatures]]'' and its [[Mix-and-Match Critters]]. But your baddest melee creature will still probably be a demi-[[Game Breaker|lobster]].
* In the ''[[Master of Orion]]'' series, you are able to design your own space ships. Moreover, ''Master Of Orion 2'' allows [https://web.archive.org/web/20120624041639/http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Master_of_Orion_II/Warship_technologies#Weapon_modifications modification of specific weapon group] depending on known technologies, and refitting of existing ship.
* ''Stars!'' allows players to create unified ship and starbase designs by placing components in slots limited by number and functionality types. But no unique ships, every last one belongs to some design scheme (which also serves a purpose: there's rather low [[cap]] on existing designs, limiting "[[Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors|redesign race]]", at least until the endgame, since scrapping all ships of a given design wastes much resources even with ).
** [https://wiki.starsautohost.org/wiki/Operational_Stars!_by_Example#Choosing_Your_War_Strategy Here] is an example of practical (strategy driven) designs. Observe that they look underwhelming ("Defensive Station" has 1/3 to 1/2 performance-defining slots unused, "Peasant" has half-filled slots, etc) because they are optimized for cutting costs while still doing their job.
* In ''[[Ascendancy]]'' you design a ship by placing components on the "deck map" one by one.
* The old [[Humongous Mecha]] strategy game ''CyberStorm'' allowed the player to customize their fleet of fighting robots, as well as oversee the training of their semi-human pilots.
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* ''[[Final Fantasy X]]'' does this with the Customization feature. You can put any abilities that you have the stuff for into the weapon or armor. Making these is pretty much the only way to get some abilities, like Break Hit Point Limit or Break Damage Limit outside the [[Infinity+1 Sword|Celestial Weapons]].
* ''[[Master of Magic]]'' allows player to create custom magic items for heroes.
** Its [[Spiritual Successor]] ''[[Age of Wonders]]'' allows player to create custom magic items for heroes or wizards in the cities with "item forge" building. Unfortunately, it's a bit of [[Game Breaker]], in that you can spend as long as you like at the end of one level hitting "end turn" until you have the resources to make mind-bogglingly powerful weapons that you can keep for the rest of the campaign.
* ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' and its sequel allow you to create and edit Gummi Ships.
* ''[[Fire Emblem]] 9 & 10'' (Gamecube and Wii) have a forge to create weapons. Basically, it let's you take a generic weapon, choose a colour for it, and mess with its stats. Each increase in a stat raises the price. The more important the stat, the more the price goes up. For whatever reason, [[Self-Imposed Challenge|decreasing a stat]] below normal also costs more.
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** The game's built-in [[Level Editor]] takes it a step farther, allowing you to load up a character with custom-made [[Infinity+1 Sword|Infinity Plus One]] equipment, then [[Game Breaker|import that character into a normal game.]] Want a + 20 [[Fire, Ice, Lightning|Flaming Frost Shocking]] [[BFS|Greatsword]] that casts [[Fantastic Nuke|Hellball]] with each hit? ''That'll'' teach those [[The Goomba|goblins]] in the tutorial level.
* In ''[[Overlord]]'' the overlord can only use weapons and armor made specially for him. While available designs and materials are limited, said items can be given special effects by sacrificing [[Mooks|Minions]]. [[Too Dumb to Live|Lots of Minions]].
* The online game ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20110514083542/http://www.navyfield.com/main.asp NavyField]'' features customizable World War II ships. You can change out engine, guns, torpedoes, ammo type and quantity, armor, fire control, aircraft, and crew within specified maximum limits based on weight and physical size. Of course, bigger guns have larger shells and on a tiny ship that can really limit your ammo. The guns even have a few quality modifiers for guns where an "L" gun will have longer range but weigh more while a "D" gun of the same caliber will have less range but weigh less.
* The player could design a weapon of their own in ''[[Worms|Worms 4]]'', complete with adjustable variables such as knock-back, terrain destruction potential, and even whether or not its rounds could poison enemy worms.
* ''[[Trinity Universe (video game)|Trinity Universe]]'' has the managraphics system which lets you repaint weapons with bizarre themes to have slightly different abilities.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Video Game Items and Inventory]]
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