hmm… yes, i see.
if you made it so that the player could select whether they prefer to use pounds or kilograms, that would give them a reference frame to work with to compare the items that they know the weight of in real life. then they can quickly do some calculations in their head if they need to. i think that would make the most sense. currency and places can have weird names, but measurements should go with what the player knows.
I’ve made coins items now. Coins can stack, so you can have many coins in one inventory slot. Coins have a weight, the exact weight is still to be defined. Along with this, all other items also got a weight. The smallest weight unit in the game is 1g, display is in grams and kilograms so far.
Max. carrying capacity of a character is 50 + kilograms, the base str of a character is 20, so the default capacity is 70kg. This might need adjustments, but it works for a start.
I’ve also worked on a small “town” map. I’m missing a lot of props and decorations graphics, this will look prettier once the tileset got more choices:
At the moment there is sort of a tavern, where the PC can rest and stash items, a smith to sell and repair metal items, and the farmer is also running a general store.
More to come …
Edit: Village screenshot updated.
its a hard job to carry 40 kilograms for any distance, let alone 70 
after ive carried 40 liters of water along the 100 meter path through the forest to my house i have to sit down for half an hour.
Well, but in RPGs those PCs are heroes ;D
Soldiers seem to carry about 30-40kg regularly on their missions. It’s a game, and the problem with well-known units is, that people will start to compare it with reality. So either one can carry unusually much 8in weight) or unusually little (in items, compared to other RPGs).
I hope that the 70kg will be a compromise that works.
I’ve published a new walkaround demo. Most work since the last release went into the inventory UI and the items, particularly the generation of magically enhanced items.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/jewelhunt/files/r003/
It’s still mostly proof of concept code, and no game yet. All you can do is to walk around, pick up items and drop them elsewhere again. Well, and play with the inventory screen - in this release the PC gets a whole lot of items right at start to play around with.
I’ve started to work on the most important building for the game, the rainbow temple. At the moment I’m a bit stuck, there should be more details, but I want to publish the current state anyways, since I think it’s looking rather nice already:
Let me know what you think 
Just some senseless, noiselike or whatever details are always good…
The inventory is a little bit annoying, would be nice to see where a dragged item goes before you drop it. Also, personally some keyboard movement feels sometimes a little bit better to me, especially to reach regions out of screen.
I noticed the item drop problem too. I think I got the position math in the inventory view a bit off (found it: was off by 16 pixels in both y and x directions). It should be easy enough to color the area where the item will drop, I’ll do that. Thanks for the suggestion
I haven’t spend much work on the controls yet, I assume there will be a need for a “continuous run” mode, with both keyboard and mouse controls.
I’ll take a little break from the temple graphics and come back in a while with a fresh head.
Thanks for the feedback
Once again, I’ve got a question. I have no real idea how to set the item prices. So far all items cost 1 currency unit, but I’ll have to give them real prices once I have merchants.
Given that the smallest currency unit is a 6 gram copper coin, any ideas how to figure out reasonable prices?
Most games just base the price according to the number of stats you get from an item. Usually, there is an equation that will just say that…
[icode]1 copper = 20 stat points[/icode]
and you distribute the points within the item.
For health potions (I dunno if you’ll have them), usually it is a good idea to keep them cheap. If healing is ever used in the game, then those items become dead weight quick. For me, I always wished that potions could have a better usage that worked alongside healing spells, but I haven’t found a game that incorporated both yet without one being statistically better than the other.
Anyway, back to the stats, have a certain number of points per item, and bound the cost system to those points. The stronger the item, the more it’ll cost. If you have to grind, make sure that back-tracking is kept to a minimum. Nothing is more annoying than drawing out a game longer than it has to be.
The idea with the stats for money is a good start. Questions are if one point of defense (e.g. armor) equals a damage point for a weapon. Also a club does 1-3 damage and weights 5 pounds, but a dagger does 1-4 damage but weights less than one pound. So the dagger not only has a damage point more, but also the weight advantage which is useful for weak characters.
But at least I have something to start with and can adjust from there. Thanks
I didn’t think about healing spells so far, potions would have been the only source. But I want to include spells to create potions if you have the ingredients and empty flasks.
There is a novelty in not balancing everything your game has to offer. Like your example with weight and damage output. Some players would decide that having a weapon with a higher damage ratio is better because they can kill enemies faster. Other players will want to carry more items on them, so a lower damage output would be a lot better than carrying that extra weight.
You want to leave a little bit in terms of flexibility when you are designing something like an inventory, because you want each player experience to be unique as players go through the game. Also, the more personality you allow the player in the game, the better chances they’ll feel the urge to finish the entire thing.
Honestly, it is one of the more harder aspects of gaming because it is one of those things based on feel. Obviously, some weapons will be straight out “better” than others. However, some weapons will reward a fighting style type better than another weapon. It is capitalizing on variety that makes games more interesting over time.
Hopefully, you keep working on this. I always wanted to design a game like this but lacked the time to draw an open world and characters that’ll make it feel alive. It is looking really good so far.
club vs. dagger: not all things are made equal. if you can get a dagger, good. if you cant, you might have to make do with a heavy club that isnt as effective as a dagger. a club would naturally be cheaper. i guess if you wanted to get complex, a club would have more chance of knocking someone out in one hit.
I like the idea of variety, too. Items will have quite a lot of (randomly set) attributes, so I assume each time someone plays and builds up equipmnet, they will meet new challenges.
I think I’ll start with giving some items “reasonable” prices, and try to set the other prices in comparion to that. I just must see to keep the numbers in a sensible range.
I’ve been hesitating a long time too, telling myself that it’s too big for me. I’ve had some bad mental breakdowns in the past years, and sometimes it took a long time to recover. Also I think my brain has seen better days.
At the moment the project is interesting, and I think I found solutions for most of the problems that could have become road blocks. If I don’t run into real life problems or another mental breakdown, it might become a project that I can work on for some years, and there is a chance that I can make it an interesting game.
@BurntPizza: I have no sound here, and no headphones, but I’ll take a look at the video later the day, when I have better equipment.
@BurntPizza: the guy who speaks the lecture sounds like a machine gun of words to my ears. I can’t stand that, sorry. But I guess I got the point. Although I never even hoped to have a perfectly balanced game, since the system is too complex already to balance it. I just want to avoid things which are “clearly better than the other”, to make players think and choose strategies
Progress: I’ve now an hyperactive imp running around on the map. I’ll see if I can come up with a somewhat sensible AI. Once I had a project where monster were looking for places to sleep, well to drink from, food and the like. It was rather nice, e.g. one could wait near a well for monsters coming to drink.
I’ve prepared some code for the combat, and I think once I have an AI which is willing to battle with the player, combat should be done soon. From then, the items actually make sense in the game - but a new problem comes: How to select item drops as rewards for won battles.
Some progress - there are now links between the levels, and I’ve prepared some combat related code. Both are very rudimentary still, and need some improvements, but the concepts seem to work
I’ve compiled a new walkaround demo
http://sourceforge.net/projects/jewelhunt/files/r004/
The village map has no functionality, and there is no way back from the village map. It’s just to have two maps, a procedurally generated one and a fixed one and to test switching between the maps. The village map also has some graphical glitches, since you can move to areas which should be blocked (e.g. the areas covered by the houses).
There also is some code for handling unidentified items, but since there are no identify scrolls yet, I made all items identified by default. It might happen though that in some parts of the UI the magic pre- and postfixes don’t show properly, since this code isn’t complete yet.
which file? i find source forge directories confusing.
I hope this link will work. Sourceforge delays the downloads for a few seconds:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/jewelhunt/files/r004/jewelhunt_r004.7z/download
Unzip the archive and then use the start.bat to run the demo.
