Crafting and revamped inventory among other new things... news - Crypts of Avaritia

Finally I have something to report to you guys! I have been a bit absent during Christmas due vacation and after that there was some illness taking up time, then sidetracked by procedural terrain... But little by little I have done stuff mostly under the hood but now some major stuff finally has been implemented.

First of all, I have rebuilt the dungeon generation algorithm once again, now I generate less predictable levels/floors since they are no longer in a pure square configuration. The stairs down to the next floor is also placed totally in random (well not really random since you set the seed, but I think you get the idea...) so the player does not now which way to head towards, previously the stairs up was always in the west and you would head to the far east to find the stairs down (which was stupid and I always planned to replace that, was just harder than I thought...).

Now I get something that looks like this:

Next up is the revamped inventory system. Under the hood i re-wrote 90% of the inventory and equipment handling, the old system was a free asset from the unity asset store and was great for a total beginner, but after a while I could not handle the weird choices and doubtful programming so I finally scrapped it and wrote something I think is better. You can now toggle the inventory when it is not needed and I also cleaned up the layout and I think this is actually really close to what I would like to use in the end. Must update the upper part where you select window though, still looks like crap. But it is easy to overview, gives relevant information and looks ok. The slot name/name of appropriate equipment to place shows when the pointer is hovering the square which is not really showing in the picture.

And I got a little video for you to see it all in motion together with some other minor new stuff:

In order of appearance:
- Picking up some items that will be used later (placeholder graphics in many cases in case you wonder what the white blocks are, the same goes for icons in the inventory)
- New menu/options for opening doors. All doors that are locked by a lock (can also be locked by a trigger/latch, remote trigger or puzzle) can either be opened with the correct key type (iron, bronze, silver and gold keys) or be lockpicked (if the player is skilled enough).
- First door is lockpicked.
- Second door is opened with key.
-We find a water source. Here you can take a sip or use the water for various things. In this case we just fill up a empty bottle, but yiu will also have to rinse/clean eatable plants/vegetables. If you do not clean your vegetables you might catch a disease such as hepatitis (working on diseases at the moment).
- Take note that water sources can be clean sources or contaminated sources. The player does not now if the source is clean or contaminated, so to be sure you must boil the water. The same goes for meat in the game where Trichinella and other stuff might be present. Bur the player will at least know if the meat is rotten.
- Equipping a rock (use your imagination on the visuals).
- Picking up lost of other equipment.
- Throw the rocks, this will be useful for tricking enemies to check out movement/sound and thereby luring them away from their position if the guard something. It is implemented but not working 100% all the time so some more work is needed.
- Equipping a weapon and a shield, picking up arrows and move stuff around in the inventory.
- Equipping torch and light it up to demonstrate a critical function, swapping weapons between hands. This is very important since once you unequip a torch that is burning it will have to be ignited again, now the player can move it to another hand without having the need for igniting it again. Might sound like a minor thing but is crucial for immersion and realism.
- Find a fire source check out the possibilities. You can cook/craft items but also close wounds if you have no bandages to fix them. This will close the wound but also inflict some health on the player.
- Combine some water and salvia just to demonstrate how to make potions, in this case we create a minor healing potion. Recipes use a base ingredient at the top and then one or several other components to make something new. The recipe is sensitive to the order which ingredients is added, this makes it possible to make more complex recipes (and lessen abuse or trial and error, the combinations simply become to hard to find).
- Demonstrate the new way items are consumed, they have to be dragged and dropped at the use "button". This lessens the chance of accidental use of stuff.
- Just random messing around in the inventory.
- Video ends.

Thats all for now folks! As always I would love the get feedback and discussions going, so please make a comment or send me a message.

/Jonathan