Forum rules - please read before posting.

Managing large quantities of items?

AlverikAlverik
edited April 2016 in Technical Q&A
Hello,my name is Alvaro. I'm designing a game which besides adventure game mechanics uses ideas from other genres, like Jrpg and life simulators, etc (the GDD is almost complete enough to start development). But, anyways, because of crafting mechanics (paper crafting, cooking, tailoring and others) I will need to use large quantities of items, and I worry if it will be workable within AC?. I imagine there will be a at least 20 or 30 items per category, (making them over a hundred individual items, all of which can be carried in bulks - like 3 donuts, 10 pork lunch boxes, 2 hats, etc). So I was wondering: is it feasible within AC? would it become totally confusing or unmanageable?  would it have a big performance impact?

Seeing the action list workflow, I had thought of another possibility. I was thinking of having an action list manage the whole item list? like having a tree with all the possible items, and when the player crafts, the crafting action throws an id, that id is processed by the action list, which then verifies if the player has the item, if he doesn't, it would then populate one inventory slot, if he does have one, it would just increase the quantity of the owned item in the inventory.. you think this is possible? 

Of course, I will most probably limit the amount of item slots available for the player, but I'll still have to deal with spawning items from a large list... 

And well, I have to admit that all of my knowledge about AC comes from all the video tutorials, and although I did once study some programming, that was like 15 years ago (I'll be relying mostly on plugins like AC and playmaker)... so I though the best would be to ask first to people who actually have experience using the plugin (and/or have more robust programming knowledge). maybe I'm just worrying too much because I don't know what AC can achieve, or maybe you all may have a better idea of how to deal with this situation.

Anyways, thank you for your time.

Comments

  • GeometriXGeometriX
    edited April 2016
    I don't know about the performance impact, but from a design point of view, AC is quite geared up to deal with the sort of stuff you're talking about. Of course there are dedicated assets, like Inventory Pro, which could probably give you more flexibility, but AC on its own can handle multiple items, crafting recipies, item categories (and limiting inventory grids to only show certain categories). You'd be able to specify limits on crafting, like the player has to go to a forge or crafting table to combine certain types of items (set by category). 

    I'd say the only possible challenge you might face is items that need to belong to multiple categories, as there's no support for this in AC. There's also no support for crafting patterns/shapes (like Minecraft) out of the box, but I imagine with some finagling you'd be able to set that up. Likewise there's a way to show the quantity of each item in your inventory using Unity UI.

    Oh, and there's no support out of the box for limiting item quantities or weight limits, but these can easily be imposed with the use of variables.
  • ChrisIceBoxChrisIceBox
    For full details on what AC provides, the Manual can be downloaded for free.
  • AlverikAlverik
    Thanks guys, that's a load of my mind. I'll start reading the manual. I'm hoping to start development soon, I already have plenty of geometry and stuff to use (at least for the environments), and for now I'm just taking my time to finish the GDD as good as it can get and deciding on all the plugins I'm gonna need. Again thanks, I'm sure, when the time comes, AC is gonna be the core of my game :)
Sign In or Register to comment.

Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!

Sign In Register

Quick Links

Categories

Welcome to the official forum for Adventure Creator.