1/17/23

Time Worked: 7 - 7:57 PM

Total Time: 57 mins

So today I worked out some stuff about how equipment and inventory management will work. Here's a summary of what I kind of came up with from my working Design document:

Inventory Management

Initially the plan was to have heavy inventory management, so the preparation aspect of the game was going to be a major feature. However, once the basic gameplay began to take shape, I decided to move to a two equipment, two weapon, one backpack inventory system. 

The player may take their pick of what they own to bring into the mission but must stay within this requirement. This is in order to make the development of the inventory system simple, as well as to keep the pace of the gameplay moving along.

Inventory items consist of:

• Equipment

• Examples: Night Vision Goggles, Grenades, Flash Grenades, Weapon Light (blinds enemies), Plastic Explosive, Thermal Goggles, Smoke Grenades, etc.

• Each item should significantly change the gameplay.

• Weapons

• Armor (?)

• Intel/Cash 

• Takes up no inventory space

• Ammo

• Takes up no inventory space

The idea here is that the player should be able to create a unique gameplay style based on the collection of equipment and weapons they are using. A cool combination might be Thermal Goggles and Smoke Grenades so they could disguise themselves and see through the smoke to attack enemies.

The extra backpack slot allows players to take one piece of loot they find in the level back with them (still possibly at a morality system (?) cost)

I feel pretty good about this system. It was kind of a moment where I could go two different ways and neither is bad (heavy inventory management i.e. Tarkov or Zomboid vs. very light management i.e. Gungeon). But I decided to run with the simple version, so I can spend less time making the inventory system and more time making cool effects with the equipment itself.

Feeling good!