30 Nov, 2014, Lundex wrote in the 61st comment:
Votes: 0
I believe handling containers should be as somewhat realistic. Such as smaller containers can fit inside bigger containers. And as such containers handled by both size and weight requirements. Obviously having various examples and whatnot. It is based on how the creator wants to handle it. Just my few cents.
02 Dec, 2014, plamzi wrote in the 62nd comment:
Votes: 0
Lundex said:
I believe handling containers should be as somewhat realistic.


I find a shared storage space only a tad less realistic, and a whole lot more convenient. It not only reduces inventory length dramatically, it also doubles as a means for transferring items between your characters. You should see it in action–it's quite nice.

Speaking from experience, visualizing nestable containers is a huge pain. I am not at all surprised that RPGs moved away from containers as they moved into graphics and non-textual player input.

But even within the text-based game paradigm, I find the classic Diku containers can be very tedious and annoying. If you equip people with the right tools to find an item quickly, why should you make them spend a significant chunk of their game time moving things in and out of other things?

My philosophy is that the only way something realistic should make its way into the game is if it's done in a fun way. I'm not having any fun when I'm getting pounded by an enemy, try to quaff a potion, and am told that I can't because the potion is inside a bag inside a sack, which happens to be closed (in a kludgy effort to de-spam). Most people here already known I have a huge problem with realism for the sake of realism, so I'm going to end the tirade here before I get carried away, and get some work done :)
02 Dec, 2014, Lundex wrote in the 63rd comment:
Votes: 0
Well I can understand what you mean. Inventory shouldn't be a task in a half when playing. I came up with a concept that your inventory is made up of containers that have equipped. So having a leg pouch, pockets in your pants, pockets in your coat. But when you search for items in acts like a single inventory. So to increase your inventory you would have just have to wear more which could could increase weight but its a trade off between opening up each container just to find a single item.
03 Dec, 2014, SlySven wrote in the 64th comment:
Votes: 0
I think you have to account for size to avoid issues of ridiculousness by size as well as weight!
I might feasibly be able to put the corpse of a small pet in a pouch, but I should have difficulty with a spare full-size quarterstaff (useless it is a telescopic version and it has been collapsed) even though the weight could be similar. Weight though a first order factor, is only part of the system, I mean, going on to flog a dead horse a bit, you'd never be able to put in that same pouch said dead horse! :biggrin:

Of course that does allow for the occasional comic exception: miniature pony, Alice in Wonderland - "drink me" potion.
03 Dec, 2014, plamzi wrote in the 65th comment:
Votes: 0
SlySven said:
I think you have to account for size to avoid issues of ridiculousness by size as well as weight!
I might feasibly be able to put the corpse of a small pet in a pouch, but I should have difficulty with a spare full-size quarterstaff (useless it is a telescopic version and it has been collapsed) even though the weight could be similar.


Mmm, yeah, let's not oversimplify here. Judging from your example, what you really mean is not just size, or volume, but exact dimensions. Seeing as a single dimension, such as the quarterstaff's excessive height relative to the insufficiently stretchable height of the pouch, would be enough to make it un-pouchable, period, game over, amigo.

There really is no excuse for any sad container system which doesn't track and account for all dimensions of the container vs. all of its contents, calculating not only whether it is possible to insert a(n extended) quarterstaff into a pouch, but also if it is physically possible for the already contained objects to be wiggled around in such a manner as to allow the insertion of a new item with said dimensions.

But hey, what about density? A huge ball of twine could be squished comfortably between two quarterstaves, whereas a small dagger will not be so easily coerced to take a different shape. Thus I find myself incapable of enjoying any game in which item density is crudely neglected.

P. S. Alice in Wonderland is one of the greatest books of the 20th Century, by the way. Among the many lessons it teaches is the lesson that the human mind needs more than stark or mundane reality to be entertained, and that it is perfectly capable of being entertained by well-devised absurdities. That's why we have myths, legends, fairy-tales, fantasy games.
03 Dec, 2014, Tyche wrote in the 66th comment:
Votes: 0
Logistics makes the mud world work better

When it's black as midnight
And you can't find a light
That's logistics
When the canoe for the trip
Causes your backpack to rip
That's logistics
Three sets of armor is twink
And in the river will sink
That's logistics
When there's miles of desert about
And your water has run out
That's logistics
Secret pouches are cool
Your friends will all drool
That's logistics
You have to be quick on your feet
With new ways to compete
That's logistics
When a mud player knows
Right where everything goes
That's logistics
There will be no more stress
Cause you packed your gear best
That's logistics

We love logistics.
03 Dec, 2014, SlySven wrote in the 67th comment:
Votes: 0
^
|
+– to the tune of Dean Martin's That's Amore ? :smile:
06 Dec, 2014, Nathan wrote in the 68th comment:
Votes: 0
@Tyche :biggrin: (Was it UPS or Fedex that was all into the word logistics in their advertisements for a while there?)

I think nested containers aren't too bad, but care does need to be taken with handling output and limiting the number of containers would be helpful. If you only showed one level that would reduce the complexity. I daresay that getting to a bag within a bag would be complex, and so you should sort out your stuff before getting in a fight or travelling some distance. There are any number of ways to display inventory that might suit one's needs, dependent on visual space usage desires, and the degree of stuff within others stuff desired.

typical + 1-layer visual nesting:
armor
potion
bag
dagger
map
*pouch

horizontal + 1-layer visual nesting:
armor, potion, staff, bag (dagger, map, flint and steel, *pouch), belt

* is indicating a container that's inside of a container here, because knowing what's a container and what isn't is important and the first level containers are made obvious by the visual nesting.

The best/nicest way (at least for ease of playing) to handle whether you can use an item, is probably to perform some "calculations" to determine whether it is viable, in the current situation and consider space and packing issues, for the character to perform the necessary, realistic steps to get and use something. If it is, then automatically have them do that, producing/outputting the number and specificity of messages you desire and figuring in any consequences somehow. Additionally, having containers that only hold specific things helps, but you do need a way to differentiate them visually for the player so they know what they have.

If you have more than 1-layer of nesting, then you either have to limit the number of layers and have convoluted syntax OR devise a flexible, and necessarily unpleasant, syntax to describe exactly which container you want to deal with and what you want to do with it.

Former: 'get sword from bag in bag in bag….' or something along those lines
Latter: 'get sword from bag, bag, bag' less unpleasant, but still nasty to type.
(you could drop the 'from' if you wanted, but whatever)



All that said, there's no reason to allow the player to carry everything and the kitchen sink and one way to discourage that is to offer other places to store things. Sure, a chest back in town isn't the most convenient, but it is reachable in a pinch and would keep you from loading yourself to point of being unable to walk.

Whether or not inventory should be a task of it's own depends on the game and whether you want it to be a mechanic. A degree of realism helps balance most games. Many games want you to have to decide what stuff you hold onto/take with you, because it's both ridiculous and game breaking to be prepared for absolutely everything.



Dimensions and what should actually fit inside of something is a whole different kettle of fish. Unless you want a lot of math and occasionally slipups, generalizing size/weight/dimension "classes" is probably the easy way to handle that.

Plenty of rpgs kept containers when rpgs started being made in graphics. containers are actually a little bit easier in graphics.

I think interesting stuff can be done with containers and the effects of trying to do that sort of thing in an actual battle or on the run, but if that kind of complexity/interesting stuff isn't what you want in your game, then why include it? If the players want it, that's different.
11 Dec, 2014, Ashlan wrote in the 69th comment:
Votes: 0
This looks awesome but I can't log in through my iPad and Safari, it's looping through a "change password" prompt. :(

Edit: I was able to login through the not-text version and apparently I made like ten Paladins with the same name, lol.
11 Dec, 2014, plamzi wrote in the 70th comment:
Votes: 0
Ashlan said:
This looks awesome but I can't log in through my iPad and Safari, it's looping through a "change password" prompt. :(

Edit: I was able to login through the not-text version and apparently I made like ten Paladins with the same name, lol.


I sorted out some issues, thanks for the bug report.

I'm not yet sure if I'm going to try to support the Havoc text-based UI demo on tablets. For the game I'm making, I'll try to make the GUI compatible with high-res tablets for sure, but I'm not there yet.

Looks like you managed to get in and move around and kill some stuff, so probably you saw enough to get a sense of what I was talking about.
11 Dec, 2014, Tijer wrote in the 71st comment:
Votes: 0
i had similar issues with my ipad and the actual mudportal site… it wouldnt display the password prompt for ANY mud i tried to connect to, this was on safari, and chrome for ipad…
11 Dec, 2014, plamzi wrote in the 72nd comment:
Votes: 0
Tijer said:
i had similar issues with my ipad and the actual mudportal site… it wouldnt display the password prompt for ANY mud i tried to connect to, this was on safari, and chrome for ipad…


Which particular MUD? I checked some and it seems to be working fine now.
12 Dec, 2014, Ashlan wrote in the 73rd comment:
Votes: 0
Ey plamzi, is there a place you would like to receive bug reports? Maybe that cloud gamer site?

I have been intending to learn javascript and node.js so I think I'll be working with your engine here until further notice :) Hopefully I can even contribute some code at some point.
12 Dec, 2014, plamzi wrote in the 74th comment:
Votes: 0
GitHub and Cloudgamer.org / Mudportal.com are both fine.
13 Dec, 2014, Tijer wrote in the 75th comment:
Votes: 0
plamzi said:
Tijer said:
i had similar issues with my ipad and the actual mudportal site… it wouldnt display the password prompt for ANY mud i tried to connect to, this was on safari, and chrome for ipad…


Which particular MUD? I checked some and it seems to be working fine now.


turns out it was the keyboard app i was using…
23 Jan, 2015, plamzi wrote in the 76th comment:
Votes: 0
Quick update.

Got some early adopters in the new year, and improving the initial install process. It will be exciting to see where people take this.

The web app is also getting updates, the most notable being the ability to send Latin-1 input to an old-school non-utf8 server :)
60.0/76