Inventory | Crafting | Knowledge | Weapons

 Author: Salireths

The progress steadily goes towards finalizing all systems we wanted to pack for the next build, approaching the exciting moment when we can start adding actual game content!

In the last post we talked about save/load system and changes to hub level, that is still being unchanged and works (and looks) very well! Think we finally found our Hub that we will stick with!

While all that works well, Hopfel continued to work on implementing all things related to the tab-menu. If you remember from the old game builds, pressing tab would open a side-panel with inventory.

Since then, not only design was completely reimagined, but also all code was re-done from scratch. Now we have a completely new and a much more robust Inventory system, along with support of Crafting, weapon and ability augmentation, Interaction with consoles, and Knowledge Tree functionality. It's even extendable with mods!

A word of warning though: the UI design has not been fully completed yet, this is all "programmer art" still. General usability of the UI is not yet polished, icons and designs are missing, temporary funny names are used.
You can check the concept art of how it is supposed to look when fully finished here, some elements have been moved around though, fulfilling new system requirements.

Inventory

 ➡ Full video version:  https://imgur.com/a/JfelPRI

• Inventory is split in multiple tabs, this is to make management of equipment easier.
  
• Filtering: the item bar only displays items that you need in a current context, such as only showing augments that you can attach on your selected weapons or tools.
  
• Weapons/tools are not items, they are more like skills that you invoke, can change layout when resting. Each weapon has a number of abilities, firing modes, and moves that you can perform with it.
  
• A weapon can have one augment equipped at a time, they are used to change weapon's properties - make them shoot fire or ice, split projectiles, make them ricochet, and many other things.
  
• Items do not support stacking, because each item is unique. Our game will focus around finding unique items, eating them, using them, or breaking them down to study and/or get resources.
  
• Storage space is limited by the amount of items you can store. Item size and weight, while they play a crucial role in crafting and digestion, don't affect your character while stored in the inventory.
  
• In the future we will do so you can expand your inventory size by equipping additional inventory modules. These modules retain their inventory - meaning if you drop a module full of items on the ground, it's just a container with those items in it.
  
• TGOR has unique lore regarding how inventory works, you see, its not bags and backpacks stuffed with items. Instead, through usage of ancient Dragon technology, items are stored in something like a parallel/pocket dimension, frozen in space and time. Items or small creatures can stay in your inventory modules for centuries, and for them not a second will pass. Your Aura is responsible for opening rifts to that dimension, and with a simple hand gesture and a mental command you can snatch or place items anywhere around you.

Crafting

➡ Full video version:   https://imgur.com/a/6v30DSV

• Crafting is introduced to the player when they first open the corresponding tab - to get started player needs to assemble their first tool. It doesn't cost any resources, but it gives an ability to further disassemble and hold matter in tool's storage.
  
• After that player needs to acquire (if they don't already have) some items to disassemble: sand, pebbles, leaves - all good sources of common and organic matter, enough to fill up the small starting tool.
  
• After player has enough matter of specific types, they can start assembling items they require. However not much will be available at the start, because player needs to perform some exploration and research to progress through Knowledge Tree to unlock more recipes.
  
• Various tools have different efficiencies and storage capacity. The amount of matter required or received depends on mass of the item and its composition. If efficiency is low, disassembly can yield less and assembly can require more matter - a big subject to be balancing later on. The process also needs energy, which is generated by player's Aura - its also something that will eventually need upgrading or worked around in order to create heavier items.
  
• The starting portable tool won't be the most efficient solution to craft. Research and exploration will be needed to make higher tier tools, as well as finding, restoring, or building stationary assemblers and energy generators.
  
• The portable tools have a set limit on what kinds and amounts of matter they can store. Stationary matter reservoirs will be a good way to dump that matter for later use.
  
• As game mechanics already implies, the lore-side of item creation process involves usage of molecular materializer technology. Creatures in our world, be it Dragons or dinosaurs, don't need to use hammers or screwdrivers in order to "craft" something. They just need to design (or copy) a molecular blueprint of a specific object, and provided with enough matter and energy resources they can "print" it.

Knowledge

 ➡ Full video version:  https://imgur.com/a/egnELY9

• Knowledge tree has actual functionality now - nodes get properly unlocked when tracked conditions are met.
  
• There is a work in progress unlocked notification now: it has a cool little animation, but it might be moved to a corner and resized to not obstruct view much.
  
• Nodes do not unlock anything at the moment, but that should be the next thing to work on: adding meaningful nodes that have meaningful tasks that unlock meaningful crafting recipes, cosmetics, and abilities.
  
• For a refresher what knowledge tree does, scroll down to the second part of this post

Weapons

 ➡ Full video version:   https://imgur.com/a/eUHgeZD

• After rework completed, weapons now function once again. They will now use the bodypart/apparel system, because the majority our weapons/tools are not rigid object, instead they are worn like gloves. We still need to rig weapon meshes though, that's why they are not shown on screenshots yet.
  
• To shoot a ranged weapon, RMB must be held to draw it and aim, then LMB pressed to shoot. If its not aimed and then LMB is pressed, the weapon will be used in alternative close-combat or melee mode, similar to Dead Space. (Controller also supported of course).
  
• We're planning to make walking with a weapon drawn be slower, doing side-stepping instead of turning towards direction of movement. The feature is is not implemented yet, but it's something to do soon. The same side-stepping mode is going to be used while performing sexual and social actions, such as licking or humping a targeted object, connecting combat and peaceful interactions more under one system.
  
• When aimed, the weapon changes the player's view position through a special camera-preemption system that was made recently as well. It overrides the default camera settings and can offset it in any direction, or even completely detach it.
  
• The bouncing red balls shown on the GIF are part of our projectile system. To save performance we do not actually spawn projectiles - instead those are just moving collision spheres (they are invisible normally, they are just drawn in debug mode). Those can be both slow and incredibly fast, have physics, react to atmosphere and water, and many more. The pattern of their movement can also be custom-programmed.

Conclusion

That's all for now! There is more things in the works that I'd love to share with you soon: new models, more level design, more lore writing in progress.

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed reading thorough the summary of game's progress.