I was reading your gameplans, and I think we can make some additions to this section:
Interface Stuffs
While I will try to avoid adding GUIs in general, I know for sure it is not 100% possible to do that. So here a few Basics things:
Your Inventory and similar things will definitely have a GUI, it can come in different Settings, you can have it like a List with multiple Themed Tabs (Fallout), or a Grid full of small Item Icons (kinda like Minecraft, but more like Morrowind), or a Resident Evil kinda Inventory with things that occupy multiple Slots depending on Size.
Another thing with Inventorys is GUI resizeing. It’s always nice if you can resize and move your GUIs whereever you want, but it is really shitty if you can “accidentially” move or resize a Window by just clicking at its Border. That’s why I will make it so you have to hold both Mouse Buttons at once to resize or move a GUI, while hovering over its border.
There will be an IRL Clock available as UI element, because why shouldn’t you be able to tell IRL time if you dont happen to have an IRL Clock closeby.
Here are some things you might add:
A list of all the “equipment” slots (Minecraft has four: head, chest, legs, feet)
Size/capacity of player inventory, or how that will work
Whether players will be weighed down by equipment
Whether players will be weighed down by inventory items
I have a recommendation, too. What do you think about having the player inventory consist only of the equipment slots, but having lots of equipment slots? For example you can only carry whatever you can wear until you wear a back or backpack. For general purposes each hand could carry a small item, and when you operate a machine with your hands that requires your hands to be empty or maybe contain the ignition key.
There is another benefit. If you have to equip bags to have an inventory then you can get rid of the inventory GUI altogether, except to equip and unequip things. Just have the player look at their bags when they want something. So, let’s say I’m carrying a backpack. I hit the keybind or whatever action that makes me look through the backpack. What I see, on screen, is my player character taking off his backpack, putting it in front of him, and opening it. I can see the items in the backpack, or at least the ones on top. I can interact with them just like if they were dropped items in the open world, in a small hole in the ground.
You are aware that this would be worth a whole frikkin GUI in on itself, right? There will be extremely many equipment Slots for different things like for example Rings for each of your 5 Fingers per Hand. 4 of those five Slots could be occupied by a single Brass Knuckle, sacrificing the space for a Punch based Melee attack Bonus. So yeah, there is a LOT. And ofcourse it will show an encumbrance Bar of sorts.
Having more space based on the Pockets/Backpacks you wear is definitely planned. Though there will be a basic Bag of Holding kind of thing that most Players will have by default, simply because massively limited Inventory is not a thing everyone likes.
That is also an Idea on how specifically Backpacks could be done, especially the large Backpacks. In my lines above I meant mostly the things you have easy access to, like Belt-bags or the large bags you wear on your Side instead of the Back.
The Backpack could have its own keybindable Menu Entry (could be used for Back-worn Swords and Stuff too) to move it from your Back to your Hand, from where you can place it on the ground and rummage around in it, like a Minecraft Shulkerbox.
Question: does the encumbrance bar show all the time (part of the basic HUD) or just when looking at certain interfaces?
The basic bag, is that something that the player starts out equipped with or is it like Minecraft or most other games where you just have that innate inventory space to carry a whole forest?
I think it would be interesting to have the massively limited inventory. You would need carts and wheelbarrows or other freight vehicles to move bulk items, as in real life. I think it would be a good incentive to prevent players from doing lots of manual labor, and also to encourage development in freight transportation and supply lines. If there is no inventory so to speak, you are also spared the necessity of making ItemIcons.
This will likely be one that only shows up on the HUD right after your Inventory changes for a few seconds, but will stay invisible most of the time, because there would be way too many Bars on the HUD if it wasn’t for some of them turning invisible when unneeded.
The Inventory will basically have that Bar visible at all times, with an actual X / Y text imposed on the Bar.
It would be an actual physical Item you start with unless you disable it. Though it would be a Key Item, so it will not drop by itself when you die and actually stay in your Inventory when you respawn. Though “a” Bag will drop containing said Inventory, but the Bag itself will vanish when picked up.
And yep, small Inventories can be a nice challenge.
That makes sense. What other HUD elements do you have in mind? A general hitpoint bar and armor rating bar like Minecraft?
There’s the concept of different armor ratings and hit points for different body parts. With Deus Ex health is like, this little picture of your body with each part having its own HP. If I am not mistaken the HUD it shows colors instead of numbers, green for healthy, yellow for injured, red for really injured, and grey for dead. The numbers are on a dedicated interface.
Would you say the item persists through death or would you say the player gets a new one for free when they respawn? Can you replace/remove this default bag in normal gameplay or is it sort of like a free bag that is always with you?
You underestimate the amount of Bars that can be there optionally. Sure, Heath is one that is the most commonly seen in Games, but Endurance, Experience, Poison, Force Fields, Energy, Magic, Hunger, Thirst and a LOT more can exist, not just Armor. And Hunger itself could even be split into basic Nutrients, so that might be something people do.
Also please be considerate to Colorblind people, the Bars will feature a Bright Color on a Dark background with an Icon next to them. They will ofcourse have actual Color so the non-colorblind people can see the difference easier, but nothing fancy like change of Color like in Pokemon.
That is settings based. A lot of things can be customized.
But if it is set to be a Key Item, then it stays with you, but it will drop a fake Bag containing all your Stuff along your corpse, for easier pickup.
There will also be a Wallet Key Item, that specifically stores Money. So you only drop a certain percentage of Money upon death (in addition to all Money you decide to NOT store in your Wallet), but using the Wallet has the downside of Pick Pocketing being possible for example. But this is just an interesting Mechanic i thought about.
Oh yes, that will require a lot of thinking as well, like being able to combine Headbands with Hats and Helmets and Headphones and Glasses and Facemasks (totally not topical joke here). How would a DBZ Scouter count? As Left Monocle + Left Headphone? What about (decorative) Contact Lenses, those clearly are not like Glasses, so those get a Slot too. Just TOO MANY THINGS!!!
Luckily, thinking is free and anybody can do it. I’ll make a separate topic for equipment slots, that way you don’t have to do all the thinking yourself.
