BLOG ENTRY 12 - 10.22.2020

I have continued working on the inventory and equipment system, It has been coming along quite nicely. Last week I had a placeholder mesh, now it actually references the current player character with what it has equipped, I also adjusted the image size so it’s no longer squished. added a sizebox to start placing the equipment and weapons. I still need to make the struct so it registers the weapon, but it is functional and getting to a point where I will soon be able to start making loot drops and have the player equip them.

So far I’m building it so it’s a very clear inventory system with very few equip able items, right Now I believe I am at 10 including weapons, armor and shields, I don’t want the inventory to become unwieldy and overwhelm the player with worthless stats. As I was finishing up the backend work, setting up the items properties, it hit me that I needed to work deeper with the item design.

There are some rules I’m trying to establish about loot, specifically, what benefits will your equipped armor pieces provide. It’s easy to say it should go beyond the standard RPG armor that provides simple flat stats. Designing those armor pieces. not so easy. The way I see it, I need to design each piece of armor so it provides tangible gameplay effects.

I’m still working them out but I believe I’m getting to something cool. Without getting too into it, Head equipment will upgrade aim, be it distance or maybe even aim assist TBD. Chest armor would provide a solid damage reduction stat (armor duh) as well as some kind of benefit to resource management. I’m thinking either a flat increase to your resource, or cooldown for your skills again TBD. Legs armor could increase your mobility skill in a way that affects gameplay substantially, right now I’m thinking flat distance and movement speed, but yet again TBD.

I’m aware that this is a lot of theory and once I’m able to implement these things, iteration will be required. I still believe that is important to plan out the design as much as possible so scope doesn’t get out of control. I’m currently working with 0 budget, so changing things is easy, but once I am able to get funding, that money will need to be well spent. and I can’t waste it on switching things that should have been obvious from the paper design.

I am really close to getting to the point where I can start designing enemies and their loot table, getting to the juicy bits of a looter shooter. Once that is done, the prototype will be basically done. Polish here and there and design the NPC interaction system. Damn it’s scary, but in a good way, I’m getting to where I wanted to be. Slowly but I’ll get there.

Me asusta pero me gusta

Daniel “Freaky” Aguilar

Game Designer

Plasmapunk Studios

Nothing worse than boring Space Armor