Review SciFi reviews Metalheart and comments on Fallout

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Changing an item's length in amount of positional squares isn't infalible. There will certainly come times when the positioning will make it so the player has to readjust things to take advantage of unused space, and when that happens he still has to deal with items which occupy a given amount of space which would be better occupied if the item was in a different position. In those cases, a simple method of Alt+clicking an item to rotate it would allow for items to be placed differently (while still occupying the same number of slots or squares) in the pack.

 

[Sarvis]

I'm getting really, really sick of limited space inventories.

It's the one aspect of Diablo2 that is pissing me off so far. Every single time I kill a unique monster I find myself needing to town portal because my inventory is full, then when I go back and grab the stuff the UM dropped my inventory is full again!

A game should NEVER, EVER sacrifice fun for "realism" and that is exactly what Diablo 2 did with it's limited inventory.

The worst part is the actual lack of realism! For instance a sash takes up two squares, but since it's just a bit of cloth a person could almost undoubtedly fold it up smaller than a potion! Then you have those little gemstones for socketing, ok... I don't think there are many potions out there as big as a potion bottle. If there are, then the Diablo universe is pretty fucking rich! So there's these tiny gemstones each taking up one slot, and this empty helmet taking up for. Empty helmet... which could be turned upside down and have the smaller gemstones dumped into it! In other words, inasmuch as the helmet is hollow, it shouldn't take up much space because other things can be packed within it's interior. Same thing with hard armors. Don't even get me started on a bow, which takes 4 squares despite the fact that you would normally store a bow unstrung and it would take no more room than a staff or longsword...

Oh, and how about scrolls that take up extra room, unless you have the book? Why can't you roll the scrolls up together eh?

There will never be a realistic inventory system, and if there were it would be about as fun as dying every time an enemy succesfully hit you.

 

[Atrokkus]

That's right.
But the main thing is to make big items must occupy lots more squares.
Rotating is good, yes.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Also, you have to consider that the depth/height of the area is fixed also, and when you have a reasonably full pack, given that your "greedy" algorithm is only taking into account one dimension, there is no guarantee that you won't end up in a situation where the packing is not optimal and a couple of awkward objects are left over (e.g low width but long height - if your greedy algorithm assumes "long width first").

Yup, that's true. The big problem with that I said are things like staves in Diablo which are incredibly thin, 1 square wide, and tall, 4 squares. In fact, now that I think about it, most things are taller than they are wide, so if you go by height instead of width, every thing should work out. The biggest problems need to be delt with first for a dumb method to work best.

 

[bryce777]

I really do like the idea of irregularly shaped items and a tetris inventory packing subgame. GENIUS.

What I liked about fallout is that at least you do not have to worry much about negligible weight items.

I BG it was ludicrous to have an inventory full of near worthless gems and rings that would all fit in a tiny sack.

Some items like quest items and pieces of paper should be in some sort of abstract configrational space where they only pop up when useful.

 

[Naked_Lunch]

Ultima VII did have an amazing inventory system, but Divine Divinity improved upon it.