Like something belong to player, so the NPC wont take it away if they are friendly, and something can also belong to NPC, so will the player try take away, it will count as stealing.
There is already such a system in place for friendly NPCs. You can set a “zone” with the zone manager menu (default keybind ‘Y’) and set it to “No NPC Pickup”, which lets your allies know that you have a claim on the items there.
At some point we’d like to put in a system where NPCs can also claim items, and if you or another NPC picks it up they get angry (if they’re relatively friendly they’d just warn you that it’s their stuff, if not they might just start shooting). Actually we’d probably just extend the zone concept and mark terrain rather than individual items.
Likewise restricted areas that NPCs will be angry about you entering and similar things.
As for publicly announcing a claim, we were thinking of erecting some kind of totem that would potentially scare off hostile NPCs, and we’d probably want some kind of similar signage placed wen NPCs want you to not take their stuff.
To be clear, I’m totally against a df-like system where you magically know what is owned by who just by looking at it. There also might be unmarked territory that NPCs consider theirs, but they don’t announce it
Didn’t know that! That’s great.
Hey, would there be a system to make NPCs see if an object is marked or not? That could be good too, to not have to zone some normal items.
Speaking of zones, perhaps it could be possible to have one zone… let’s call it a construction zone. As long as you and the items needed for construction are in that zone, you can construct anything inside that zone, even when you’re far away from the needed items.
One of the annoying problems about constructing big buildings for me is I have to haul around a wheelbarrow of items while constructing, and when I run out, I have to refill the wheelbarrow to get working again, or alternatively, set the item on the tile next to the place I’m constructing, which in the case of roofs, on each tile underneath the roof to be built.
I can’t say I’ve ever had a huge problem with NPC thieves. If they are hostile you just kill them, if not there’s always loads of ‘worthless’ junk one can trade for whatever they stole.
Still, a zone based ‘territory’ system is probably better than item ownership because individual tag tracking and proliferation for that sort of thing tends to cause weird code bloat as far as I’m aware?
Still, might be useful to link zone ownership with factions or something?
It does not if you just add an ‘owner’ attribute to each item. This is what most games do today.
That been said, the rationale for not doing so is that anyone should be able to recocnize that the thing belongs to you, or else its free for them to claim.
This is imo a much better approach.
Thus, zone-based ownership is much more sound. A survivor can claim and protect a zone, as long as he stays around, but never single items scattered in a wide area.