I finally completed my inventory pickup, consumption/use, saving script but now have to bypass the entity destroy command when it comes to picking up and then being able to drop items.

Curious how others have addressed being able to "drop" items picked up somewhere else? My thoughts are I will have to move the entity somewhere out of view and reposition it at players X,Y and Z.

Any ideas out there?

I would say that´s it. Or what do you expect?

I suspect that's the only option but others *may* have addressed it differently. That's why I asked.

As soon as one thinks there is only one way to do anything, abandon all hope he who follows here

I suspect that's the only option but others *may* have addressed it differently. That's why I asked.

As soon as one thinks there is only one way to do anything, abandon all hope he who follows here

maybe use a map location to move the picked up objects to, one that the player cannot access, such as inside a non enterable building, just set an array flag to 1 if carried, some work for the designer to find entity number and map positions though, then when drop is needed you just need to move the entity to just in front of player. The is how it worked when i wrotes txt adventures, room(255) was always the inventory, dunno if that helps.

Thanks tarkus. That's essentially what I'm thinking.

I'm running a full user inventory so keeping track of it is no issue. I was wondering if there might be another way.

One way I was thinking is preload a heap of excess entities out of zone and simply swap what "was" to the new entity.

that might work, but it gets tricky. Plus when level jumping carrying inventory from level to level, is that even possible?

we need a way to save multi dimensional arrays, like in the old amiga blitz basic days, you could get the memory address of the arrays and save the memory locations out.

sounds great what you are doing im really looking for an inventory solution, makes puzzles and gameplay more unique.

Hi !nullptr,

I was just going through the lua bible ...

This link might help you.

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/207801?page=4

Just under the superman script is a proximine_pickup script.

smallg picks up the mines, and then places then back on the map to kill the ai.

It might be worth a look...

thats th only way. I do not think there is a option for storing in cache.
So my way would be:
take -> entity have no colision and invisible
use -> destroy entity
drop -> replace entity to player

I hope this helps you a little bit

Hide(e)
CollisionOff(e)
is enough but the only issue is you will need to set it always active otherwise once the player leaves it's script cutoff range it wont be "working" anymore - that's why i normally just move it around with me

@tarkus - no problem there. I've written a save system so inventory/player stats/time etc. can go multi-level.

On your multi-dimensional arrays, they can be done (but they are a pain). A method I am using is to index the item in name properties. I then use that index, pick up a string from a hard coded lookup list for display in my inventory . I only parse the string to get the values when user looks at the inventory, ie: I don't keep the values or the entities, just the string. The only data I ever "carry" is the string for the items the user has (multiples of same thing is simply incremented). The entity is killed off and forgotten about at pickup. I simply eat/drink/use the "string" (which is removed on use).

This has the advantage of leaving me with a single location to edit any item properties (balancing for example) in one place regardless of the number of items or type of items placed on any given map.

entity.name = 1 or 2 etc...

eg:
if itemIDX == 1 then return "DRINK,Bottle of Water,10,1,800,0,1,1,0,1,2"
elseif itemIDX == 2 return "FOOD,Bush Berries,5,6,100,1,3,2,2,4,1"
etc.....

Every bottle of water on a map is simply named "1". The string contains weight, value etc.. etc... I add a timestamp to the string after pickup so I can deteriorate any contents.

(And I just save the string when I jump levels and the exact same parser/method applies)

@others
That's a better idea. I see what smallg has done with the mines. Unfortunately I can't carry the "e" because when I jump levels the "e" is worthless.

I've since settled on a stored list of items on each map ("e" picked up on level load) and bring the item to my position when needed. As long as I keep the "cache" out of range it shouldn't have any significant resource hit. In addition, when I load the save, I'll query what I have and only "tag" the cached entities that may be dropped in the new level and destroy any that *can't* be used.

ie: If there are "chips" in level 1 and I take 1 packet to level 2 and level 2 has no chips, I have stored "chips" (equal to maximum chips in level 1) to access (eg: 10) . Since I only have 1 packet, I pick up the "e" of 10 packets and destroy 9.

Can't think of a tighter way at the moment. Be so much better if we could just dynamically load entities....

i think that's the only way to do it right now if you really need the items to be droppable, it would indeed be nice to be able to clone objects but i can't see that coming for a long time.

@tarkus inventories are possible but only really text based output as we can only display 1 picture at a time, it's not much fun scrolling through lots of pictures but for a small inventory system that could be an idea, i may have another look at it now we have more input control though.

@smallg More input control? Can you elaborate? Is there a doc' anywhere on the new controls? Do we finally have mouse?

@tarkus - forgot to mention (smallg reminded me) that I use a panel for the inventory display with a "popout" image based on where the user has scrolled to. It's a bit of coding to get panel working off keys (no mouse control) but certainly behaves predictably.

Here's an example. Note: gfx's are placeholders at the moment - I'm changing the panel graphic etc. as I speak now I know the concept will work.

Hi !nullptr,

I noticed in the picture in your last post with the panels. The background of the panels are coloured...

How do you assign the background colour?

Cheers,

@perelect

The .png files for the panel are located in files\languagebank\neutral\gamecore\huds\panels

Once changed I suspect a verify cache with Steam will overwrite them so make sure you do backups - before and after

EDIT: The "item" image used the panel edging but is essentially an image, not a panel. For some strange reason we can't put text over an image so I couldn't use what I hoped I could. So instead, I'm modifying the panel to be.... better

2nd EDIT: There is also some panel artwork in \importer you might want to fiddle with too.

!nullptr

Thanks
ill have a look at that now

Cheers

No I was referring to bring able to cycle with the keyboard, before I had to cycle and select with only the 'e' key... It got very messy :p
I was actually planning something very similar to what you show in the image with the pop up image

For the text on top of images you could try making the image a bit transparent

Thanks smallg. The images I'm using are placeholders until I find out if we can eventually put text over images otherwise, yes, it'll have to be transparent backgrounds or completed artwork. The item details are mostly static anyway so art might be easier.

@!nullptr

That inventory looks fantastic, will you be selling it via the store..... and if so when..... looks very very good. Post apocalyptic writing heaven I'd say

Not going store side Tarkus sorry. Not because of any reason other than the inventory and player stats etc. is intricately bound to an entire system, right down to environmental effects and an autosave system etc. They are not PnP scripts, in fact none of it uses _init or _main except for my custom global.

GG is apparently doing a simplified inventory last I heard so might be a case of waiting a bit.

Certainly happy to offer individual tips for ideas etc.

As an aside - some of the items I'm using are by ErrantAI in the store. They have great graphic individuality which works well in such a system.

Lee has told me in another thread they won't be working on the inventory system anymore and are leaving up to the community to figure out via LUA. I liked the concept work he was doing in Reloaded but i guess that's abandoned for whatever reason...................................

If that is the case then those very "LUA solution providers" will need read access to all of the player variables (ammo count for example). In fact, if the full list were available already a basic PnP inventory system could be written and tested... by someone... in weeks, if not days. I bet at least 5 guys here could do it very quickly.

(And this is a point I have tried hammering home many times. If devs were to recognise the talent they have at their disposal and simply provide the access and the command set then scripters would have many of the demands filled - either free or available via the store. Fixed inventory is one of them. Saving is another.)

ofc, a custom inventory and/or save system is a whole new ball game - as has been discussed previously - and would remain that way even if Lee included a basic system. And it's this that scares some people off from providing any kind of PnP inventory/save system, the knowledge that some would expect it to work for everything/anything placed in a game.

"It doesn't work with my can of baked beans" and "please modify to include my left handed screwdriver" requests would be overwhelming.

we do seriously need a proper fully working level movable inventory system and a save/load progress too.. It's Vital for gameplay.

Nothing is abandoned, But Allowing the LUA commands to do such things, will bring even more power to the scripting capabilities of setting up inventory and other systems. These commands will be released in updates over time until they are all in place. Putting them in as needed in order to not loose any functionality.

With the number of capable scripters we have in the community, I can see them coming up with the solutions needed to make this happen faster. I am sure that some kind of base examples will be given to get most started.