Improvement ideas for backpacks

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

I just joined this forum, and forgive me if someone has already suggested this.

But after playing the game for some time now, one thing that kinda bug me, is the way backpacks and storage items are handled. Let me give you an example

Say you have a backpack, and your storage volume is full… no problem! But then you get into some fights, can’t repair your stuff, and then all of the sudden… your backpack is destroyed!
Now… instead of everything in it falling to the ground… somehow, you’re still carrying it… most likely in your arms!

See what I mean? Another example

This time, you have a dufflebag, filled with stuff, but it encumbers you to the point of lowering your melee. You then come into a situation where you need to fight a Zombie… so you drop your dufflebag… and magically, everything in it, is now in your arms!

Now… my idea is this. Program it so that when you pick stuff up, and have several pieces of clothing with enough storage for it, you get to choose what item is put where (sorta like sheathes, holsters, etc. but for items) and when you drop that pieces of storage clothing, everything in it is dropped as well, but stay in the bag, letting you easily pick it up after a fight.

Now, I don’t know how this would work, I’m no programmer, or modder, or anything, but I thought I’d at least let you devs know my idea for making the game better, and more “smooth” so to speak.

Lance out

2

Would making the player needing to (a)pply the gear you’re going to store into container be a viable option?
Might need some (or maybe a lot) tweaking with volume and weight.

3

Ah, the “backpacks improvement” post of the month (-:

This has indeed been suggested several times before and comes up every month or:

http://smf.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?topic=8344
http://smf.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?topic=9650
http://smf.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?topic=2510
http://smf.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?topic=894
http://smf.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?topic=1386
http://smf.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?topic=8447
http://smf.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?topic=3989 (kudos to that user who found a similar, existing thread themself → http://smf.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?topic=3971 )

All of the above can be easily found by searching for “backpack”. You can find the search function at the top right corner of the forum, or use this handy link: http://smf.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?action=search - it can be set to only search part of the forum (e.g. only the suggestion board).

This is not implemented because nobody found a good solution to avoid the micromanagement:

Now... my idea is this. Program it so that when you pick stuff up, and have several pieces of clothing with enough storage for it, you get to choose what item is put where

Imagine picking up 100 rags, do you want to answer 100 questions? What about 100 items of different types and different size? What if there is a combination that all of them fit, but there is also a combination that some don’t fit, e.g. you have a backpack (free storage 10) and a pouch (free storage 5), pick up a 5 volume item and a 10 volume item. That fits if you put the first item into the pouch, but if you put it into the backpack, there is no 10 volume storage space left for the second one. Who should solve that problem: the computer (by automatically picking the best combination), or the player?

Just play a game and stop and count how often you pick up items, now add a question to each of those picked items, that will be unplayable.

4

That is true… and I didn’t really know how the search thingy worked, just tried to add some constructive criticism, and some sort of solution :confused:

5

[quote=“BevapDin, post:3, topic:9297”]This is not implemented because nobody found a good solution to avoid the micromanagement:[/quote]Dwarf Fortress has a system that does exactly that and would be made even better with CDDA’s advanced equipment management.

6

Unfortunately, Toady (DF dev) didn’t find a good solution to avoid the micromanagement either…

7

I’d prefer the micromanaging in place of the current possibility of becoming horribly encumbered in fhe middle of a fight and dying due to technical limitations. And I’ll bet I’m not the only one annoyed with this.

8

We have a way toward this that does address both sides of the equation and it is being worked on, but it is not simple to implement, so it’s going to be a while.

9

If current inventory volume > max inventory volume then drop random items, starting with the largest, until equilibrium is met.

10

Would you rather wield that rifle with bayonet attached?

KA101 frequently overvolumes during mergetesting–debug menu FTW–though a debug carrying bag could easily be made

11

I don’t think you should get a prompt. If you weren’t wielding or wearing it, you don’t have time to catch it as it falls out of your destroyed backpack. If you want it, you’re going to have to pick it up off the ground.

I think that simply dropping items starting with the highest volume would be a passable middle ground solution.

12

Perhaps like we have clothing layering we also have a storage layer, simular to the [ + ] menu to sort your clothing layers you get to rank your storage options from most preferred to least preferred, when you then pick up new items you don’t get prompted about ‘where it goes’ but instead it just looks at the highest preferred place to put it that item that can hold that amount of volume.

if the player then wants to restructure the way she carries her load the [ / ] menu could be expanded upon and used but instead of targeting a tile it could also target your various storage items.

In the long haul it’d be awesome if every object was hierarchically attached to something. zombies actually wearing their clothes… the powdered candy sticks actually being in the pockets of that ripped and bloodstained hoodie… and zombies who revive no longer being naked.

((my apologies if I’m beating a dead horse repeating things that have been said a million times already, I don’t engage in the forums a whole lot and I don’t really know what already has been discussed and not))

13

I don’t think I understand.

14

Real Life
The worn-out backpack has gotten torn apart, and you’re crouching whilst struggling to keep your stuff in one place.

Rogue Like
The worn-out backpack has gotten torn apart, and you’re crouching whilst struggling to keep your stuff in one place.

A sensible thing to do with items meant for storage is to code them as containers. However, the simplicity of this task has been proven untrue, even though it only seems as trivial as:
hasContainer: True / False;
dettachableContainer: True / False;

In other words, you can’t just code some container class in, and leave it vanilla. The class needs to inherit some properties codewise, and what’s ‘million miles’ more important - items in the container and other containers in that container will most certainly get dependancies based upon those properties.
Let’s see what are the real problems player characters face in-game.

Purging Items

Item purge is no stranger when it comes to debugging RL games. This is not the same as the ‘discard item’ function. ‘Purge’ means forcing a choice of items based on their properties through a filter that inspects them, then releasing those “less important” items to another function - like drop().
Players should be able to confirm this action, so to end the whole nerd-talk thing - but it must be automatic and painless.

I hope you can realize where the issue is here; whereas you code a reality-bubble-segment with containers, you’re defining a magic wand possibility with purge filters which needs to be practical and, by all means, unobstructive.

15

I don’t think I understand.[/quote]

I was thinking that some items should be wielded instead. shrug Basically because, as I said, I overvolume all the time in testing and would rather the game not automatically mess that up. But then I can make a non-encumbering debug bag with 9999 volume easily enough.

16

making realistic system what will be not pain to use request creating new inventory screen from scratch
i have 2 ideas how this can look

  1. do not need mouse, there is a screen like actual advanced inventory management with items on ground/near player to the right and containers to the left what are expandable lists and have idicator how much volume they have left inside it should look like that:
    kg v q
    9mm 0,4 6 20 backpack <0/20> V
    meat jerky 0,1 1 1 jeans <2/2> V
    plastic bootle of atomic cofee (2) 0,4 2 1 reinforced t-shirt <0/0> V
    leather belt <0/1> ^
    tactical dump pounch <2/5>
    plastic bootle

this realy badly created image how this should look
<x/x> show how much volume container have
V and ^ show if list of items inside container is open of closed
this have clear look while micro management is a problem is far better than using backpack like holster