Inventory Issues

[Quintaros]

I'd like to make my game as realistic as possible but am wondering if some of what I have in mind might actually be seen as a detriment to the playability of the game.

I'm thinking in particular about the player's inventory.  Within the context of a cartoony game its perfectly acceptable for the player character to have a limitless capacity to carry ridiculously large inventory items. This is convenient for the player b/c he just picks up everything he can and generally most things will be used at some point during the game.  But I think that leads to trial and error.  When a player gets stuck on a particular puzzle he just resorts to trying everything in his inventory on the puzzle regardless of the logic behind it.  

The approach that I'm considering is to make virtually every item you come across pick-up-able but give the inventory limited capacity.   Possibly assign a mass to all objects so that a player can carry more small objects than large ones.  Many objects would never get used in the course of the game.    I hope that this would discourage systematic trial and error for puzzles but force the player to really think about what he needs to complete a task.  I could see it causing a lot more doubling back to rooms you've been in to retrieve items.  Also items could get lost if a player dropped them somewhere and forgot what room he was in.

Any thoughts on this approach?

[Nostradamus]

Well on one hand this is a more realistic approach to inventory.
But on the other one it will be extremely annoying and dismotivating for the player. If he'll have many useless items in his inventory that is frustrating. To go a lot of rooms just to take anohter item because you didn't have place for it in the inventory is frustrating.
I would only take your approach in pure RPG games, because some people might get too annoyed and stop playing.

[MrColossal]

Quintators: i recommend a game called Dream Web to you, you can find it for download off the internet

the game does just what you want to do, you can pick up anything and carry it around with you, once i was carrying at least 3 pounds of cheese just for fun and cause i could. The game is FILLED with objects [in one scene a dinner is knocked over and peas are all over the ground, you can pick up like 10 individual peas including the entire dinner] it was very annoying if only because the puzzles weren't very intuitive

i feel that if you're going to add a system like this you should make sure the puzzles can be solved multiple ways with different objects and that there is no way to get a walking dead.

eric

[taryuu]

for example, say you give the "shovel" a weight of 5 pounds and the max weight is 15.  how is the player supposed to know that he won't need a shovel later on?  should he keep it for the entire game?

earthbound (snes) had a system where you could keep the inventory in another place (escargot expresss i think) and recall it later if you needed it.


tho i don't think this would work in ags.

so i vote no unless a good system is conceived.

[Quintaros]

Yes I'd definitely like to include multiple solutions to puzzles and walking dead is always something to avoid.  

As for it being dismotivating, thats a possiblity.  I'd hoped that it would have the opposite effect though and motivate the player to think about what he's carrying instead of just assuming that "If I can pick it up I must need it."  

With the shovel issue, I think he just picks it up when he needs it and not prior.  It means going back for tools instead of carrying every single thing that he thinks might come in handy eventually.

If the basic consensus is to not do this than I won't.

[MrColossal]

never say that...

if the general consensus was something we all paid attention too this would be the First Person Shooter Studio Forum and we'd all be l33t

try new things even if they suck at first, forge new ground, tear adventure games a new anus, do it if you want too

i'm all for picking up everything, it would discourage the PICK UP EVERYTHING THAT ISN'T NAILED DOWN! philosophy of adventure games. it would force people to think differently and sure a lot of people will hate it but a lot of people will love it. not everyone loves pleurbugh and not everyone loves monkey island, it's the people that do that are important

ok i kinda lost it in the end there...

eric

[PeaceMan]

I like this idea. It would make a change to have limits on what you can carry rather than just take everything you find which is physically impossible.

However if the game allows you to pick up anything you wish it should be able to let you solve puzzles in multiple ways using the inventory items realisticly otherwise it is just pointless.

[Nellie]

Considering every other graphic adventure in the universe is using the limitless inventory approach (including mine), I'd love to see someone try a different approach.

I don't see there being a problem with frustrated players, providing the locations aren't so far apart that trekking between them is hideously boring.  However, there might be a problem with the graphics.  Presumably, the player will be able to drop the items wherever they want, so you'll have to ensure that every item can be drawn in every location without looking weird against the background (ie, if the player drops the shovel, and the ground of the room they're in is the same colour as the shovel handle, half the shovel will be 'invisible').  Also, every object would have to have a 'lying on the ground' view, so there could be some extra drawing involved.

I'll just mention that another approach to achieve realism in your game is to prevent the player picking up an item unless their character has a motive to do so.  That way, the Player Character doesn't act like a raging kleptomaniac, plus you avoid that whole 'Jeff randomly steals a shovel that doesn't belong to him for no reason whatsoever...  later on, Jeff comes across a situation where a shovel is exactly what he needs to progress - what an amazing coincidence!'

[Quintaros]

Eric:  I agree that I shouldn't let majority rule for every aspect of my game but I do want people to enjoy it so I take their feedback seriously.  

Peaceman:  Having multiple solutions is something that I'd like to include but of course is limited to whether I'm able to think of every possible solution any other player might think of.  Perhaps in the betatesting stage I  can accept suggestions from the testers additional solutions.

Nellie:  Yeah I've already started thinking about the graphical issues with dropping inventory anywhere.  Scaling and whatnot.  I guess I'll just have to play around.  As for the character requiring motivation to pick up an item, my problem with that is sometimes the player knows what to do before the character does.  If a player already knows how to make a compass from a pin and magnet why should the game not allow him to just because the character hasn't been told how yet?

[Vel]

coughKyrandiacough

[Quintaros]

Just spell it for me, Vel.  What about Kyrandia?  Does it have a unique inventory?

[Haddas]

I know this probably doesn't belong here...but anyways *deep breath*
I like the inventory system in Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmasist, where you can try Every single inventory item on another and he says something different. As an Example:
"As much fun it would be to wax the ladder and see you fall, I think you might need to save the wax for later on."
Or some crap like that. No "You can't" or "That wouldn't do any good" shit.

[Quintaros]

That can be funny but I don't really think it enriches the game much for the amount of effort it would take.  

[Haddas]

they made me lol. Damn I loooove sarcastic games

[Nostradamus]

In Kyrandia if I remember correctly you have 10 pockets so you can carry 10 items, no more.

I think that if you are going to limit the inventory you should make a "cache" of sorts so everything is dropped in one place and it's both easier foor the player to go to one place when he needs to change inventory items and easier to draw in terms of drawing & scripting the object so it would fit to e drpped anywhere. Something like a closet or a chest in the hero's house.

[Quintaros]

One consideration was to have the character stockpile items in a secret place  but I don't want to just route every dropped item automatically to his stockpile.  On 2nd thought that might work as I could just do a fade in/out to indicate the passage of time required to drop off/retrieve an item.  But perhaps then I'd just end up with the typical pick-up everything scenario.  I really think there has to be some inconvenience to the player for scavenging without plans.

[MrColossal]

the limits of the ags engine won't let you easily drop items at the moment

ways could be figured out but they would be very assbackwards and too hard to manage i think

i can't think of a way to do this in ags... i don't think there is an easy way that wouldn't be either way too annoying to work with or way to annoying to play

eric could be wrong tho

[Haddas]

A plug-in could be made?
(NOT ME)

[Kweepa]

I think you're right eric - since you can only have 15 objects per room, but 300 inventory items I don't think it's feasible to have all those objects lying around on the floor - it is possible I guess (using raw draw!).

One solution that hasn't been mentioned yet is the Resident Evil approach, which is a magic box that appears in a number of rooms and behaves like a second inventory. It could also be a character you summon, a replicator, or luggage that follows you around like in discworld.

As for the use item on item comments, I disagree with you Quintaros. If I'd had the patience I'd have added more of that sort of thing to my game. Most of the feedback I get says how much they enjoyed the comments I did put in. It would have doubled the development time, but right now I think it would be worth it.

I haven't played FrPh:FrPh but I'm tempted to now.

Steve

[Kweepa]

As for the gameplay value in traipsing around, I think you could make it worthwhile by adding new interactions to characters and rooms when people revisit them, such as extra conversation.

It is a tried and tested way to extend the life of a game - RPGs do it all the time - so I don't think it would kill the game. It would frustrate me though.

If you're trying to make it realistic, I'd come up with an explanation for how the player is carting that stuff around instead, like Apprentice did.

Or feed the player items as needed, and remove ones he's used (oh no, it broke!). Nah, that's rubbish isn't it - it makes the game easier, which I think is the opposite of what you want.