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Inventory 2015.07.26



Inventories, Item Converters, etc.

I created an inventory. You can pick up items off the ground, and they are automatically stored. When you drop items by selecting and dropping in the garbage can (or by selecting then clicking E (click-dragging to be added later)) the system creates the item from its model in the model database, if available, or else creates a bag that is colored based on the attribute ‘category‘ type of the item. When you dump items, they are laid out in a pretty circle, meaning that in my game throwing away garbage is finally fun, which should be an indicator of how fun doing ACTUAL fun things will be. Like, you will play the game and your head will explode from how much it changes your life and/or cures rare illnesses. OR, you may simply have an enjoyable and relaxing recreational experience.

Soon I will universalize the inventory code so that new inventories (treasure chests, mailboxes, NPC inventories, etc.) can make use of it as well. In the meantime I am developing the attribute tree for a new system that will CREATE items (rather than simply transferring them, which is all the inventory system does), called an ‘item harvesting regenerator node.”

For this, just imagine an object you get items from, whether it is a tree you chop down, crystals you mine, plants you grow, or pots you break (the last of which, incidentally, will NOT be a thing in my game because I HATE the gaming sin of ‘dumpster diving;’ I’d much rather have one or two big treasure chests in a dungeon full of loot than have the same amount of loot spread around in 800 different pots and crates, and to me ‘exploration’ is about discovering new places and adventures and not about discovering what is inside a billion trivial containers. End of micro-rant).

To make further use of the new item system, I’m developing an ‘item generator/converter’ system like a furnace; you input fuel, wait, and get a product and/or byproducts of the fuel and/or product. The sweet thing, though, will be that it won’t just be ‘input fuel, receive product;’ it will instead be ‘input X, get Y, and byproducts Z and A, after T amount of time. It will be so easy to make new generators and converter types that I could, for instance, make a basket that accepts sticks of butter, requires electricity, burns them into gold ore, and cooks rocks into hairballs.

So when you hear ‘furnace,’ don’t just think about the physical objects, but the interactive event that takes place. It won’t be that hard, down the road, to create some kind of “item converter crafting system,” too, whereby even a player could design a custom convertor, that uses their designated inputs and outputs: ”I want to put in this item and turn it into this other item at this cost over this amount of time.” Depending upon the product desired, that will affect the costs in fuel or the time it takes. Maybe that isn’t a great explanation, and the idea of ‘custom converters’ might break the game even too much for MY taste (like some people see the Equivalent Exchange mod for Minecraft). It would be alchemy, which is a cool idea that would be end-game stuff. So the possibilities opening up as a result of finally having ITEMS in the game and a functioning inventory, are pretty sweet.

#gamedev #unity #Unity3D #playmaker #blender #video games #3d #unity 5 #game design #game development
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Jul 26th, 2015
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Everything is a work-in-progress and is subject to change. Release dates TBA.