Devtober Day #11

Welcome back to Day 11 of Devtober, in which the schoolwork doesn't stop coming and doesn't stop coming.

As you might be able to guess, not a lot of progress again today since I've been held up working on homework and other things lately. Tomorrow should be freer, so hopefully, I'll be able to get much more work done then.

For now, however, I've done more coding work on getting the inventory system up and running, which has mostly entailed abstracting workstations from the "interactable" class so we can get some custom functionality that not all interactable objects have to inherit. Workstations will have their own internal inventory, as well as their own cameras to switch to when in use to provide a "minigame" feel when using them. As I've mentioned in a previous devlog, this is more of a stopgap for now since I plan to switch that system out with a camera that can smoothly move between the desired perspective and the player's perspective.

Switching to game design, I've also played around with the idea of actually including a form of non-physical storage in the form of an "item crystal." Simply put, the item crystal would allow the player to store a large quantity of a single type of item. These items themselves might vary, such as different types of ingots or weapon components, but as long as they're of the same type, you're good. Using a storage crystal will act similar to the player's own inventory, where items can be converted to data, and vice-versa. This means instead of having to look through a bunch of racks or shelves, the item crystal will allow the player to simply grab the item they need from a table of stored items.

Of course, if that were all, then there'd be hardly any choice between physical and crystal storage, now would there? Thus, I'm giving item crystals an additional caveat, as well as an additional feature to make things a bit more interesting.

First up, item crystals will only be able to be acquired by completing the various dungeons the player will be able to travel to when going on excursions for ore. I plan to talk more in-depth about the excursion system at a later date (as in, when I actually get that far), but to sum it up, it'll mostly be a way for the player to use the weapons they've forged through the medium of a simple "rock-paper-scissors" combat system, as well as a board game-like system for traversing the dungeon. 

Anyhow, setting item crystals only as rewards from these excursions will have the double effect of both making them limited in number, as well as giving the player a reason to go on these excursions. Given the amount of convenience they can provide the player, it only makes sense to dangle them as a reward, as well as limit them so that they can't be used as a cheesy storage solution.

Second up, the player will also be able to use item crystals to increase the size of their personal inventory. It should be noted that this won't destroy the crystal or anything, but simply make it unusable as workshop storage while it's being used as inventory space. This should hopefully make the choice between player inventory and workshop inventory one that should be carefully considered, especially give the limited nature of these crystals.

Well, either way, storage crystals are going to have to wait until I can get the inventory system itself implemented, but I should hopefully be able to get that done by tomorrow (inb4 I jinx myself and it ends up taking ages).

Anyway, that's about it for now. 'Till tomorrow,

- Ian, Lunarium Works