Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
several of them, up to some maximum limit. Money, usually gold coins, will fit in a
box with so many hundred coins per container. Figure 15.5 shows the inventory
mode for Dungeon Siege II , which appears as a pop-up window over the main game
world.
FIGURE 15.5
The inventory mode in
Dungeon Siege II
Item weight may be a secondary constraint. No matter how many boxes the player
has free, his character can carry only so many lead weights around. The BioWare
games assess a penalty on a character's speed if he is carrying more than a certain
weight, and above another threshold the character cannot move at all. Money is
often exempt from the weight limit because having to store it whenever the player
finds a big treasure hoard is annoying.
The player usually spends a disproportionate amount of time micromanaging the
contents of the inventory, so inventory management becomes disproportionately
important. Often, this task breaks a cardinal rule of human-computer interaction:
Don't force the player to perform a menial task best handled by the computer. A
simpler solution is to display a simple table of the items in the inventory, without
requiring the player to organize them in space. A pair of indicators, one for the
total weight of the inventory and one for the total volume, could tell the player
how much room he has left and how much more weight he can carry.
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