I'm sorry, I wasn't paying enough attention. I assumed it was first-person.

I doubt this is a big enough deal for a small measure of disconnect to bother gamers. I'd have the avatar reach over the shoulder, behind the back and so forth, switch the weapons, return the hands and do a weapon readiness animation (cock the pistol, pump the shotgun, etc).

Rather than manually creating holsters for all the armor, why not make some kind of 'cloth simulation' that generates them for you? It could load in the armor models and then orient 'gravity' to be toward the holster and have a long piece of cloth (the straps) start on the opposite side of the limb, then run the simulation till it settles down, 'clip' the excess cloth, and tada you have your holster straps =-)

If you get it working well enough, you could even incorporate it into the game and calculate the new positions whenever the player changes armor.

Of course, you might need to manually adjust some of them, but it seems like 99% of them could be generated automatically via such a method. Then just record the position of the holster and adjust the player's reach-for-holster animation accordingly.

Realism wasn't exactly the right word I was looking for. Of course the game is non-realistic. The year is 2400+ and there are all sorts of tech machines to do things that are currently totally impossible. I was really meaning that something "dissapearing into your pocket" didn't fit the rest of the game. But there are going to be mutants, orcs, and all the sort. So realism was definitely the wrong word.

Since this is an RPG, I need a somewhat magical inventory. What fun is an RPG where you can only carry 5 things at once? I'm thinking maybe a limit to combat gear of 2-4 guns, maybe a melee weapon and quite a few grenades. Other small types of inventory items can be stacked in there infinitely. I'll probably just use a weight system, and set the weight of non-combat items as zero.

Thanks for all of the suggestions. I think I'm going to take the easy way out this time, as Oluseyi suggests. Even though something materializing makes me cringe a bit, gameplay (button-weapon-switching) is much more important than a slight oddity. And having the gameplay without the oddity is going to add way too much to dev time. This will also remove my concern about how security guards and police should react to a guy walking down the street with 8 guns strapped to him [lol] The locations in this game are pretty clean / high class for the most part. With the ability to hide your weapons, it allows the player to actually go somewhere normal/social without having to leave all of his weapons somewhere else, and without forcing him to wear trench coats. Of course he may still be stopped by a patrolman every once in a while and have to draw his gear or run like hell [smile]

I'm still open to suggestions. I'm more interested now in figuring out a way to hide this appearing and vanishing of gear from the camera, without spinning or zooming [lol]

Quote:

Original post by Jiia What fun is an RPG where you can only carry 5 things at once?

Personally, I prefer a few well-balanced items to a plethora of useless or use-once ones. In fact, I'd say that, as a culture, we've fallen prey to the notion that more is better.

More isn't better. Games today are riddled with unlockables, many of which (IMO) should be available from the get-go. Not all gamers have the tenacity to play through the entire game just to get an additional skin, so you're actually penalizing such gamers. Additional game modes? Should be available from the start, giving gamers more ways to play and thus more value from their purchase.

Back on point, RPGs owe a huge debt of lineage to fantasy novels, yet I don't see constant acquisition of new items in fantasy. (Admittedly, I don't read them much, nor do I care to.) Are there other means of character advancement besides spells and weapons? Skills are good, but the current implementation turns them into an arms race as well. I can't count the number of times I've cringed in response to hearing or reading "level up".

I think it's worthwhile to reexamine certain cardinal assumptions of our various "genres".

[Edit: Fixed [quote] tag.]

[Edited by - Oluseyi on October 30, 2004 1:17:19 PM]

The PC can rent apartments, where he can store his weapons, armor, and other items. So extreme limitations on what you can carry would just make the trip back to the APs seem annoying. I do feel there should be limitations on certain types of items. Such as items that can be pulled from fallen enemies and sold. I don't want the player to feel an advantage would be gained by looting every dead body that falls. If he is restricted by time and inventory space, he will pass up anything that is not of great value. Add to that the fall in price of used equipment, and looting for money almost goes away.

I'm the type of gamer that likes to collect equipment. Especially rare types of equipment that you can't buy. Even if I have some other equipment that makes the rare one basically worthless, the fact that it's rare makes me wanna hold onto it [smile] So I expect I'll end up adding many different ways the player can collect items. Displays for armor and weapons, hide-away storage spaces with palm-reader locks [wink], etc.

I personally have to disagree with the unlockable situation. I prefer games that give you rewards for accomplishing a goal. If at the end of a week, you've finally finished the game, what better way to make the gamers day than to give them another way to enjoy it? I believe the entire drive behind the idea of an RPG is unlockables. The ending is an unlockable. Skills are unlockables. Weapons, armor, the story itself. The idea that there's something to look forward to, that you're trying to gain something, it adds to the flavor.

As for acquisition, this is a single player RPG. So no arms races. Well, unless you just want bragging rights. The items are there, and undoubtably a lot of them, but the game itself does not revolve around them. The goal of the game is to stay alive, to figure out why the police/gov are trying to kill ya, and put a stop to it. This is more of an RPG for gamers that prefer to play games rather than finish them.

I'm hoping I can have a lot of [useful] skills, abilities, etc. I'm trying to put these things off until I add the actions which will put the abilities to a test. So instead of adding a bunch of skills, then trying to decide what they should effect, I'm going to try to add a new skill whenever a new action doesn't fit into the current skills. The way this game is being written allows me to add a major game element far into development, even after a major amount of game content is finished. Blah blah, damn I'm blabbing. In other words, I'm not sure how detailed character building is going to be yet. It all depends on the number of different types of activities they can perform.

Could you just turn the "weapons appearing out of thin air" into something that compliments the game and/or story? By this, I mean, could you add a little burst of light or some other effect that accompanies the item appearing out of nowhere and say that there is some technology/magic that allows a player access to items in their inventory instantly - it teleports into their hands, or whatever.

Honestly, this sounds like kind of a wierd way around it, but if you're just getting hung up the fact that it doesn't look realistic in the game, *make* it "realistic" (perhaps "believable" is a better word) by adding some kind of effect and add an explanation for it. Work it in as part of the game.

Why not create a compromise that would allow you to have the best of both worlds? You want the char to be able to realistically switch between weapons & have realistic animations to go with it, yet you also want the char to have a large inventory where all his weapons & items are stored.

You could have your char equip all the weapons that he could realistically have on his person, such as a holstered pistol on either leg, a rifle or two slinged over a shoulder, maybe a couple more pistols holstered at the small of the back or waisteline area, some knives or grenades on a utility belt or bandolier, or some knives or small pistols strapped to the ankles, etc.

Then the player can use a single keypress to switch weapons, such as buttons 1-10 on a keyboard. When the player presses a button to arm a weapon, the game would look to see if he already has one armed (in his hands) or not. And if he does, it would play the proper animation to have him put that weapon away before the animation to draw the newly selected weapon.

This would solve a large part of your problem. Then all you have left to deal with is when the player wants to switch to a weapon that is in his inventory but not visible on his person. To do this you could simply make it so that when the player chooses the new weapon from his inventory, it immediately replaces whichever one it needs to get in the correct spot, such as a slung rifle being replaced by a slung SMG, etc. Then the animation would run showing the char arming the SMG, etc.

This way you don't see a weapon magically appear in his hands, but only see it magically appear on his person along with the holster right before you see him reach for it. And because the player will usually equip the weapons he uses most first, these magical instance sshould happen with much less frequency than switching between already equipped weapons. This would offer a good compromise between these two issues.

AP makes a good point, but having a dozen weapons tied to your character would do more harm to the immersion than flicking them in and out of existence. If you had a long gun, a handgun, and a melee weapon, you could strap them all the the character's body and then just have the player switch between them at will. If three isn't enough, why not just have the player pull different weapons magically out of the same holster, like Lara Croft used to do?

Or hide the shifts more convincingly. Instead of having the character pull stuff out of thin air behind him, Bugs-Bunny-style, just put a big flappy coat on him, or a cape or something. Link is forever tucking things under his shield, for instance. There's no way a bow, a hookshot, four bottles, three magic crystals, a huge sledgehammer, two changes of clothes, two spare sets of boots, fifty arrows, forty bombs, a claymore and twenty tree branches are stuffed in there, but as long as his hand goes inside and enclosed space before emerging with the object, the player will forgive you.

For my part, I think you should have to go to your car or open your backpack and choose the gear that you will carry into the level before you go, and be limited to what you choose and battlefield pick-ups for weapons or ammo. An assault rifle and a sidearm should probably be enough for the job, and if you need a bazooka, then odds are there's someone around who'd be willing to let you borrow his in exchange for a small amount of lead.

> 2. Player pulls/places weapons from side opposite to camera

I think this is a palatable solution.

1. because weapons have been materializing out of the air for a while now.. gamers are basically used to it.
2. Less invasive than throwing up an inventory screen all the time. (Presumes gamer will probably use most efficient method)


I think the idea might be worth a second look.

FWIW (=

In Halo for example, you can only carry 2 weapons at the same time. It made the game a lot more believable, and it didn't harm it in any way. You usually chose between a sniper rifle or a rocket launcher as a secondary weapon for some specific targets, and most other weapons fill the role of a primary weapon (machinegun, plasma gun, etc). I'm not saying yours should be this limited; you can still have 2 big weapons slingered over your shoulder, firearms in different holsters, and all the other stuff that AP mentioned. Although this sounds limiting, it will add a lot to the game and emphasize strategy on the choice of weapons. Sometimes the way someone would handle this problem in real life is the best approach.