By Terry
More progress!
Ended up spending too long today messing with graphics, but I finally like how it looks. The final version will probably look more or less like this, I think.
The next big thing on my list is to rethink inventory management – the basic idea is that I want items and gadgets to be pretty scarce over the course of the game, and a limited inventory is a pretty good way to solve that problem while still letting you discover lots of new things as you play. But thinking about it, I’m not sure I want the hassle of stuff to pick up bringing up a menu and asking you to drop stuff and etc… this is really feeling like much more of an arcade game than a roguelike at this point, and I don’t want get in the way of that feeling.
Thinking of trying different solutions, like clearing your inventory after every tower or just giving you a hard limit on what you can bring into a new one – which is a hard thing to wrap a game fiction around, but solves a lot of the same problems for a lot less work. Maybe better solves them, actually. Hmm.
I feel infinitely more pumped.
Easy Solution:
You make the player go for some amount of money that the town needs to win the game. The $ bags contribute to that amount, and gadgets also sell high. That way, after every tower, the player will be encouraged to sell their gadgets and find new ones.
Or, you can make the $ in the town go infinitely high, and it can be arcade style scores (although you did just say you were moving away from arcade games :P)
Add in the Terry Cavanagh Life Message , and you have a game.
I noticed that the space outside the level is filled with visible brick now. How does the level revealing system work now?
Menu programming is always a pain. Maybe you could keep the simple limited inventory by having it work like a queue? If you pick something up and your inventory is full the oldest item pops out and ends up on the ground where you got the new item from.
You can have them saved in a “bank” when picked up. The bank is only accessible at certain points/places. When you access it, you pick what you want to keep within your hard limit… and the rest are thrown out automatically.
How about different types of items (weapon, utility, valuable, etc) and player is only allowed to carry one or two of each type. On picking up a new item, player drops the oldest item he’s carrying of the same type, or does drop anything if doesn’t have too many items of the same type.
This would allow player to quickly decide which items he wants to bring, as long as the max cap for each type isn’t too high.
How about having items automatically converge together? You could have a maximum of 10 items in your inventory but three items will always autoconverge in your inventory no matter what. So the collection rate for the player could be collecting 30 items but 3 particular items will always become one. For example, you collect a pistol that is in your inventory, you then reach a new area and collect a knife, then you get the flame thrower. Automatically, you would get the flaming pistol sword from that hence not having 3 individual items in your inventory like a Pistol a flame thrower, and a Knife in your inventory.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/07/Elgin_cutlass_pistol.jpg/220px-Elgin_cutlass_pistol.jpg
Say you get a spear, grenades and a shotgun. That would converge into an exploding spear gun.
I think having the weapons being able to build other weapons would be a great idea and you would never have more than 10 items because your rogue will always craft and converge existing items into one singular new item.
Also to solve the problem of getting non craftable items together in your inventory such as picking up a club and a knife, if you say pick up the club first then when you went to go and get the knife it would say “This doesn’t work in my crafting plan, I’ll pick this up later when I’ve moved onto a new weapon crafting project.” This way if you pick up the knife you’re basically forced to get a pistol and a flame thrower next to finish making one crafted weapon before making another one.
Johnny: I think there’s probably a cool idea in that, but I don’t think it’s right for this 🙂
Well you could always have monsters or enemies that gobble up your weapons or take your weapons away when they attack. Kind of like how the Like Likes would gobble up your shield in Zelda.
Beware! The fierce Weapons Disposal Robot {=} it is invincible and moves very fast. You don’t stand a chance of holding onto your weapons.