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Bioxx

Encumberance Inventory system

144 posts in this topic

My impression was that a large part of the impetus behind this encumbrance system was to make minecarts useful.  Personally I prefer the size system we have now.  But, if the weights are too much in the final version, someone is going to mod them lower, if they're not made natively configurable.  I don't think most people would argue about weights for armor and weapons and stuff like that.  I think it's when you get into building material that people differ. 

For some, I think they like the idea of building material being an extension of the hardcore-ness of the mod.  They like the idea of realism, and fighting for every jot of progress, right down to the last door and plank.

Others - like me - are more interested in the act of building and design.  I want to do big beautiful projects.  Not huts.  It's already a large amount of work processing the materials to build a big project with, and takes a lot of time.  For those of us who enjoy the act of design and building, having to return to a minecart every fourth block is not going to improve the experience at all. 

It might be that a single config setting would meet most needs.  Perhaps a "builder" setting for those who don't want to be burdened overly much by building material weight - which would allow quantities similar to TFC1 to be carried perhaps.  A "normal" setting with a mid-range weight of building materials.  And a "hardcore" setting with very heavy materials, for the 'realists'.  These settings would alter the weight of logs, planks, cobble, stone, etc.  But not weapons, armor, food, sticks, etc.  That's kind of what I'm hoping for.

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Maybe with minecarts/mule carts there could be a button or some thing called build mode where you would have access to all the stuff in that minecart/mule cart but the cart can't move you have to remain within a certain number of blocks from the cart lets say 30 blocks and you can't do this if there's a weapon or piece of armor.

That way you don't have to keep going to the cart for blocks.

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3 hours ago, Darmo said:

My impression was that a large part of the impetus behind this encumbrance system was to make minecarts useful.  Personally I prefer the size system we have now.  But, if the weights are too much in the final version, someone is going to mod them lower, if they're not made natively configurable.  I don't think most people would argue about weights for armor and weapons and stuff like that.  I think it's when you get into building material that people differ. 

For some, I think they like the idea of building material being an extension of the hardcore-ness of the mod.  They like the idea of realism, and fighting for every jot of progress, right down to the last door and plank.

Others - like me - are more interested in the act of building and design.  I want to do big beautiful projects.  Not huts.  It's already a large amount of work processing the materials to build a big project with, and takes a lot of time.  For those of us who enjoy the act of design and building, having to return to a minecart every fourth block is not going to improve the experience at all. 

It might be that a single config setting would meet most needs.  Perhaps a "builder" setting for those who don't want to be burdened overly much by building material weight - which would allow quantities similar to TFC1 to be carried perhaps.  A "normal" setting with a mid-range weight of building materials.  And a "hardcore" setting with very heavy materials, for the 'realists'.  These settings would alter the weight of logs, planks, cobble, stone, etc.  But not weapons, armor, food, sticks, etc.  That's kind of what I'm hoping for.

Why not weight and size at same time? Perhaps it has to be re-thoug.

 

It MUST be configurable.

Builder: Similar to TFC1

Normal: Reduced weight carry limit

Hardcore: Reduced weight carry limit and increased (realistic) weight for everything. (Food sticks and straw, too, that in big quantities are not light)

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I think it's better to change the item weights, not the carry limit.  If you raise and lower the carry limit you're affecting the amounts of everything in the game that the player can carry.  If you just affect the weights of certain items, then you can focus on, for instance, just building materials.  Things like bloomery and blast furnace blocks can be left to weigh a huge amount (if desired) and thus *always* be burdensome, and incentivize cart use.

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One of the things I like about Encumberance, is the possibility to use mine carts the way they were originally envision. Can you imagine actually having to use carts to haul ores out of the mines?

What about the fact that you would have to build the mine in a slope so carts can travel up and down?

As for construction materials, they should be limited just enough to be an incentive to use hand carts and wagons.

For example suppose the maximum you are able to carry in your inventory is 9 stacks of stone/cobble/smooth/dirt.

Is enough that no one can complain about building, but at the same time it makes it so when you are collecting resources you will want to be able to haul more material.

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I'd be interested in the mining part being harder for sure - recovering treasures from the bowels of the earth is, for me, different than hauling building material.  Recovery of the treasure is part of the fun to me.  And if one thinks about how the TFC2 ore will be - long sinuous veins - it actually will lend itself very well to minecarts.  Unlike the current ore generation which is vertical.  So ya, I'm totally on board for ore to be extremely heavy, to incentivize getting it out of the mine via cart.  Then there's the question of whether the player processes it at the mine, or hauls it back home.  That's kind of another issue. 

But hauling building material?  I know the trees or stone are there.  It's fun to first discover a type you want, but then there's no more thrill really.  There's always plenty once you find them.  In your example Tony, 9 stacks, I almost certainly wouldn't minecart it.  Minecarts are too much of a material and time investment.    It'd still be faster to just carry it by hand at 9 stacks.  We don't know how cart mechanics will work so I can't really comment on that.  The cost to make a cart, vs the speed penalties (I presume) and how much more than the player they can carry would dictate if they're more attractive than just making more trips.    If they're too easy to make it trivializes them.  If too hard, I'll just carry stuff.  It will be interesting to see the balance.

To me, I think it would be enough to make certain very heavy items the focus of carts.  Like here's a bed.  It weighs 500.  You cannot move while carrying this.  Your only option is to move it by hand cart or greater.  Same for a barrel full of liquid perhaps, or quern base.   Now here's a bloomery block.  It weights 1000.  You can move it by hand cart at a crawl.  Donkey would be faster.     Here is a blast furnace.  It weighs 2000 and slows a donkey to a crawl.  Minecart is best option.  Super-heavy items could be limited so that the player cannot place them more than 1 block away from themselves, to discourage a place-and-break chain of movement.  I think you can incentivize the use of transport, without making building a house a huge ordeal. 

Edited by Darmo
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Mine carts for mines, with tracks, really heavy stuff ores.

Bringing a load of stone from 1000 blocks away because you want marble for your palace. that's where hand carts and animal pulled wagons would come. Was not suggesting mine carts for long distances, although  they could be used for faster traveling.

Edited by TonyLiberatto
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A train of minecarts for inter-island transport? aw yiss

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This is a great idea that would definantelly add to the game! Or mod, but let's face it, its basicly a game now

So with this in, you could have us in the need for beasts of burden! Maibe we could put little bits and bobs on all of our pets, dogs could carry very little, but I'd be something, maibe even cows or bulls could carry stuff! But not on their straight up backs, but in duffle bags we would have to craft with leather. Out of all animals, the horse should be best at this IMO, along with donkeys and muels.

Also, with the addition of this weight system, what's going to happen to the size system we have? I personally think that if a more in depth size system where an item can take more than one spot is not possible, our inventory's should be infinite on the size concept, so we could carry any amount of different items as long as it doesn't exceed the max weight the player has.

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EndR20

If you look at the "development"forum you'll see a thread about dromedary camels - there are some pictures there of camels with panniers - preciesely what you're talking about I think.

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I know I am resurrecting a thread that hasn't been active since July, but it pretty on pare with the subject. I have read the first and last page and briefly scanned pages 2-4, so I have missed some stuff, but I believe I have some discussion to bring to the table still.

The goals of making it take more time and effort to get things from point A to B is to increase the time it takes to get to end game, and to make a use for the various systems of item transportation.Before selecting a system we must make sure it accomplishes our goal. If our goal is to decrease the rat population and we offer out a bounty for rat tails you are going to have a lot of rats running around without tails, and if you offer a bounty for rat heads you going to have people breeding them. Stretching out the gameplay is the goal of a lot of mods and is generally desirable as long as the player doesn't feel like he is "grinding". Grinding I will define as repeating a task to make a number bigger. Now a summary of some of the systems I saw proposed just to make sure everyone is on the same track.

  • You get increasing slower as you add more weight to the point it doesn't seem like you are moving. Pro is inventory size is not an issue. Con is you can pick up five barrels containing vessels filled with rock which normally don't allow you to move, hop on your mount and it doesn't effect the mount allowing to quickly transport tons of ore and chert to build your city. 
  • Limiting stack size. Pro is it slightly deals with the last con. Con is it increases inventory management.
  • Shrinking inventory size. Pro it makes containers a lot more valuable. Con when you start with nothing it means a lot of stuff is being left on the ground.
  • Items having sizes. Pro stops you from putting a sword in a small vessel. Con, can be confusing for people not use to that mechanic to understand why something isn't appearing to work.

But lets not put the cart before the horse and discuss current ways of transporting good other than on your person.

  • There is the minecart. The minecart requires metal for the cart and tracks. Railcraft offers wooden tracks and wooden rails that moves slower, breaks easier. As far as I know doesn't wear out at all but that would be cool. It requires tracks spanning the distance you want to travel, to automate or speed it up it requires magical redstone. If you take it off tracks it become so slow it's useless.
  • Donkeys can be equipped with saddle bags and have seen other mods adding similar features to other creatures. Anything moving fast in minecraft takes a toll on a server and can often lead to falling into a ravine before you know it. Leads constantly glitch specially when trying to take animals through narrow or forested paths. You have to find and tame the animals before you can use them.
  • You can now stick a chest in a boat. Haven't tested the new boats, don't know if they are prone to glitching.

To tackle this issue I believe not only do we need to limit the player but make transportation of goods better in a way that all makes sense and can be done with the tools the games gives us. Now I am a fan of a combination of all the ideas. As someone who not to long ago went backpacking in the Montana highlands, climbing 2000 feet over a distance of 4 miles with a 70 pound back pack, I agree object weight matters. I had to take many breaks to drink and snack. So I think that carrying a heavier load should not only slow you down, but should also more rapidly increase your thirst and hunger. The backpack I was using balanced the weight between my hips and shoulders very well and made the weight not as bad as the climb. To simulate this, I like the idea that was suggested of different containers reducing the weight of certain items. This is very beneficial when you traveling as you want to get to your destination quicker and be able to outrun zombies. We also want to make sure you can't stick a minecart full of ore in a bag to reduce the weight of stone and ore. Which, items having size helps and makes sense. How would you even fit a cart in a knapsack? I would also include a warning message telling them item is too big. But we also need something in place so we don't stick a bag of stuff in a bag of stuff in a back of stuff, but at the same time don't want to stop someone from putting empty bags in a bag. So all containers need to keep track of if they are empty or not. 

The weight slowing you down just introduces and issue without a solution other than exploiting that hopping on mount which ignores weight. First this exploit needs to be closed. Then there are three transportation methods that I listed that can be retooled to make this better. We don't want the transportation to be faster because that hurts the server so we want the transportation methods to carry more. Now by far if all transportation methods carried the same amount and moved at the same speeds (which I think it should be close), boat and donkey win as they require less resources, less time, and restrictions. You can fix this by adding a big bonus to the weight reduction that the minecart gives to stone and ore. The only issue with this is when I was playing with Tony, one ore mine didn't last long at all. Meaning if it took multiple trips to bring back the ore, it was still faster and less resource intensive to than building tracks all the way to the mine. So unless mines last a lot longer the only time you are going to use tracks and minecarts is between cities, even if you allow wooden tracks and carts. Two things can fix this. Making the rocks and ore so heavy and the cart bonus so big that Donkey and boat are near useless for carrying ore, and as just mentioned, making mines last longer by yielding more ore. I think this would be a hard sell on an island map without something like my port idea.

Boats are going to get used no matter what for exploration, but what is the use of pack animals then? Well what if you also reduce the inventory space and increase the inventory space of pack animals? Well then you have horrible item management. But you do have containers which reduce item weight, making a tool belt both great for expanding your inventory and reducing the weight of the tools. Also including slots for them in crafting benches and anvils can help that. That helps if you have the resources but what about someone who just starts. They won't have the resources or containers to put them in. The reason you put items in containers is so that they don't despawn, what if items don't despawn? That would be horrible for the server, so what if items that were on the ground instantly spawned and got put into a block called a garbage pile. The garbage piles would get used instead of chests, unless garbage piles were a container that only showed you one randomly picked item in it's inventory each time you clicked on it similar to the enchanting table and enchantments. It would fill the niche till you got containers, reduce loads on the server, and be annoying enough you wouldn't want to use it long term or at least for anything important. But then you can't get rid of items. What do you do with all the junk such as unwanted stone, rotten flesh, and bones? Well you either create a dump site, have the garbage pile go away when it reaches 0, throw it on a cactus or in lava. I will admit it presents and interesting issue that the world in general has yet to figure out.

Well that connects all the ideas together in a way that is doable and makes sense to me at least. I know that would make Terrafirmacraft more hardcore, but people don't play TFC because it's easy. They love the totally different mechanics and challenges it brings. There is really no other mod that I know of that comes close to completely changing the fundamentals of minecraft like TFC does and that's what excites me.

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Slight addition; as Bioxx mentioned in the OP, he is also adding hand carts.  So that's another transportation method. 

It's been awhile since I read this thread, but I don't remember mounts ignoring weight being brought up as an issue.  I'd assume Bioxx can code it so that mounts have a weight limit where appropriate (maybe mine carts are unlimited).  Junk piles would be quite humorous, but I don't really think they're probably necessary.  Players will have some early game storage options.  If carried containers reducing weight became a thing, it might be good to add a durability to the container, reduced every time the player removes and/or adds something.  If containers wear out, then the player will have to remake them, and maybe it becomes worthwhile to add the resources necessary, which could be as simple as leather (stone-age-makeable) or reeds for basket weaving.  As opposed to if they never wear out, in which case the player makes one and it lasts forever, and if they can do that in the stone-age, you practically may as well just not have it, it becomes almost as superfluous as javelins.

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I missed the hand carts bit and as I have never used or seen something like that in any mod I've played, don't have input. So horses ignoring weight is an artifact of TFC 1 which I have full faith that it won't show up in TFC 2. Junk piles would be hilarious, specially if it could grow and split off into other blocks like a pile of rubble that looked awesome in the video Bioxx made. I am not sure I agree with container wear out, I love when things wear out but it just doesn't fit in my mind. I am in favor of different containers having weight limits and that a reed basket wouldn't be able to hold much weight wise, or size wise. I mean could you imagine picking up a basket with a gold bar in it. 

 

Do we know if handcarts get penalties for trying to go across soft surfaces like grass, snow, dirt, sand, gravel, etc?

Edited by Stroam
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Have been playing some ARK lately, one of the features I appreciate is how the player weight gets added to the total of the Mount.

It feels natural and realistic. 

One way to solve the issue would be to apply the same encumberance mechanic that the player will have to the hand cart and animals.

So in an example: The player is able to haul a maximum of 100 units of weight.

the hand Cart can store a maximum of 100 units also.

The Horse can pull a cart with 600 units  or carry the player and a saddle as long as the maximum load does not exceed 300 units.

Bigger animals can pull heavier loads.

One of the big incentives would be if a player was unable to sprint while having a barrel on the back. Also, he/she should be unable to fight. We would need a way to quickly remove the barrel from the back, but when you are been attacked by wolves, you do not try to run or fight with a barrel on you back.

Another feature that I would like to see implemented is the inability to climb ladders with a barrel on the back. The player would have some options when mining.

  1. Build stairs or half slabs.
  2. build a minecart rail.
  3. build a lift platform.
  • The lift can be pulled by the player if is up to a certain weight.
  • Animal pulled lift up to a bigger weight.
  • Some kind of machine for unlimited weight.

 

The numbers here are just to illustrate the idea.

The main idea here is that if we are able to create an encumberance system for the player we should be able to have the same system with different limits applied to animals and moving containers.

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2 hours ago, Stroam said:

Do we know if handcarts get penalties for trying to go across soft surfaces like grass, snow, dirt, sand, gravel, etc?

I am not aware of any cart mechanics being revealed.  Only that they will exist. 

Hopefully the player won't be able to climb a ladder with one, at the very least.  I think it would be interesting if the player was not allowed to jump while pulling one.  Then travel is dealt with in one of two ways: the player gains the ability to simply walk up 1-block rises while wearing the cart, or, they could have to 'pave' themselves a path with half-slabs and/or stairs.  This would kind of simulate cart paths, rather than just having them be totally offroad vehicles.  It would also make players naturally stick to low-slope terrain with the carts, which is believable.  This would give mules a parallel purpose, in being able to off-road it.   If this were the method it'd be good if half-slabs could be made of dirt, sand, and gravel in order to make as natural a path as possible, But even if cobble half-slabs was as 'natural' as it got, that would probably work.  At least their stone type could match the terrain.  And the hand cart could be an early-game mine cart, as long as the player builds a sloping passage with stairs.  It would of course hold far less than an actual minecart.

Edited by Darmo
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8 hours ago, Stroam said:

It requires tracks spanning the distance you want to travel, to automate or speed it up it requires magical redstone. If you take it off tracks it become so slow it's useless.

I have a rail

I have a hand cart

Uh!

Hand cart in rails

 

Sorry.

Now, seriously, this would be a good thing. That will be a midway between hand carts and powered minecarts. The rail hand cart will not slow your trip, but you'll still have to push or lead it. And when you're in mine you could use leads to move the cart upwards faster.

 

And... I realized how being limited will change to style of the game IN BETTER! In-game communities, villages, cities will be created to make heavy works possible. You will no loger be able to make tos of ingots in 15 minuts ALONE. You will no longer build walls and roads and mansions (well you'll be still able to do it but it will take too much time) by your own. You will no longer go hunting or raiding alone. With limited weight and size carrying players will become to be groups and will steal and grif less. They will care of do not be hated by anyone. People will begin to join forces.

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Since Bioxx's original thread on encumbrance hasn't had any new posts since last year, I'm going to put this suggestion into a new thread specifically about walking away from the idea of assigning items individual weight values and moving back to a tiered weight system.  Internally, each tier is worth a number of Encumbrance Points, but instead of showing the user raw numbers they are shown a gauge and/or percentage of their total encumbrance based on what they currently have in their inventory.

In my examples, I am going to assume that a player can hold a number of items worth 1152 Encumbrance points before becoming encumbered.  This is only my initial stab at this idea, so obviously it can be tweaked, tiers can be changed, and items can be rearranged, but I'm thinking something like the following:

 

Tier 1 - Featherweight

Examples: feathers, straw

Encumbrance Points: 1 (64 unstackable)

Max carried: 2 inventory rows (18 stacks of 64) - 1152 items (18 unstackable items)

 

Tier 2 - Lightweight

Examples: "snack" foods, thatch, leather chest armor (unstackable)

Encumbrance Points: 2 (128 unstackable)

Max carried: 1 inventory row (9 stacks of 64) - 576 items (9 unstackable items)

 

Tier 3 - Mediumweight

Examples: "full meal" foods, wood blocks, empty barrels (unstackable), chain chest armor (unstackable)

Encumbrance Points: 6 (192 unstackable)

Max carried: 6 stacks of 32 - 192 items (6 unstackable items)

 

Tier 4 - Heavyweight

Examples: stone blocks, full plate chest armor (unstackable)

Encumbrance Points: 12 (384 unstackable)

Max carried: 3 stacks of 32 - 96 items (3 unstackable items)

 

Tier 5 - Burdensome

Example: anvils (unstackable)

Encumbrance Points: 1152

Max carried: 1 item (burdensome and above are always unstackable)

 

Tier 6 - Immobilizing

Example: bloomery blocks (unstackable)

Encumbrance Points: 2000

Max carried: 0 items - max encumbrance, player is immobilized

 

 

EDIT:

Yes, you read that correctly.  In this example, wearing plate chest armor eats up a third of your unencumbered carrying capacity.  This is by design, as you shouldn't expect to be able to carry much more than your weapon itself when fully equipped in plate armor.  Perhaps there could be a weight-modifying spell you could enchant it with, though...?

Edited by Konlii
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It's a way, and I like it, as I see a couple advantages to the system.  I'm curious what relative advantages/disadvantages you see in this system?   Is it mainly the trying to shut down arguments about "real" weights of items?  Because I'd say that's a valid advantage.  The other advantage would be the player could configure the encumbrance points by class, and alter the overall scheme much faster than if they had to alter every individual item.   That also does seem like a big advantage.  Just curious if there's any other considerations.  Also I'd suggest perhaps tiers beyond "immobilizing", for vehicle conveyance.  I'd like to see items that immobilize the player, but can be carried in a cart (full barrels, beds), and yet more items that are too heavy for a cart but can be carried in a minecart (I would place bloomery and blast furnace in this category).  With donkeys and horses playing in there somehow.  Maybe replace "immobilizing" with "massive", followed by huge, mammoth, and gargantuan, if necessary? 

Beyond those generalities, how do you see a full player kit playing out?  Since TFC2 seems like it's basically going to have a building/mining phase, where you're in a conquered island and building or gathering resources, and then a conquering phase where you're in unconquered land and can't break blocks, it does seem reasonable to have heavy armor take significant weight, since the player won't really have any reason to carry blocks in the conquering phase.   Then they could switch to lighter armors during building/mining, in theory.  So in the conquering phase, what should the player be able to carry?  Chest plate is far from the only armor and I feel like 1/3 would be a bit much.  You've got 4 body armor slots, plus a shield, plus a weapon, could be considered the basic kit.  Should we not consider what this entire kit should take first, rather than a specific piece?  What will the player be likely to carry beyond armor and weapons?   Healing items and food?  Maybe repair materials if that's a thing.  But they also need to have some room left for looting right?  We're not going to expect them to conquer first and come back to loot later are we?  They may not be able to fully conquer on the first go, we need to allow them to take away whatever loot they can surely.  I would forsee ingots, ore, books, and weapons and armor being important loot items.  Where would these fall in your weight system?  Light for books, medium for the rest?

 

Edited by Darmo
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The main goal of this system is to add a layer of abstraction between the raw numbers and the player.  Unless we are all carrying a triple beam balance around in our pockets, how do we know the precise mass of everything in the world?  Secondly, on the dev side, it stops devs from wasting time trying to answer the useless question of "how much does this item weigh?" and gets them to ask the real question of "how much encumbrance does this item give to the player?" since it is split up by Encumbrance Points internally.  The main disadvantage I think is simply that it is a new system and is pretty much guaranteed to need some rebalancing and testing before it really starts to work smoothly.

Absolutely, carts should be able to carry items that would otherwise immobilize the player and if more weight classes make that function better, I'm all for it.  In fact, I'm thinking maybe the jump between Medium and Heavy is a bit much in my example and we might be able to slide another one in between those two or make Heavy less restrictive and add something else higher than that.

And yes, the way I'm trying to balance this, a player wearing a full Heavy armor kit should be right at (if not slightly over) their unmodified encumbrance threshold.  I am envisioning a significant buffer between the threshold at which encumbrance starts causing penalties and the max encumbrance level at which the player is immobilized.  Want to keep your mobility in heavy armor?  Get on your mount, of course, or drink a swiftness potion (or TFC equivalent spell/charm/rune/blood sacrifice/whatever).  Otherwise, you can expect more agile enemies to dance just out of your reach.  Also, maybe if you eat your greens and push your max health up you can increase how much you can carry, as was discussed in the other thread.  Or we could use this to incentivize the use of pouches, sheathes, and other encumbrance-reducing accoutrements.

Also yes, I expect anyone looting a dungeon to bring at least a wheelbarrow along with them.  That's only common sense.  Plus, Medium probably sounds about right for most loot items, and (though I haven't done the math) I think even if your armor kit brings you right to your encumbrance threshold you should still be able to hold well over 100 (stackable) Medium items before you hit your max encumbrance level.

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The main problem I have with encumbrance is that it is too punitive and kind of unnecessary for Minecraft. Unnecessary in the sense that there are already two major things placed that work similar to the encumbrance mechanic: limit number of slots, and stack size. Because how the games works the limited number of slots already put the a limit in the types of items that you can carry. This is already a limiting factor that has its own problems. You can fill your inventory with different types of seeds or almost weightless items, making your carrying capacity full with nothing.

The second thing, stack size, is highly tied to the first problem. Different items have different maximum stack capacity. Tie it with the first mechanic and now you have a carry mechanic in place.

Both, encumbrance and slots mechanics, work against each other. In one hand you are limited in the number of items you can carry, in the other hand the weight that also would limit you. I like the idea of one of them being the main mechanic, but not both. In both cases you can have vehicles that help you with the problem, being weight or being slots. In the case of slots the limit and balance is done in the size of the inventory and stack size: you can also implement bag packs as mechanic. In the case of encumbrance you can use stats like strength to determine the carrying capacity. As things are right now, Minecraft has already implemented one of the mechanics, I think that it would be better, easier and more natural to expand the slot mechanic rather than incorporate the encumbrance mechanic. Furthermore, the way TFC1 used the barrels and the "back" slot was perfect. I think that that would also be applied to big items like the "tier 6" category that you proposed

Saying that, what I like is the idea of armor and weapons having effects on your speed (but not carried items). What do you think of, instead of encumbrance in items, applying speed debuffs to armors based on weight/ metal properties? For example, a metal chest part would reduce the speed 20% without STR modfiers and 10% with max STR (just saying). It can also be expanded by making alloys and magic runes/inscriptions/enchanting: lighter alloys can have the same protection but 30% lighter (for example), or the same weight but higher protection. It can be even expanded to the manufacture process, something like a "layer" based armor (1, 2 or 3 layers)

  • 1 layer metal breastplate (2 ingots to make)(if iron used speed penalty 10%)
  • 2 layers metal breastplate (4 ingots to make)(if iron used speed penalty 20%)
  • 3 layers metal breastplate (6 ingots to make)(if iron used speed penalty 30%)

 

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It's probably useful to keep in mind that Bioxx's stated goal with even bringing weight into the game is to bring an actual need for conveyances.    And due to the way minecraft stack sizes work, we can't make the player's inventory have a fraction of the stack sizes of, for instance, minecarts.    Apparently the stack size limit is innate to the item, and if a container (e.g. the player's inventory) limits stack size, then *all* stacks have the same limit - they're all 'chopped down' to the same level.  So if a minecart allows stacks of up to 64, but the player's inventory is limited to stack sizes of 16, then the player's inventory will limit *all* stacks to 16.  So native-16 stacks will be the same, 32s will be halved, and 64s will be quartered.  So it makes it hard to make minecarts superior, because in vanilla code the player's inventory allows all stacks sizes.  So in a vanilla context your only solutions would be to 1) blanket-limit the player inventory - which would become inconsistent having all stacks the same limit.  2) increase the slots of minecarts to be much better than player's slots - impractical given the player inventory is already huge, or 3) increase minecart slots AND reduce player slots, to keep the number of minecart slots sane, but still superior to player slots.  I would guess that at a minimum, solution 3 would require minecart slots of 36 (a 33% increase over vanilla), and player slots of half that: 18 (a 33% reduction from vanilla player inventory slots).  I do now know if slot numbers higher than 36 are allowed, but if not these are inelegant solutions, and don't allow for a lot of fine gradation.   Because stacks sizes are not scale-able (only chop-able) and slots can quickly get out of hand I think.

So, enter a third factor to make the system more fine-tuneable.  TFC1 added size to the equation, but it didn't really utilize it very well.  You basically had 'items that fit in vessels', 'items that you can only carry on your back', and everything else.  And it was not implemented consistently (querns and beds in vessels anyone?).  But it added much-need variety to the inventory system.   Now for TFC2 - as either a fourth, or replacement-third factor - arrives weight/encumbrance.   I think the game *needs* a third factor *at least* if there is to be any progression at all in terms of containers, or use for more than one conveyance.  Slots and stacks alone are not a finely scale-able system.  I think most people were fine with the size mechanics in TFC1, and I think it was an excellent third factor.  I still think it is enough, without weight being tossed into the mix.  But that's for another post.  So my point is, 2 factors are not enough, you should count size as a third factor already, and weight should be discussed as a fourth factor.

Regarding armor speed debuffs, I'm not a big fan of speed debuffs, generally speaking, but they do have their place and I could see armor being such a place, especially in single player.   But it would need to be supported - and by that I mean you would need to provide the player a way to carry their armor on their horse or cart, without using every inch of capacity (so there's room for loot), to the dungeon or whatever, and then they put it on right before going in.  That or the debuffs will need to be finely tuned to be noticeable, but not onerous (30% sounds kind of onerous to me).  But it would be another hook for smithing skill and magic, and maybe even different types of armor, and in that sense I support it.  I don't think material type should play into it, I think material type should affect tier vs. tier damage, and maximum enchantment tier.  By different types of armor, what I mean is rather than having breastplates with 1 to 3 layers, you would have chain, scale, and plate armor (for example).  And those would have the differing speeds debuffs.  More graphics, but also more variety.

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If you have categories, they should be for size not weight. Reason being that a bamboo pole might be light but it certainly would not fit a bag. We put things inside of bigger things and never the other way around. Even feathers and lead fishing weights can go in a bag despite vastly different weights. So the container doesn't care about the weight as it does the size. 
More on sizes.

Spoiler

Some sizes I'd throw off the top of my head would be liquid(water), fine(seeds), Two Palms(smaller than a block), Two cubits(smaller than two blocks), four cubits(must be carried on the back), and too big to carry unaided. Size categories is solely for determining what can go in what with the limitation that is has to be in that specific size category. A small chest would hold a bucket but not seeds or a barrel because seeds are fine and would get lost and a barrel is not smaller than a block. If you want to put seeds in a chest you would need to put seeds in a seed bag and then put it in the small chest. 


Weight should be summed and used to reduce speed, reduce jump height, and increase how quickly you sink in water. If the goal is simply to make item transportation necessary a slowness effect alone is enough. However, once you get into item transportation you are also diving into item management. Players, at least on youtube, already have difficulty with item management which is further proved by the sheer number of inventory management mods. To prevent TFC2 from feeling like inventory hell, along with item transportation being necessary, there needs to be a variety of systems to help manage it for you. This comes in the form of making the typical feel fast, lots of quick transportation options, reducing and diversifying storage solutions, linking storage and crafting areas.


Making the typical feel fast.

Spoiler

The benefit of this is that when the typical feels fast it distracts from the slow and makes the player not want to be slow. It’s behavioral science. To do this get rid of player inventory and only keep the hotbar. Harsh but wait for it. Then limit the hotbar to items two cubits or smaller with max stacks of 4. This limits the amount of things a player can hold which keeps their weight down, reinforces there are some items you aren’t meant to carry, and encourages them to get containers. Containers should reduce the weight of sum by a percentage further incentivizing players to utilize them. Next give the player a 20% speed boost and a jump boost just for having something in the foot slot. The first set of footwear should be attainable in the first couple of minutes and will be amazing. Then enforce that speed is a theme by including it in everything and giving player options to counter play. Have ice, snow, mud, sand all slow the player down but special footwear that negates that for snow and sand. Let players know that there are alloys that reduce armor weight, etc. 


Making lots of quick transportation options.

Spoiler

Wheelbarrow to cart the farming equipment around. Crates that can be loaded up and don’t lose their contents. Barrels that players can roll around. Trains for transporting between established spots. Packs for animals, caravans, and ways to leash them to a post. Quick ways of moving inventory from one container to another. If I have a backpack, I want stuff to go into it automatically and I want to be able to dump all the contents out of the backpack and into a chest in one click. If I have things in crates and barrels I want them to retain their inventory when moved and be able to pick them up and place them down in a wheelbarrow or cart quickly. With trains there should be ways for them to be driven and quickly loaded and unloaded. If done right moving 5 crates of items to a new spot using a car should be just as quick or quicker than moving the same amount of stuff the same distance in vanilla minecraft.

 

Linking storage and crafting areas

Spoiler

In a typical FTB modpack there are so many items that keeping track of them all is very difficult. The tech mods are typically the worse offenders which increases the time making storage, keeping track of said storage, moving items from inventory to inventory, and time spent crafting. This can be prevented using a few basic techniques. Having fewer base resources so less types of resources need to be moved long distances. Encouraging distribution networks. Having different storage solutions that work together so that bulk is stored separately from odds and ends. Allowing vast multiblock inventories that can be accessed from a single spot. For instance a large shelving unit where you can go to the shelving index to quickly store an item or check to see if you have any stored. There’s also the issue of storing things when there isn’t a storage solution setup yet. This can be handled with piles and other short term solutions. 
Lastly, linking storage and the things that use those items so the player doesn’t have to keep running back and forth. There are a varied of solutions such as those blocks pulling from specific storages structures and crafting tables searching all inventories in the workshop area for items to the recipes. 


All of this is necessary if the objective is to make item transportation utilized. There needs to be a limiting factor that feels like a mechanic and not a limitation. Just slapping on weight that slows you down without slot, stack, and size limitations might do this. But then if the players were to play as if it were any other modpack and constantly fills up their inventory they will always be bogged down and the connection to item transportation might not connect making them feel punished for playing the way they’ve been taught by all the other modpacks. Kinda like in bloodborne when people tried playing like they did in darksouls where you could tank things. Then when they tanked in bloodborne they just died horribly over and over because that’s not how bloodborne was designed. Anyway if you want to avoid item management as much as you can while still giving players reasons to invest in item transportation, then stick to the slowness with weight and take every opportunity to teach the various item transportation techniques. Otherwise you might as well go all in with the above suggestions.

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@Darmo

Ok, I see, if that is the case the weight system make a bit more sense. I totally forgot about that mine cart's post XD. 

The speed debuff in armors was a substitution of the  encumbrance idea, but if the goal is to make the encumbrance and weight system a thing there is little point in it (the debuff). But, because I still think that having a slot based inventory and an encumbrance system a bit of a punishment. In that regards I suggest that the containers that the player can make would be easy and fast to make with any hassle. You want to put a bed in a backpack? You can, because magic!!! (or something like that). Since there is little point in limiting the number of slots because there is weight as a limiting factor, I think that allowing the player to have easy access to inventory expansion is a great way to managing storage and the full with nothing problem. Obviously I'm talking about the general containers without any weight reduction. If there is going to exist magic, I would like to see weight reducing backpacks on high tiers that are a bit hard to make.

As far as I can tell, right now the 3 factors are:

  1. Slots - alleviated with easy to access and use backpacks to avoid the "full with weightless items" problem.
  2. Stacks (may be determined by size of the object, e.g. 64 seeds or 8 spears - alleviated with vehicles and backpacks.
  3. Weight - alleviated with vehicles, magical backpacks (maybe) and "strength/class?"

What can be a 4th factor? 

@Stroam

Although I like your idea of the item mechanic that you proposed, I think that the slot reduction is not very well suited for a heavy item game as MC. Just with Pam's mod there are already tons of items. just with stones, sticks, hay/grass, an axe, a knife and two - tree stacks of food and half of the hotbar is already full. So, no, limiting the inventory is extremely harsh and unnecessary. But the idea of teaching the weight mechanic is very good, but I don't know how without using text.

 

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3 hours ago, chepelink said:

What can be a 4th factor?

Fourth factor is size.  As in, physical dimensions.  Like Stroam said, irl a fishing pole is light, but you can't even fit it in a barrel.    The interesting thing is TFC1 *already* had both size (tiny, very small, small, medium, large, huge) and weight (light medium or heavy) according to the wiki.  I never really noticed that before I was researching into this.  Because out of all those classifications, the only mechanical effects that I ever really noticed were that some items fit in vessels/barrels and a couple items can only be carried on the back (full barrels/vessels and anvils).  I don't know if the querns and beds things were just kept small for convenience, or just waiting until better systems(handcarts) were coded, which never happened for TFC1. 

Stroam there's good ideas there but it's a little OT compared to the OP I think.  I'm going to try to stick with Konlii's original stuff.

In the context of Konlii's weight system, what I'm going to say is, it's going to come down to mining.  The mining system needs to use conveyances.  Everything else can dance around that, but mining, being integral to tiered advancement in metals, I think can be made into a localized enough activity to not 'slow down' the entire game, but also make minecarts and other animals good and necessary. 

Before getting into this, I will say that I'm feeling like the 'unstackables' encumbrance still seems a bit much Konlii, unless it's not an absolute.  For instance what if we don't want potions to stack, for game balance sake?  This is how vanilla does it right?  Despite being small, they exist only in stacks of one, I presume to keep the player from just having oceans of potions to breeze through stuff.  I think that's a good mechanic, but I think it's not good to have them weigh huge amounts.  And I can only imagine they would not be the only case - wands, rods, maybe even special books, all might want to be unstackable.  I think it would be better if all items simply had an encumbrance assigned.  But then how to limit the number of weapons, tools, and armor carried?

My suggestion for limited 'major gear' carried would be - if code-possible - to make add a break-point where items can ONLY be carried on the hotbar and in special slots.  This takes the entire 'inventory' out of the equation, and limits these items purely based on a limited number of slots available, but still leaves the vast player inventory for use with all the little 'collectibles'.    In the context of the OP, I think tier 4 - heavyweight, would be the candidate. 

Now to back up a bit, the way I'm envisioning the inventory system is the hotbar, the offhand, 4 belt slots, and back slot.  All visible along the bottom.  offhand, back, and belt slots are essentially extensions of the hotbar that only are available for certain items (offhand) or when supplementary items are worn on them (belt and back).  When you're actually in the inventory screen, there are also the vanilla four armor slots, an additional four clothing slots (maybe) and 'baubble' slots for 2 rings, necklaces, etc.  That's just how I envision it, it of course may (probably) won't shake out that way.

So back to tier 4 encumbrance.  Armor pieces (metal armor that is) can only be carried on the hotbar, or worn in the armor slots.  Not allowed in inventory.  I think this accomplishes Konlii's goal of making armor a cumbersome item, without making it have to weigh insane amounts.  Shields - hotbar or offhand.  Two-handed weapons (as discussed elsewhere) offhand, 1 hotbar slot, and 2 sheathe slots.  Empty barrels - hotbar or back.  Full barrels - hotbar AND offhand (2 slots).  They slow the player immensely, and the player cannot climb ladders or jump, but the player can still move up and down stairs - this is an attempt to simulate 'rolling' the barrel, without forcing Bioxx to animate that.  Although I guess if the barrel were shown in front of the player horizontal, that would still be a nice accessory thing, and similar to the barrel-on-back thing.  This will encourage localization of barrels, and basically allow the player to 'roll' them to a cart for further transport.  Anvils could be same as full barrel, or maybe also have the option to be carried on the back alone.   So that's a few examples.  As many mods as i've seen that toy with inventory slots, I'd hope that limiting some items to hotbar+ slots would be code-possible.   I feel this solution kind of accomplishes Konlii's goal of having certain items come 'at a premium' without having to ramp up the encumbrance levels so much. 

But now, where I was heading this whole time, mining.   So I'm going a bit OT here, but it's in service of trying to tie this system into the world more.  Basically, I'm thinking for TFC2 it'd be a good idea for ore blocks to drop themselves when mined, and then the player has to process them to get the ore out.  So ore blocks themselves would then be tier 4.  This allows the player to carry a certain amount of them on their hotbar.  But while mining the player will certainly have other things on their hotbar, so they'll have to find a balance.   But if ore block max stack were 8, then the player could carry 72 max and that would be only if they stowed their pick and other hotbar stuff.  Bioxx has suggested before that TFC2 ore may be reduce per-block, but even at vanilla levels, 72 normal ore is only 18 ingots.  Not a ton by any means, but still enough for a lot of tools and some armor.  So maybe stack size of ore blocks is 4, or ore yield is smaller, but however that shakes out, the point is to try and make the max ore blocks carryable not all that great.  Barrels are no longer an attractive long-range transport, and ore blocks can't fit in backpacks.  It'd be a fine balancing act between making early-game ore processing not be too onerous, but still keeping conveyance useful in both early and later phases of the game.  I think processing ore blocks to get ore will help because you can bring in tiered processing that varies the yield.  Early game processing would be easily mobile, but low-yield, while late game would be very expensive and tough to move, but higher yield.

So, coming full-circle, I've tried to keep to Konlii's suggestion, but I've tried to reduce the need for number in the thousands, with drastically encumbering unstackables, by introducing a mechanic of hotbar-only items.  I think this would allow for a greater number of low-tier encumbrances, and reduce the need for a huge upper limit, by keeping items we want to control the numbers of limited to the hotbar, which will already have regular tools and such competing for that space.

Edited by Darmo
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4 hours ago, Stroam said:

If you have categories, they should be for size not weight. Reason being that a bamboo pole might be light but it certainly would not fit a bag. We put things inside of bigger things and never the other way around. Even feathers and lead fishing weights can go in a bag despite vastly different weights. So the container doesn't care about the weight as it does the size.

My original idea (and why my system treats unstackables the way it does) was to combine weight and size into the single element of encumbrance.  The way I look at it, stack size is how Minecraft already represents the size of the item.  Larger items have smaller stack sizes.  Of course, there are exceptions like potions (as Darmo pointed out) and any small items that take damage.

I am actually cool with a certain amount of illogical container-holding for gameplay purposes as long as there is consistency to it.  I'm going to have to disagree with you that the container doesn't care about weight, though.  You can stuff a pillowcase full of feathers no problem, but try the same thing with bowling balls and the pillowcase is going to rip apart at the seams.

Get rid of the inventory altogether?  Uh... no thanks.  That's going to be a hard sell however you try to do it.

 

1 hour ago, Darmo said:

In the context of Konlii's weight system, what I'm going to say is, it's going to come down to mining.  The mining system needs to use conveyances.  Everything else can dance around that, but mining, being integral to tiered advancement in metals, I think can be made into a localized enough activity to not 'slow down' the entire game, but also make minecarts and other animals good and necessary. 

Personally, I don't foresee minecarts ever being useful for actual mining unless the resources required for them are dramatically reduced.  Or if we can make minecarts/rails out of wood.  But that's a different discussion.

 

38 minutes ago, Darmo said:

I actually think the system works better without weights, because I think players in general hate maths, and I think all goals can be accomplished without bringing weight into the equation, and it's just more headache to have to balance weights.

I can get on board with this.  I went with weight tiers instead of pure encumbrance tiers just because I thought it would be more intuitive for players.

I'm trying to get my head around your hotbar suggestion.  Basically, the entire concept of encumbrance is thrown out the window and instead you are classing items based on what part of the player inventory they can be put into?  That has a lot of potential.  I only have limited experience modding inventories, but there's no reason coding-wise that the player's inventory has to be a single undifferentiated block of items.  Internally, I think all Minecraft really cares about is Slot ID and in your GUI configuration you tell the game where each Slot ID exists on screen.

So I think it is doable to code it such that specific ranges of Slot IDs cannot hold certain items, then you would need to change the inventory GUI texture so that each "section" of slots is visually distinct.  Hell, you could even increase the total number of slots available to minimize the number of general purpose slots eliminated due to conversion to specialized slots.

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