Comments on:

By: curious

curious — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 10:31:55 +0000

This isn’t about dumbing down players the grid system is simply inconvenient in many games(though that’s not the grid system’s fault rather the ‘gobble up everything and do a hundred journeys to the town for cash’ but fiddling with the grid just adds to it)

The only annoyance the grid system can cause in L-D is that it’s slow and it can result in ‘OMFG that dude shot my dude in the ass while I tried to fit in a Megaboomcannon in his inventory!’ of course this depends on the pace of the game.
On the other hand it can prevent people from turning into automated vacuum cleaners sucking up everything they find so they might give a bit more thought to risk picking up the awesome stuff or pass.

By: MM

MM — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 07:47:35 +0000

This is why I’m making this inventory system. As a commander you should really be careful what you pick to arm your soldiers.

By: TLD

TLD — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 21:47:13 +0000

agreeing with phemox here, a bit of tetris and realism vs 20 shovels in a backpack ? id go with the tetris, if you were a commanders youd pack ur soldiers combat ready and efficient right ?

By: PHeMoX

PHeMoX — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:01:05 +0000

There is really nothing wrong with a bit of tetris, especially as many of THOSE games feature a ‘auto-sort’ button anyway.

I like the 4×4 grids a lot more than 1×8 or 1×5 stuff. The idea to tie shape and size to it’s location in a grid, really isn’t that bad.

It’s obvious that from a point of realism, you might be able to carry 10 shovels of a few KG each when it comes to weight, that doesn’t mean it should also fit in a backpack designed to carry 60 KG in total.

It really makes a lot more sense than people seem to assume.

Also, I am against developers trying to oversimplify these kinds of things as if the average gamer is a total moron. They’re not.

By: TLD

TLD — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 19:42:59 +0000

If im correct, the current plan from michal was to have a
listen/right click menu based control system,

basicly a menu which listens the commands, and makes the player choose whatever the unit is going to do( in fact, i believe michal took some advice from me over this some time ago, not saying you didnt think of it xD ).

so im not sure if this can also be implented, or if there is just a second side menu which shows the available equipment.

By: Tenshi

Tenshi — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 18:45:53 +0000

I still consider the Crysis / cortex command in-game weapon management the best solution. Just hold right-click, a circle-menu appears around your soldier, then quickly move the mouse over the item you need and release the right mouse button.
After some practice you can do an item swap in way under a second (it’s just a click), but you can still have many objects and complex actions inside the menu.

By: Marc McMillon

Marc McMillon — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 17:10:10 +0000

I think there shouldn’t be a complex inventory during gameplay.

I think you should do a small hud inventory system. Probably 4 items at a time. Lets say the inventory button is shift. Hold down that button and it bring up a small hud appears above your character. Then hit one of the four direction buttons and choose one of the weapons placed in the slot.

Probably similar to Gears of war except it requires a two button command.

By: niko šveikovsky

niko šveikovsky — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 15:02:25 +0000

it’s true that my model is specifically for RTS purposes. for a player controlling a soldier, it would need to see some adjustments to allow things like easily swapping out guns. whatever that solution would be, it needs to end up just as easy as picking up a different gun that’s lying on the ground in soldat.

By: Gnoblar

Gnoblar — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 11:46:14 +0000

I’d rather inventory pickings and choosings whilst on the spawn screen.

By: MM

MM — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 09:48:43 +0000

Good points guys. I have it figured out and will present a screen very soon. The thing I’m thinking about now is whether to allow the player to use the inventory menu at all during gameplay (he would repack only after death). Everything in inventory during gameplay should be handled with short-cut keys. This is a real-time game after all.
The bots should handle their inventory in their own AI way. If you want them to do something specific you would just order them “Use the sniper rifle” or “Bring out the ol’Painless”.