I've been thinking bout 2 things, for the newest RPG i'm making.
First off all, i'm gonna implement an Inventory system to it, now i'm asking which one would be better;
*A Drop from shuttle/dropship of certain items (The easiest to use for players, since u can just hotkey it and its good to go, however this gives limited space in inventory and also when buying items i'd have to do a system that would remove the items that dont fit into the dropship, and eventually refund the player.
*Move Item to Beacon (Harder to use since u cant hotkey those, if and if u do u have to rehotkey it once u use it, however no limit of bag space.)

The second question is about advancing your character thou levels, since i pretty brought to live a very similiar system to the one in Temple Siege, i got 4 options:
*Boost HP
*Boost MP
*Learn New Skill [3 SP's]
*Boost Power
*Unused
*Unused

I got 2 free slot, any ideas what i could get there? Only possible options nothing like DEX which raises the speed of the unit, this is impossible to do.

Cheers,

This. The move item to beacon system is annoying. Also limited bag space is actually a good thing.

As for your second thing, more details please? Then people will be able to help more. Maybe free minerals?

You could give them 32 item spaces. 4 dropships. Shuttle, Ov, Drop, Ygg.

1)Dropships would be okay, but I find that pubbies seem to not understand how to use it correctly. There is also a problem of clicking the wrong one by mistake. Instead of limiting yourself to just two options, you should try to think of other ones. I knew someone who used a scarab building option for items. It was quite creative.

2)You can implement skill upgrading (No, not learning a new skill, but rather improving a current one that is makes it more powerful, but will also cost more mana or less depending on the situation.
And instead of dexterity for speed of unit, why not the accuracy of an attack or spell?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jan 21 2009, 4:52 pm by Echo.

Well, dropship it is then.

But how would u do the accuracy? -_- o.O

It depends on how your RPG is. If it doesn't deal with vHP, than you should use something else like mana regeneration or cap the amount of skills you can use and have an option to increase the maximum.

This is incorrect.

You can slow a unit by continuously moving a burrowed unit under the player or creating and killing an air unit. For example. If you have level 1 DEX then a zergling is moved under your hero every 50 miliseconds. As you level up add 50 miliseconds to the timer until you reach 1000 miliseconds and remove it.

You could also use something like Charisma to persuade NPC units to help you or let you pass a gate or something, or Luck to increase the chance of better drops from monsters or scoring critical hits.

In DOTX I used larvas to represent items. When you bought an item a larva got moved to the location of this item type.
You could put a few larvas on hotkey, much like real RPGs where you have a set of quick access slots for items. To use the item you morph it into a drone for example. This opens an unique option: Items can have different modes.
For example you can use a medkit to heal yourself (morph into drone) or heal a nearby ally (morph into overlord).
If you need an item that you haven't hotkeyed you can just press F2 (jump to start location) and manually select it.

Another idea for item activation is having a drone for each type of item and burrow the drone to activate the item. You can place crystals or other units to represent your stock of items and remove one crystal when you used the item. This is a quite good system if you don't have many different items.

How does your system detect if they have the item that they're trying to use?

Drone/overlord is automatic.
Zergling is spawning pool
hydra is hydralisk den
muta/scourge is spire
queen is queen's nest
ultra is ultralisk cavern
defiler is defiler mound

That's 6 controllable items, 2 automatic ones, and 1 alternating use one. This way limits the number you can carry at the maker's discretion, but prevents you from building an item that you don't have, and wasting the larva's hotkey.

Alternatively, you just know what you pick up (like units or powerups), and when you make it, you remove that data. If you don't have one, the spell does nothing.

It doesn't need to be detected.
Initially all slots are empty. And for every item you buy you get 1 larva which is representing the presence of the item.

About the inability to change the speed of a unit:

That is not true. Though you can't make a unit faster, you can slow the unit down, and upgrades of speed will gradually remove this effect. However, make sure that the initial speed is not too low, so the player doesen't get pissed at how his hero ling moves like a reaver.