Thorah

Very cool thoughts. I was entirely ingorant of these and I'm building a forge in my back garden. I like the beenfit of balance it would add to the game without simply amking all starting locations identical, that's a great benefit IMHO. Couple of queries. Do you see a place for iron tools prior to th grinding technology, and if so what's that. Or instead do you suppose we'll skip straight to forging tools and then immediately going to the grinding stone we've readied.d Also do you think this would require an increase in the effectiveness of the resultant iron tool to warrant the extra effort or do you see this as a 'fix' for current progression. I'm aware of the fact that TFC is new I'm just curious as to the origin of your thoughts and their effective implementation.

Fair point regarding the overall effort, but I thought the benefit of this would rather be that you only get the whole tree after going through all 4 logs at the base. Same overall effort but different experience. You'd have to wait longer for the pay off. It would feel a bit more epic.

@miamia Yup that's definitely the gist of it. Progression is something I can't comment on too much until we know much more about Steve's abilities and limitations. But it's a nice sketch of the idea. @Trix That would be a fairly severe limitation, to the idea. I certainly didn't intend for people to be dropping and picking things up all the time. I assumed we'd just be able to shift place them like we do for most things early game. E.g. Pots, tools, ingots. I'll have to check out to see what can and can't be shift placed. I'll think about that. Maybe I will make another post. @Darmo Well I suppose it depends on exactly what's decided on for encumberance. Effectively yes we have a minimal carry capacity to start with and that's expandable with whatever the system allows (backpacks I suppose). We would only need a variety of storage options if the rest of the factors of gameplay neccsitated it. My idea was more in essense to ensure that there was a hard observable link to the things you carried. An effective solution to which would be to have the character craft the various resceptacles. What they might be would depend primarily on how complex we'd like it to be. I think the idea of a hotbar being built of the pockets and pouches you'd created would be very cool. You could manually assign the number to it. If it was a pouch pressing the number would open an inventory GUI. If it was a holster it would switch to that tool, I'd find that system realy immersive and entertaining because there would be a logistical and mechanical reward for my effective organisation. I appreciate that's quite unusual however. One thing I think would be more generic is a discount on weight/encumberance based on specialised holders. If your sword and axe being holstered reduced its effective weight, I'd go for that. It would be realistic and entertaining. Whatever the case I feel that to avoid encumberance feeling like padding for the game, or becoming tedious which is the great danger. We might focus on observable benefits from a mechanical standpoint. To the same end it needs to benefit from direct interaction with the world. What you can do should be what is natural. Being down a mine and needing a minecart to mine out all the ore just makes sense to me. As does needing a means to transport a large amount of building materials long distances. Or actually setting up a base near a new ore vein in the desert, because noone wants to live there, but that's where the coal is. Apologies for concentrating on priciples but what I'm trying to do is discuss a groundwork rather than try to build a game that I am not building. Throw some ideas around that stimulate the minds of Kitty, and Bioxx. Hope that's helpful.

Yeah I'm definitely liking how this is shaping up as well. I agree with Darmo and Bioxx that it creates a more fully realised world, that is what I was trying to get accross with the idea of internal logical consistency. Which point I feel adresses this point? :/ right? We have also brought into the convosation the purpose of transportation. I agree that there needs to be a neccessity. I defiitely feel that having neccessities of transportation which are logical increase immersion which I'm a big fan of. In this vein we need to be careful not to make things feel crowbarred in. As though they're there so as to give the transport a need. The solution to which I think rests on that obvious logical aspect of a bloomery fitting in your pocket. The other point to make however is that real world transportation rellies on geographically dispirate resources. We mine in this place and transport it home becasue we wouldn't want to live near the mine for various reasons. I'm not trying to digress into the geography of TFC2, rather to highlight that a portion of the features transport/encumberace require will depend on the geographical neccessities of the world. The point this all raises with Steve is that maybe he should be able to carry barely anything when we start. I appreciate it would certianly be a rebalance but I understood that that was the idea anyway. I lie the idea of being able to carry basicaly nothing other than what you can with two hands myself. Then having to make up sacks and bags. This would integrate the idea of transportation logically by having it there from the start. We woudl then be required to live very hand to mouth initially and we would have transportation as a logical evolution of encumberance. I feel as though that would add in the idea of neccessary transport options and bind it into the world physics naturally, and would make things like pockets, and holsters quite useful. What do you all think of that?

I have always been a fan of encumberance but I heseja's point highlights how dificult it is to get right. I've been formulating a two-fold solution which has been touched upon in part. First ensure the player can observe the logic behind the rules. This is primarily graphical in it's manifestation. The item icons don't really help with this, as they effect the 'pokeball syndrome'. Second though is provide the literal and interaction based tools to allow solutions. Being restricted from taking the log you've just cut down home is much less frustrating when you are allowed the tools to build a solution. This hinges upon interaction with the world, allowing manhandling of objects by dragging them perhaps. If we can ensure the player can see the need for the limitation such that they don't really need to be told of its existance, and instead would miss its absence then we will be more likely to accept it readily. And whatever dificulties we face seem like entertainment when we know we have all the tools we need to solve it, and the solution is based on out efforts rather than being a fault of the mechanics. I feel that any solution to the issue of encumberance needs to be measure on two axes to maintain a degree of reality. The weight of the item and its bulkiness. To work with this I think things like holsters might be good idea. I have no idea about coding but they certainly have evidence in real life. Anyone who needs several tools with them uses hosters of some type, and its very rare for someone's entire set of accoutrements to be carried in one resceptacle. Certainly any attempt at internal logical consistency requires a diverse range of transports to fascilitate the aims most players have. The question becomes, I suppose, how do we scale this effectively. Items Irrespective of the mechanics one solution might be a progression of containers. Pockets and pouches, rucksacks and bags, and finally as many have speculated handcarts. Not withstanding TonyLiberatto's suggestions of course. That might also address some issues surrounding variable types of item and block being dificult to measure by one system. Another might be more subtle interactions effected by means of the 'grab'/'grapple'. I have some more specific ideas for solutions. I'd be happy to mock them up for you with diagrams and such if my ideas seem good to others. Hope that all soundd respectful, and I'm aware the ideas weren't absolutely original.