Mar 7th, a lovely Thursday afternoon. Yesterday I finished updating all of the data, graphics, and interface for the Quest and Battles scenes. These scenes are intended to emulate a basic travel + adventure feeling just like traditional story RPG games such as Final Fantasy or EarthBound (Mother).
So now you can travel around scenes and interact with the environment and have discussions with game characters. Awesome! Woohoo!
And - Everything seems good and stable, but... a problem...
I had a vision to make the inventory system MUCH more intricate. So today I have to make a decision about that, because I want to do another soft launch of the game this month. It's been a year already since the last release.
Rather than stress myself out any more, I think I'll keep it simple for now, and revise the inventory system later when I have more time to think about it.
Right now each character has a set inventory, for example
weapons: Gun, Sword, Fist
or...
weapons: Staff, Bow, Fist
... depending if it's the cyberpunk book or the fantasy book respectively. And each weapon has a set attack point. It's not bad, but not very flexible.
I was thinking it would be better if you can find new weapons and inventory along the way, and each weapon and item is unique, with its own attributes, strengths, weaknesses, etc.
But the reason this would be fun is mostly because of the way you would use the inventory. Some characters might be immune to certain weapons, or some buffs and/or skills might shield characters from certain attack types. That's where it gets interesting!
So in conclusion, I think it would take me a long time add all of that functionality to the game. And I would want to do it once and do it right.
For my sanity, and a note to self here, it would look something like this:
1 - Create a static set of objects for each book, each object will be saved with it's attributes, [id, name, description, hitstrength, ammotype, etc...]
2 - So each book with have a special inventory section to add "inventory items".
3 - Create the objects for each book, then place the objects around the game and in the shop for purchase.
4 - There must be some type of tracking and stock management. Some objects can only be picked up once, like a weapon, an d other items can be picked up in bulk, like ammo or grenades and potions.
5 - The shop can have an inventory management system to view, purchase, organize, and equip objects.
6 - There will be different object types so the game can distinguish how to use each item [weapon,item,collectible,sellable] just for example.
7 - Then I would have to make sure that each chapter doesn't allow to pick up these "game objects" more than once, such as picking up the same gun more than once in a certain chapter.
8 - And for battle scenes, finally, this new inventory system should allow for more complex battle scenes. Buffs, potions, bombs, attack items, unique weapons. And what do you call it when certain weapons have less/more effect on certain enemies? -- attack versatility?
9 - And some special quest items can be found and used throughout the game. Like a key, a magic tome, or maybe a communication device to call for help.
Anyway. Something like that.
I definitely want to do these things, but I also defintiely see it as being too much work for this phase. The real problem here is - what if I release the game WITHOUT this inventory system and then add it later? Will that break things for people who already made progress in the previous system?
Probably. Mostly likely. Yes.
So I'll have to figure that out before next week.
I'm sure there's some solution to deal with both problems.
A - want to release something soon. deadlines and all...
B - also want to add a very complex feature to the game.
But these 2 plans seem to conflict with each other.