Jupiter Hell > General Discussion
Design Rant : Inventory
Thiebs:
It might also appease players if instead of just disappearing, you got some small reward, though that might encourage vacuuming.
LuckyDee:
--- Quote from: Thiebs on January 23, 2014, 08:42 ---Maybe just clear items when you leave a level?
--- End quote ---
This would prevent a lot of frustration. The player should not be punished for accidentally clicking 'Drop' instead of 'Equip' (or whatever mechanism we use). Although dropping a stack of bullets in a puddle of water should have some effect on them. Not to mention dunking a crate of RPGs into a campfire.
Kornel Kisielewicz:
--- Quote from: LuckyDee on January 23, 2014, 09:01 ---This would prevent a lot of frustration. The player should not be punished for accidentally clicking 'Drop' instead of 'Equip' (or whatever mechanism we use). Although dropping a stack of bullets in a puddle of water should have some effect on them. Not to mention dunking a crate of RPGs into a campfire.
--- End quote ---
It might, but then it would seems as a engine limitation, not a conscious design choice. Not allowing items on floor at all will provide a system that is much more consistent.
ZicherCZ:
OK, a few thoughts incmoing (all IMHO, of course):
1. First, I like the overall inventory mockup. Looks very nice!
I'd like to ask, whether the mods from the extra slots would be removable - in DoomRL they're not, creating another DiabloII similarity (think socketed items, and assemblies as runewords).
The inclusion of equipped items is a _very_ nice thought. I already saw this approach in the first Deus Ex (although the only changeable items were weapons there).
Possible idea: To further discourage unnecessary items switching, you can make the both the switched-out and switched-in item ineffective for some time, depending on the kind of items switched. E.g. A pistol might have a "switch time" 0.5s, a rocket launcher would have 2s, and the total time would be the sum of those two times - so switching between two pistols would take 1s, but swtching between a rocket launcher and a pistol (both ways) would take 2.5s.
And, if such an idea is incorporated, then (in similarity to Deus Ex) assigning items to hotkeys would me highly desirable.
2. I agree with thelaptop on this one - if I understand correctly, Kornel's way might easily lead to a frustrating situation when I would not be able to pick up some ammo simply because I have no free ammo-boxes, even though I have a half of inventory free. That being said, I also agree that an ammo-box should hold more ammo than free slots of the same size (e.g. if a shell-box takes 6 spaces and holds 100 shells, than one free space should hold 10 (60 in the same 6 slots)).
One possible way to prevent this would be to have _all_ ammo be found only in ammo-boxes with an option to stack those boxes and tossing the empty one if the player wants to do so (for freeing inventory space). But this seems quite unrealistic to me, doubly so if unloading dropped weapons would be possible.
3. If different ammo types should be available for a weapon, I'm all in for different boxes for each ammo type. The fact that 20 standard 9mm bullets and 20 armor-piercing 9mm bullets of the same size should fit into one 50-bullet box is true, so I see Kornel's point.
But my point here is organization and clarity of the inventory. It may be just my point of view, but when I open the inventory, I'd like to see that I have two different bullet types on the first sight (and for further clarity, I'd like to see that I have 30 standard and 15 AP bullets - easy to achieve with displaying the number in a corner of the ammo-box). IMHO this clarity serves gameplay more.
And that being said - a hotkey for switching ammo type might be in order, as well as a reloading time being in effect, should you want to change ammo type.
4. IMHO - that's not a good idea.
First, items dropped on the floor don't simply disappear (unless dropped into lava or somesuch).
Second, in pretty much every game there's time for action and time for scavenging. Unless I'm direly pressed for getting towards a mission goal, I take time to search all of the area I'm in for whatever may be helpful; depending on the game it may be more ammo, another weapon or hidden clues.
That being said - Kornel mentioned levels being open for backtracking within an episode. If that is the approach, then making items on the floor disappear once I leave the level may be a fair option, especially if combined with smaller levels.
Oh, and regarding Kornel's last post - "minor demons and rats stole everything they saw once they noted you're off, and went back to their hiding places" ;).
Thiebs:
--- Quote from: Kornel Kisielewicz on January 23, 2014, 10:10 ---It might, but then it would seems as a engine limitation, not a conscious design choice. Not allowing items on floor at all will provide a system that is much more consistent.
--- End quote ---
I get what you mean here, but from personal experience, it always ends up feeling like an engine limitation rather than a design choice, unfortunately. Perhaps have certain types of items deteriorate naturally? Think old school NES games, where things flash and disappear after a while. Maybe the corrosive environment is just too hard on things like exposed medkits/ammo/etc to be leaving them around, so after X turns, they melt away?
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