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Hyena Grin

Inventory Space: Oh my god it's a thread about Inventory

74 posts in this topic

There was another thread in which this subject came up. Perhaps more than most suggestions I have seen, this one seems to have the community fairly divided. There are arguments for both sides. Hopefully we won't have to rehash them too much.

 

The question of inventory space is a tricky one, but I think certain things are relatively clear.

 

1) With too much inventory space, there is little need for resource management or infrastructure. You can more or less head out into the wilderness with a couple of picks and return with a treasure trove of valuable metal with little to no effort beyond the task of actually finding/mining the ore.

 

2) This often means that in a rather short period of time, you can go from metal bankruptcy to having more metal than you can probably use. A single good-sized copper source can supply a settlement of a handful of people for a rather long time, and often times the mine is visited once, maybe twice, and the ore is simply stashed in a chest until it is needed. This is, at least, how my games tend to go.

 

3) Because you typically visit a mine site once, or twice, there is virtually no reason to invest time in building roads or developing the mine site with mine carts or stairs or support structures. Often these sites are simply 1x2 holes in the ground and don't even require supports to prevent cave-ins. The miner goes in, collects all the ore he can find, and then never returns. This applies to logging as well. Even a mighty sequoia tree can be chopped down and transported easily back home. There's no reason to build a logging camp where resources might be gathered and perhaps processed on-site for easier transport. No reason for roads.

 

4) Because of this 'scavenging' mentality regarding all resources, typically all development occurs back at one site. Instead of processing ore/wood/stone/other materials on the site where it would make sense to do so, it is generally less time consuming to just mass-harvest everything and run it all back to base.

 

On the converse side;

 

1) With fairly strict limitations on inventory, managing resources and infrastructure becomes a vital skill. Finding a source of ore or wood would not be enough. Some effort would be needed to make harvesting those resources efficient.

 

2) Instead of mass-mining or mass-logging far more ore and lumber than is actually required, people would tend toward moving smaller numbers of resources when required. This would balance out some of the resource booms that people often have and keep people traveling to and from resource sites, keeping active and interacting with the world beyond their settlement. Reducing the ease with which people can move goods, would expand the lifespan of resource sites without increasing the amount of resources each site contains.

 

3) Because more time needs to be spent traveling between the settlement and the resource sites, there would be ample reason to develop the site, make it more efficient for gathering, and develop roads and other means of moving between the site and settlement with greater ease. The end result is a more developed world that looks more like we expect the world to look; networks of population (the settlement) intrinsically connected with the resources around it that supply it.

 

4) Because of inventory limitations you would likely see storage and processing shift out of the settlement and into the resource sites. It would make more sense to mine stone, mix mortar, and craft brick blocks on-site than collecting masses of stones and transporting them back to their settlement for storage. Large amounts of wood might be collected at a lumberyard in the forest, and then processed into planks to be transported one cartload at a time back to the settlement for construction. Ore might be collected and smelted into ingots at the mine site because simply transporting the ore back to the settlement would be time consuming.

 

The point is; from adversity comes innovation. For every obstacle a person faces, new ways of overcoming that challenge will present themselves. Whether this means new ways of playing the game or new gameplay features such as roads and backpacks and carts for moving resources.

 

The beauty of TFC has always been the addition of necessity to the Minecraft formula. Minecraft would always allow you to do practically anything, and allowed creativity to run wild. But while it was trivial to build impressive things, there was precious little need to do so. TFC adds a necessity to build. But because it still hasn't fully shrugged off the free-wheeling inventory system which allows enormous amounts of resources to be carried on your person at all times, all of this necessity to build has been centralized. Collection of resources is still relatively trivial and thus building outside of the settlement is unnecessary, leaving the wilderness around a settlement largely untouched; you'd hardly know where the settlement got all of that stone and lumber.

 

Reducing inventory would add a necessity to build outside the settlement. And I think that is not only important, but it is worth the obvious drawbacks that come with such a change.

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

So, apart from the obvious arguments against the very idea, some thoughts on how to go about reducing inventory would be nice.

 

Some thoughts;

 

Ideally, an inventory system would avoid irritation by allowing the character to carry a fairly large number of items of light weights and small sizes, but limit the amount of medium to large, and heavy objects the character can carry. Inventory clutter is usually the cause for annoyance, and the best way to avoid annoyance would be to have a forgiving attitude toward this 'clutter.' 

Really what we are interested in limiting are the base resources; ore, stone, and lumber. By extension objects like dirt, sand, gravel, and similar would be affected.

 

One idea would be to provide the player with a number of slots for each item weight. For example;

 

10 Light Slots

5 Medium Slots

2 Heavy Slots

 

This would give you a starting allotment of 17 slots to play with (the default is 27), but severely limits the number of heavier objects you can carry. Notably, any object of the weight of the slot or lighter can be placed there, but obviously if you are carrying a rose in your Heavy slot, you can't also carry a Heavy item there. Objects would be automatically sorted upon acquiring them into the lowest possible slot available that it can fit into.

 

The trick here is that each slot size would have an equipment slot associated with it for storage items, to add one or more additional slots for carrying. For example, a craftable leather pouch might be slottable to Light the Light Equipment slot, and provide an additional 5 Light inventory slots. A craftable utility belt might provide 3 Medium Slots, while a backpack provides 2 Heavy slots.

 

The idea here is that with the best possible equipment your inventory would look like this:

 

15 Light Slots (with pouch)

8 Medium Slots (with utility belt)

4 Heavy Slots (with backpack)

 

For a total of 27 slots, the same total number as the vanilla inventory. But still, even with the same amount of inventory space, you are still limited where it comes to larger objects. If fully outfitted, you would be able to carry 4 stacks of stone in cobble or brick form, but quite a few more stacks of stone in individual rock form. You could carry 8 stacks of logs or planks (12 if you used your Heavy slots).

 

Quickslots are another matter entirely. Someone else had the idea to have each quickslot beyond the first two (your hands) require equipment to access them. For example, you could carry a sword in slot 1 or 2 for free, but if you make yourself a leather weapon harness then you could put your weapon in slot 3 and free up your hands for things like building materials. A small tool harness would let you quickslot things like knives or chisels or hammers, and a large tool harness would let you quickslot things like mining picks and shovels. A quiver would let you quickslot a bow. And perhaps a carrying harness could be used for generic materials like sand, dirt, wood, stone, etc. 

This way, when you first start off, you have just 17 inventory slots and your two hands, but eventually you work your way back to something resembling TFC as it is now, just with some limitations on what kinds of objects you can carry and in what quantities.

 

In any case, the numbers could be adjusted; the numbers given are just one example. Some people might want the total available slots (with equipment) to be less than they are right now. Personally I don't think the total number is as important as controlling the kinds of materials people can move in large quantities, and making people work for it, and think harder about how they do things. 

 

It's just one idea, in any case. I am interested in hearing others.

 

 

 

 

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I think part of the issue stems from the limitations of Minecraft's inventory system. There would have to be a complete overhaul, and your suggestions are very interesting. If you've ever played Wurm Online (which Notch worked on before Minecraft, I believe), the inventory system is very much like you describe. You can't carry an inventory full of logs. You need to chop down a tree, break it into smaller logs, and carry a few at a time, or load them onto a cart.

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I'm  reaaaly divided, the inventory thing seems atractive, but limmiting inventory is going to make the game much more time-consuming, it's already a down-side in terrafirmacraft, in fact the transportation facilities is what atracts me more in this idea,

I will use it anyway for rock mining, soon as I have enough iron for it,

but back were I was, about what you said on mines, yes, pretty much one-visit-only sites, but, If you have a mine 5k blocks away from your base, it's surely an annoyance to be forced to do a road/base there, roads are not this easy to build and bloomeries are expensive, in fact, I'm for inventory expansion by implementing efficient animal tranportation (double bags for horses, each horse can carry 2 of it and it's like 1 chest)

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Well written, thought out post. Great job.

 

I've personally been playing around with the idea of cobblestone being placed like log piles instead of being crafted; And when a stone block is broken by a pick, instead of dropping sprites it turns into cobblestone which can then be picked up by the player. It could get really interesting if the ability to drop rocks as sprites was removed, and you were forced to store them as cobble piles (Ditto with ore).

 

Also, I should add that if recovering resources was made this much more difficult that each "unit" should go much farther then they do now. Hundreds of cubic meters of ore go into a single suit of armor, or bloomery, and likewise with charcoal production. I've got the impression that realistically that's a bit excessive, but it's an acceptable balancing move considering how much stuff you can gather in one go. If you make gathering 2 or 3 cubic meters of ore or stone or wood as difficult as it should be then you should make that much material more useable.

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All for that, at last a reasonable post about inventory size. God, i want this. Now. Love you.

 

 

And yes, having to build individual workshops, not just because you have to, but because it's easier and more practical, is what I'm loved to thin for a long while. I always imagine my own settlement having libraries, cellars, coops, stables, barns, slaughterhouses, attics,carpenter shops and kitchens and stuff, just because it's nice and easy and practical. And fun to build.

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Now this is thought-out at least - this I can deal with.

Though being able to carry only like one tool and one weapon or two tools or weapons at a time is annoying, especially earlygame, and at this point backpack is a must pretty much. Unless someone would also change tool size so it can go on a belt (in medium slot).

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I would gladly accept OP's inventory system IF I could store stuff like tools and other misc items on the ground or something, to make early game viable with OP's inventory system

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I would gladly accept OP's inventory system IF I could store stuff like tools and other misc items on the ground or something, to make early game viable with OP's inventory system

 

----------

 

A good solution for this would be the ability to place any small object on the ground like you can with ceramics.

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----------

 

A good solution for this would be the ability to place any small object on the ground like you can with ceramics.

----

But there's no way to store tools until you can make tool racks, and awkwardly enough I don't know how to make one XD

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A well written OP that hits all the points that I would make regarding this topic. I'll be keeping my eye on critiques made here.

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A well written OP that hits all the points that I would make regarding this topic. I'll be keeping my eye on critiques made here.

Is there anything in particular that you want to see in a suggestion thread?  I'd like to know for my nutrition thread.  

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I would love this, especially with wagons hitched to horses/cows that could only go on flat land and stairs to encourage the building of roads.  And barges, encouraging settlements on the ocean and rivers.  I love all the suggestions.

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Now this is thought-out at least - this I can deal with.

Though being able to carry only like one tool and one weapon or two tools or weapons at a time is annoying, especially earlygame, and at this point backpack is a must pretty much. Unless someone would also change tool size so it can go on a belt (in medium slot).

 

I noticed that sizes were going to be problematic so I actually sorted inventory by weight and not by size. All tools are medium weight (though paradoxically the tool heads pre-creation are almost all heavy). So before you have expanded your quickslots with tool harnesses or a utility belt/backpack, you can still carry 5 medium weight tools. (There are a few light tools also)

 

That said, you're right;  with such an inventory system in place, it wouldn't hurt to do a balance pass on the weight of objects to sort some of them into more appropriate slots for better carrying.

 

I've personally been playing around with the idea of cobblestone being placed like log piles instead of being crafted; And when a stone block is broken by a pick, instead of dropping sprites it turns into cobblestone which can then be picked up by the player. It could get really interesting if the ability to drop rocks as sprites was removed, and you were forced to store them as cobble piles (Ditto with ore).

 

Also, I should add that if recovering resources was made this much more difficult that each "unit" should go much farther then they do now. Hundreds of cubic meters of ore go into a single suit of armor, or bloomery, and likewise with charcoal production. I've got the impression that realistically that's a bit excessive, but it's an acceptable balancing move considering how much stuff you can gather in one go. If you make gathering 2 or 3 cubic meters of ore or stone or wood as difficult as it should be then you should make that much material more useable.

Storing raw resources like stone and dirt in piles similar to log piles is something that I suggested in the Other Thread, and I'm pretty enamored with the idea. It would allow people to store these resources without needing containers - who really needs a container to store rock and dirt? Just pile it up. Ideally I'd like to see it work a little bit like coal does, I think, with the ability to add layers of cobblestone down. This would be easier to break than regular cobblestone or dirt (using your fist) or could be rapidly picked up using a shovel. This might cause issues with different kinds of stone not stacking together, however, so if that is problematic, treating it like a log pile with its own internal storage space would also work.

 

And yes, I think the current metal costs for certain items are directly related to the overabundance of metal ores and the ease with which it is gathered, so I wouldn't mind seeing a slight rebalance on certain very costly items.

 

----

But there's no way to store tools until you can make tool racks, and awkwardly enough I don't know how to make one XD

 

I would gladly accept OP's inventory system IF I could store stuff like tools and other misc items on the ground or something, to make early game viable with OP's inventory system

 

True! Or perhaps convert the toolrack recipe to use sticks, thus making it accessible earlier than before. Or perhaps a new recipe using sticks for a light rack that can only hold one or two tools/weapons instead of four, so there is an earlier, less advanced option for tool storage. Storage is of course going to be an issue in the early game, and perhaps a few more storage features/objects would be useful. Placing tools on the ground like pots would be a good option, though I do actually use the crouch button in conjunction with tools (particularly the chisel) to reach tricky spots, so that'd be awkward.

 

A well written OP that hits all the points that I would make regarding this topic. I'll be keeping my eye on critiques made here.

 

Hey Bioxx, good to hear from you. =)

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I generally don't like "hard" limits. Like "you can't do this". In this case, it is simply limitation that you can't carry specific amount of items. I prefer "soft" limitations. Something like "you can carry all this rock, but you will be slowed down significantly". We already have weights for items, so why not slow player down if he carries too much. This would also be easier to implement, because you don't need to hack around MC's inventory system.

 

Also, OP's system doesn't take into account stacking. Stack of 64 small items really shouldn't be considered "small" if we are talking about believability. 

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I generally don't like "hard" limits. Like "you can't do this". In this case, it is simply limitation that you can't carry specific amount of items. I prefer "soft" limitations. Something like "you can carry all this rock, but you will be slowed down significantly". We already have weights for items, so why not slow player down if he carries too much. This would also be easier to implement, because you don't need to hack around MC's inventory system.

 

Also, OP's system doesn't take into account stacking. Stack of 64 small items really shouldn't be considered "small" if we are talking about believability. 

 

Fair points, and I did actually consider a system that slowed you rather than restricting you, but I had one issue with it (on a personal level). Mainly it's that it kinda forces you to constantly monitor your inventory and keep track of what objects are there and how heavy they are. With 27 slots that's a lot of management. With the system I suggested you know immediately what you can carry. You still have to shuffle but it's a simple matter of 'Okay, I need to free up a slot of X or Y type in order to carry Z item right now. It's a much quicker process then looking through your entire inventory going 'Okay, which of these stacks is slowing me down the most, which of these things do I need the least' etcetera. 

 

That's just my opinion. I wouldn't rage against the glorious machine if a slowdown/weight system were used instead, because you're right, it would be easier to implement.

 

As for not taking into account stacking, you're mostly correct. Whether you are carrying one log or 16 logs it doesn't change your situation. But I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. Working with stacks is a convenient abstraction, and I don't think it matters as long as the end-goal is met. Which is to impose some significant limitation.

 

Still, good points.

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Mainly it's that it kinda forces you to constantly monitor your inventory and keep track of what objects are there and how heavy they are. With 27 slots that's a lot of management. 

 

And why is that bad? It might become a necessary skill. Being able to glance over your inventory and quickly remember what items are light/small and what heavy/big. For inexperienced player, it might be hard. But for experienced player, they know rocks are small, logs are medium (or what, I don't remember), doors are big. And even then, it is not like you have to do this. You just keep what you need to keep and drop everything else. Even worse, people are already doing this. But instead of weight/size, they measure value of the item itself. Like with long expeditions, even with current inventory space, you can hit situation where you need to pick between items in your inventory and one you just found. If you limit inventory even more, you will force people into this either way.

 

There is also idea of adding weight of the armor worn to the equation. Which might add even more depth into the armor system, because there would be demand for light armor, so either different types of armors or different alloys, that would break away from the linear "higher is better in all ways".

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And why is that bad? It might become a necessary skill. Being able to glance over your inventory and quickly remember what items are light/small and what heavy/big. For inexperienced player, it might be hard. But for experienced player, they know rocks are small, logs are medium (or what, I don't remember), doors are big. And even then, it is not like you have to do this. You just keep what you need to keep and drop everything else. Even worse, people are already doing this. But instead of weight/size, they measure value of the item itself. Like with long expeditions, even with current inventory space, you can hit situation where you need to pick between items in your inventory and one you just found. If you limit inventory even more, you will force people into this either way.

 

There is also idea of adding weight of the armor worn to the equation. Which might add even more depth into the armor system, because there would be demand for light armor, so either different types of armors or different alloys, that would break away from the linear "higher is better in all ways".

 

Limiting by slot number would force people to item swap in order to make room, but they would be doing so with a much smaller group of items. If you only have two or four Heavy slots and you want to pick up another Heavy items then the selection process is down to two to four items, rather than 27. It is much faster. You've taken all the other slots out of the equation; value and stack sizes etc become irrelevant because those slots simply cannot hold the cobblestone you want to carry.

 

It is more restrictive, and that is the point. And why stuff like handcarts and horse-drawn wagons would be more valuable, and why roads to service those vehicles would also be more valuable. The idea is built on tiers of dependencies.

 

That said, a weight/slowing inventory system is a valid alternative. I just think that personally, it would be more of a hassle. I appreciate that the stack is a nebulous object and I don't have to worry as I am mining out ore that I am overburdening myself, and suddenly I have to go and figure out exactly how many cobblestone I need to drop in order to maximize my travel speed with the most amount of gear that I can carry. I dunno, it wouldn't be bad but I personally prefer abstracting stack sizes and weight to a hard limit, especially since stack sizes are already variable based on their size. By their nature you can carry fewer logs than you can blocks of sand because sand is smaller and stacks to 32 while logs are medium sized and stack to 16, so you're already getting less bang for your buck for MOST heavy objects.

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Love this idea; very well thought out.

 

One thing that I see that would be difficult to balance here is the stack size vs single item for heavy objects.  If you only have 2 inventory spots for heavy items, does that mean that you can carry a single unit of each heavy item or up to a stack?  If, say, logs stack up to 16 and are heavy in this scenario, you could carry up to 32 of these heavy items, but only 2 unique types of heavy items.  However, you can't carry 3 unique heavy items, whereas you could easily carry 32 of 2 unique items, making the forced choice seem unfair.  This could be solved with the total weight of the entire inventory system.  I'm not entirely advocating it, but it could be elegant if implemented well.  Perhaps relaxing the number of heavy items that can be carried will ease this to the point of balance.

 

I'd also like to see a much larger inventory space or dedicated containers for very tiny/very light things like seeds.  There's no reason that a normal person can't carry dozens of seeds on their person without being overburdened with either the weight or the number of unique objects.

 

I know there are two threads on inventory and transportation, but it seems like the choices in each of the threads will impact the direction of how both are implemented.  For example, if I had ready access to a handcart, a smaller limit on heavy items would be more tolerable.

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Love this idea; very well thought out.

 

One thing that I see that would be difficult to balance here is the stack size vs single item for heavy objects.  If you only have 2 inventory spots for heavy items, does that mean that you can carry a single unit of each heavy item or up to a stack?  If, say, logs stack up to 16 and are heavy in this scenario, you could carry up to 32 of these heavy items, but only 2 unique types of heavy items.  However, you can't carry 3 unique heavy items, whereas you could easily carry 32 of 2 unique items, making the forced choice seem unfair.  This could be solved with the total weight of the entire inventory system.  I'm not entirely advocating it, but it could be elegant if implemented well.  Perhaps relaxing the number of heavy items that can be carried will ease this to the point of balance.

 

I'd also like to see a much larger inventory space or dedicated containers for very tiny/very light things like seeds.  There's no reason that a normal person can't carry dozens of seeds on their person without being overburdened with either the weight or the number of unique objects.

 

I know there are two threads on inventory and transportation, but it seems like the choices in each of the threads will impact the direction of how both are implemented.  For example, if I had ready access to a handcart, a smaller limit on heavy items would be more tolerable.

 

It would definitely apply to stacks. 

 

Fortunately the game is already set up in such a way that Heavy items are typically either stackables or 'workplace' objects that you typically don't carry around in your inventory. For example, tools are all Medium or Light. Some heavy single-stack objects: Sluices, Boats, Bellows, Crucible. None of which you generally carry around for long (or if you do, it makes sense that this would be a limiting factor for your expedition). I think it's fair that a single sluice or boat would take up enough space to warrant losing that slot until you place it in the world.

 

So yes, if this was going to dramatically limit the number of tools people could carry around I would also see that as an issue, but the vast majority of single-stack objects people often carry around a great deal, are medium or light in weight, and there's plenty of room for that stuff in this design. 

 

That said, a balance pass on objects to re-sort them into different weight classes with these inventory limitations in mind would be of significant benefit, and allow the devs to control what sort of items people can carry in quantity. Off the top of my head, tool heads should probably not be Heavy objects when their finished tools (the addition of a handle) is a Medium object.

 

And yeah, the two threads are pretty closely linked. I think that any major limitations introduced to the inventory system would require new storage and transportation features to make up the difference. But honestly? I find them both to be pretty exciting possible changes. 

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That said, a balance pass on objects to re-sort them into different weight classes with these inventory limitations in mind would be of significant benefit, and allow the devs to control what sort of items people can carry in quantity. Off the top of my head, tool heads should probably not be Heavy objects when their finished tools (the addition of a handle) is a Medium object.

 

This seems like it should be a bug.

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New comer to the forums, but played TFC in a few incarnations now. 

 

I really like this idea, but I worry about revamping the inventory gui, as I think it WILL cause some (maybe many) people to rebel in an uproar.  That said, instead of revamping the entire gui to fit, why not add an actual weighting system?

 

This is a very, very basic idea here, but maybe add a system of units. Each item would have a unit value based on weight (not size) and the player would then be allowed to carry a total number of units.  This would still restrict you from carrying too much of a particularly heavy item, but not require massive changes to the gui's.  The other reason I like this idea is, I would think it would make the total number of units allowed per player to be configurable, that way the server admin, or player (for SSP) can decide the amount they prefer be allowed as a max. 

 

The nice thing about adding containers (back packs, belt pouches, sacks, etc.) is that they would increase the value for total number of units, without requiring extra gui's. Though, if you prefer that each container be managed seperate from the players inventory, you could easily do this and still just apply a total units to each container type (and then you could control the size of items per container as well). This would also mean that if wagons and carts are added, moving items from your characters inventory over to a carts inventory should be easy considering carts and wagons would have separate total unit values.

The system in place regarding size of items should still govern stack size, as well.

 

This is a very vague idea I came up with at work and certainly not fleshed out fully, but curious as to what others think about it.

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Making inventory only take a specific numbers of weight is much harder task to code than what Hyena suggested.

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Why would that be a much harder task to code?  Wouldn't you just iterate through all the items and add up their weights, comparing the result to some value to see if you are overburdened?

 

If that were to happen, it would be nice to see some gui improvements that make it easy to spot heavy items for the user, instead of mousing over each one to see if it's light or heavy.  This approach would also change the way carrying capacity is increased via backpacks, wagons, etc.  It would be rather disappointing to have the typical RPG mechanic of "You leveled up STR!  You can carry 5 extra pounds."  I think Hyena Grin's method would be more rewarding, but both sound more absorbing than the current method.

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Soft weight limits were indeed already suggested by Euphoric, I believe. hard weight limits are certainly another option (and if a weight system were used, hard weight limits without slowdown would be my preference).

 

The reason I prefer a visual, GUI system is that you know immediately at a glance what your situation is. You know exactly how much you can carry, without question. With weights it becomes a bit of a math problem.

 

This would be less of an issue if 'weight' was determined by object type rather than stack sizes. So one brick block has the same impact on your encumbrance as a stack of 32 brick blocks. At least then you could have some assurance that as long as you have room for one brick block you can carry the rest of the stack without changing your situation.

 

If you count every single item in a stack then things would get pretty wacky. For one, the math to balance it out would be tricky. In order for the heavier resource blocks to make a significant impact on your inventory you would need to make them quite a bit heavier than other objects. And that means that if you have no heavy objects in your inventory you would be able to carry a metric ton of any lighter objects. 

 

Managing your inventory space would also be a bit of a math problem. How much of a stack of something do you need to get rid of in order to fit a precise number of something else? People carry around a lot of different kinds of objects and trying to match their value with their weight would be time-consuming for the purpose of managing inventory. I think it would get a bit awkward, honestly. Managing inventory space using inventory slots is intuitive even if it is an abstraction. At a glance you know what you can carry. At a glance you know which objects you can discard in order to make room for something else. It's a much quicker, cleaner process of inventory management even if it does impose some hard limitations. 

 

Also I find just throwing numbers at the player kind of a bland way of handling things. Giving them more inventory slots is tactile and immediately satisfying. You put on a backpack and suddenly you can carry twice as many brick blocks as before. Rather than 'you can carry 30 extra kg.' It's largely meaningless. Yeah people would get the hang of it, but it's still just numbers that lack meaning until you get a feel for how much everything weighs.

It's interesting that you mention GUI changes being an issue, because you're the first person to mention it. That said, you could be right. But my vision of the GUI isn't actually that much different from what it is right now.

The max is still 27 slots so the inventory screen would not change dramatically. There's a couple of ways it could be handled. One option would be to leave the slots positioned where they are and simply border them with colors that indicate their slot type. Green for Light, Yellow for Medium, and Red for Heavy. Then in the item hovertip, colour the Light, Medium, and Heavy words to correspond with the slots, to make it obvious which goes where. Any unusable slots would be greyed out. So when you start off it might look like this:

 

XXXXXXXXX

XXXXXXXXX

XXXXXXXXX

 

Or, alternatively:

 

XXXXXXXXX

XXXXXXXXX

XXXXXXXXX

 

(Where the whole list nudges forward as additional slots are added)

 

Along the left side you would add three new slots, such as this:

 

X  XXXXXXXXX

X  XXXXXXXXX

X  XXXXXXXXX

 

Where inventory expanding items could be slotted for each slot type.

 

The GUI could certainly be more heavily modified, such as expanding the inventory screen horizontally to make room for the maximum number of Light slots. This would also make room for the Quickslot equipment slots.

 

X  XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX  <--- Light Items (Green X is your storage item slot)

X  XXXXXXXX  X  XXXX  <--- Medium Items | Heavy Items

             XXXXXXX          <--- Slots for quickslot gear (weapon harnesses, tool harnesses, etc) 

         XXXXXXXXX          <--- Quick Slots

 

The latter option I think would look the nicest but also be the more significant overhaul.

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I like your idea better, Hyena Grin, but I also think it's possible to adopt the interface for weight limits so that it's easy to use.  To address some issues:

 

* An encumbrance bar could show you how much you are currently holding and how much more you can carry.  This bar could be a fixed length that expands as you acquire abilities to carry more stuff.

 

* Hovering over an item would highlight how much of the encumbrance bar it is taking up and/or highlight the item border or box with a color that conveys its relative weight.

 

* To get an overall sense of how all of your items contribute to the weight, you could hit a key that would highlight all your items with the appropriate colors relative to how much weight they take up.  This way, you could, at a glance, find that one stack of heavy blocks.

 

* You would still be limited by how *many* different items you could carry as it is now.  In other words, if all you have is light stuff, you can't carry more than 27.  I could certainly see backpack/pouch upgrades increasing the numerical inventory as well.

 

I'm not certain how difficult it would be to alter the UI in this manner, however.  I still think it has potential and shouldn't be dismissed outright.

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