It's one of my pet hates so you better get it right

 

The only thing Farcry could have done to make things worse was to turn you inventory into one of those block puzzles where you have to arrange things to fit in a limited space. If I wanted that I'd play Tetris.  

Yeh, Diablo does that, and i always thought it was a bit of a naff way to do things.

Even worse, i thought was the Ultima system, from Origin.
Although i've read a lot of comments from fans who love it, i persoanlly felt it was a right pain in ****.
Ultima had a backpack, where you just dumped all your inventory items into.
All on top of each other and it made for a right mess.
With lo-res tiny icons too.
You often had to spend 5 minutes just rearranging your backpack so you could just get at the most useful items.

On the other hand i quite liked the way Oblivion managed it's inventory system.
Items displayed in a list were quick to navigate and equip / de-equip.
And although i liked the 3d object display in Skyrim for inventory objects, i hated the way they implemented the list system.
I felt that was a step backwards.
Very awkard and the favourites system was terrible.

Hopefully i can avoid all those pitfalls.

TMC

It's such a simple thing to get wrong and unbelievable it wasn't picked up in testing.  Maybe that was all done on PC where mouse controls make this a non issue?

Could well be.

Interesting to hear your thoughts, as inventory management is what i'm currently coding.

And i'm endeavouring to make things as simple and easy to use as i can.

TMC

I'm going to have a quick try and see how fast an image downloads from the net and then look into the possibility of including that in the news stream.  I'll report back!

Neat.

Thats what i did for the advert system.

It works really well.

In my case my text file contains a list of image and data urls.
A master url list basically.

TMC

Another win for Cav yesterday too after a really tough day.  He's in just about the form of his life.

Thats great news.

Cav, Wiggin's and Froome will generate a lot of interest for the UK in this years TDF.

And i really appreciate the way they havn't sold their souls to the advertisers, as other sports stars have.

TMC

Nice update.

TMC

Ahh, that sounds like a bit of a chore.

I wonder if the text commands have been updated in later versions of AGK.

TMC

Yeh, this Wiggin's v Froome battle for the TDF is gaining momentum now.

I'm seeing more reports about it as the tour looms.

It's going to be real interesting to see how it pans uot.

TMC

Update
----------

I'm still working on the inventory system.

Coding is going really well and I'm quite pleased with how it's progressing.

Whilst coding I'm also still putting together a database of in game objects for the players to collect.

This is turning into a massive list with categories for common, uncommon, rare, legendary and epic items.

And whilst putting together this database i realised there would be no way i could create icons for everyone.

Even using a set of generic standard icons would still mean i would need a large number of them as there is such a large variety of items.

Therefore I've decided to ditch the icons for the inventory and use a text based only system.

This has turned out much better than i thought it would be and allows for lengthy descriptions for the objects.

I think it's a fair compromise for me.
Being a one man outfit and i don't think i lose too much going to a text based only system.

I'll post some screenshots when I've finished the coding.

TMC

Good progress Jdog.  

I remember getting huge speed savings when i wrote a cull routine for my shooter.
Before i just assumed that Blitz would cull any images not on screen, which it does, but it still processed the images.
Just putting in a simple check to see if an image was onscreen before drawing it really gave me a big speed boost.
Which i was really surprised about.

I also used a partition system as well for my collision level.
Which is pretty much essential for anything with large levels that isn't tile based.

My RPG does that too and allows for a world of infinite size, but with no speed penalty for the size of the world

TMC

Good news for Cav.   

I heard on the radio this morning that Brad has quit the Giro.

Apparently suffering from illness.

A real pity, but it's probably a wise course of action.

TMC

Cool stuff Prime.  

TMC

Sounds like a documentary to me.   

TMC

 

TMC

Hmm the first part of getting a live news system working went remarkably well.  All it's doing so far is retrieving a text file from online, but as I've not done any internet stuff before I'm relieved even that works

Thats great.   

I did something similar a while ago as i was researching adding in game adverts.

Just as a test and it all seemed like a viable way to do things.

TMC

I can just picture The Stig in it now.   

TMC