Weapons, items and where to put them

Author: Hopfel

(All art and interfaces shown in this post are mostly programmer art and not final. Readability and layout are subject to change once we do user studies so all mechanics are communicated to players appropriately.)

Items in TGOR are very valuable and we want to put emphasis on physical interaction. For this reason, items aren’t stackable but in turn allow for many different interactions. Among other things, one focus of this month has been to bring the interaction and item system together to allow crafting and research progression crucial for the next public build.

Interact with items

You can still traditionally put items into your inventory:

But you can also pick them up and hold them in your hands:

From there multiple interactions are possible, such as putting the item in your mouth. This is how you eat:

There is no swallow animation yet.

And of course some other places that can fit your items:

One downside of this is that handling items becomes more convoluted than traditional inventory systems (and will require rigorous playtesting to get right). Compared to other games where players are showered with items, here each item has very strong purpose. Crafting recipes only require few inputs, consuming items has long-term effects and storage capabilities are very limited.

Craft items

This sparsity is offset by the matter system we introduced in prior posts. All items are made out of stackable, high volume matter which they can be disassembled into or assembled from. The crafting system from an earlier post hasn’t changed but the functionality has been moved to a physical machine.

Note that machines don’t have an inventory but items are physically attached to them:

Items are physically put into the machine

Disassemble item into matter:

This temporary menu shows currently processed item in the middle and gathered matter to the right.

Create new item from matter:

Completable items can completely, available items only partially be assembled by the available matter

Items can be broken or incomplete, meaning they lack matter. This makes items lose some or all functionality and they need to be repaired in the same station.

Move items

Items can be taken from and put into machines, either from your hand or by inserting them from your inventory.

Moving items by hand

Inserting from inventory

Research

One way to progress through the knowledge tree are research stations. Research stations require you to put in samples (items) of a certain type which are then destroyed and turned into knowledge. The research doesn’t tell you what exact items it wants but it gives you a hint for what item types work together (creating some sort of puzzle).

This temporary menu shows the current research and progress above, currently attached items being researched at the bottom.

For now these stations only unlock new knowledge nodes, but after a research is done doing it repeatedly isn’t beneficial. We are thinking to make it generate a special resource as a perpetual reward that can be used e.g. for expanding your home dimension. 

Weapons

Combat is a core mechanic of our game. As with items, we want to design our weapon system in a way that promotes interaction with other creatures and the world. With that in mind, weapons don’t just do damage but each weapon has a set of skills.

Primary attacks do baseline damage while skills can be applied towards targets. The controls and user interface are the same as interactions.

Three combos of our test weapon.

Primary attacks being used while moving.

This weapon has three example skills, one of which sends the orb to a target and interfaces with it for 2 seconds. Fishing, anyone?

All weapons are paired with items (augments) which further change the way they behave, how they look or even what skills are available.

Conclusion

Player interactions with other creatures and the world is a central part of our game and our item/crafting/weapon system reflects that. There is a balance to be struck between immersive interactions and player convenience: Do you shift-click items quickly into an item grid, or do you hand-place items into physical locations? Our goal is to achieve as much of the latter as possible without sacrificing player convenience. These first item iterations have shown that slow processes work if items are sparse and valuable. We have also realised, that weapons need not simply be tools of war but offer many different ways to interface with the world. From here, consistent and intuitive interaction interfaces are our main tool to achieve interesting gameplay.

Extras

See-through mesh for specific camera situations (e.g. for self-interactions):

Super rough implementation for teleportation pipes: