/tg/Station 13

I had a talk in coderbus about this and figured I would make a thread.
Currently, how the size system now works is, each item is assigned a size or whatever, a number basically that says what it can fit into. For example, large guns like the L6 can't fit into your backpack because it is too large. Neither can the Ion rifle. Things like crowbars and tools however can because the number they have says they can fit into backpacks, and such. However, certain things that can fit in your backpack, can't fit into your box, such as the shovel for the same reason.

Now on top of this, despite the realistic size of ANY object, you have seven slots in your backpack. Meaning, inconsistencies come up. Seven shovels can fit into your backpack and they take the same space as seven coins or seven screwdrivers. "But Niknak, the coins are the size of your head! They are giant coins! If you want to go off sprite size, shovels are then six feet tall and yet you can fit that entire fucking thing into your backpack. No wait, you can fit seven, six feet tall shovels, into a backpack. Don't base object size on sprite size. Certain sprites are only the size they are so you, as the player, can see what they are. If coins were realistically the size they should be, they would be so small a player could not see what they are, and could not click on them to pick them up or interact with them.

So let's find a medium between the two. Assign every item in the entire a game, a size number. Each item already has this, so only slight editing with the variables would need to be touched. Then assign a value to containers such as boxes and backpacks that defines a number which gives the maximum amount of "size" the container can hold. This will make it so you can only hold say, two shovels in your back but hold like 20 coins or 10 screwdrivers. This has advantages and disadvantages. Certain things that have become the norm, like stuffing your internals box full of a full set of tools would no longer be possible but you could fit a larger amount of smaller items into boxes or bags where you could normally only carry seven. I'll list some advantages and disadvantages as well as some notable problems that would come up.

Advantages

• Carry a larger amount of smaller items.
• Storing items and the amount you could carry would make more realistic sense (muh realisms!)
• Could play a very interesting gameplay mechanic that could actually have a large impact on the game in a positive way
• According to Mrperson, this would be relatively easy to code.

Disadvantages

• Carry a smaller amount of large objects
• The normal behavior of stuffing entire sets of tools into an internals box would be removed. (could be argued as a good thing, but since most players like this and do this, I assume negative)
• Hard to implement. Item sized would have to be debated on and agreed upon for every item in the game unless it's obvious what the size of the item should be.
• Potentially game breaking issues might follow the incorporation of this.
• Ores and stacking would need to be tweaked.
• Bag of holdings would need to be tweaked to hold any size item of any amount but make it so there is a maximum limit so the screen is not spammed with backpack item slots. See bullet one of problems.

Problems

• Making a backpack hold more items would make it so the layout of item slots change. Make the item slots stack on top of each going over the screen might help this.
• Game breaking issues as mentioned in disadvantages. (A traitor with a gun would have to hold his gun but could theoretically carry a much larger amount of ammo then they would be able to in the past.
• Large amount of time would be needed to be incorporated into discussing and changing the values and sizes for each item. Easy to code, but tedious.
• Tons of other stuff I can't be arsed to type out.

I may have fumbled some info, so don't shoot me if I messed something up.

NikNakFlak wrote:Making a backpack hold more items would make it so the layout of item slots change. Make the item slots stack on top of each going over the screen might help this.

Something similair to the "New" (it's pretty old now though) Cyborg module thing Erro did a little while back. That updates with the amount of modules present.

I like the idea but it would require a lot more playtesting than the server is currently used to.

This would be less of a size revamp and more of an entire inventory revamp when your finished, especially if you don't want to fuck with every single job that involves carrying 9 different things around like a moron.

Luckily, the system is already in place, you just need to set the correct variables, no real playtesting required.

Giacom wrote:Luckily, the system is already in place, you just need to set the correct variables, no real playtesting required.

I think that only LIMITS things, it doesn't allow you to stuff more things in a container if the size limit has not been reached.

The inventory screen will expand.

Really?
The more you know.

Because making inventory management take even more time is fun

How would this even work without taking up half of the screen while still giving sufficient feedback to the player?

Lo6a4evskiy wrote:Because making inventory management take even more time is fun

How would this even work without taking up half of the screen while still giving sufficient feedback to the player?

That is technically a problem but who would keep their backpack invintory open if its full of 50 cables. Risk vs reward comes into play a bit more with fiddiling with your invintory if you seriously want to carry about a stupid amount of coins not in a box.

Jalleo wrote:That is technically a problem but who would keep their backpack invintory open if its full of 50 cables. Risk vs reward comes into play a bit more with fiddiling with your invintory if you seriously want to carry about a stupid amount of coins not in a box.

First of all, I need my inventory open all the time to quickly get a weapon or just to speed things up. Secondly, you absolutely have to give an information about how much stuff I can fit in it, so I won't find myself in permabrig full of prisoners unable to put stun baton in my pack because it needs 1 more space which is taken by soap I just picked up.

So this is what my question is about. How are you going to provide feedback of remaining space, so that I know at all times what I can put inside, without it taking up whole screen?

Giacom wrote:Luckily, the system is already in place, you just need to set the correct variables, no real playtesting required.

I didn't mean playtesting to see if it's buggy, I meant playtesting to see how it affects balance -- which it will, drastically.

Oh.

Well one way would be to display the exact amount of "space" left in a backpack on-screen and how much "space" each item takes up when you examine it.

wouldn't this be comparable to some older games,were your inventory was a grid, and certain items took up more then one square?

Kinda except without the Tetris part.

(insert witty comment about needing a tetris game in SS13 here)

We can also do the form of stacking items via the way in mining satchels at the moment to remove clutter. It probably would be helpful if we did that since it would mean better backpack management. There would be issues with battery stacking when you want a specific one and cable coils each having their own length.