One thing that always frustrates me about these kinds of games is the ease of hoarding objects after a certain point--on one's person, no less! Unless you have a backpack or a Brahmin or something, you really shouldn't be able to carry very much. So I was thinking about making a mod that adds something like "bulk" to items to take into account how awkward they would be to carry.
So let's say you don't have a backpack or a Brahmin or anything like that. Realistically, what can you carry? The armor you're wearing, a pistol holstered on your leg, a knife sheathed on your belt, a couple of grenades in pouches on your belt, a rifle slung across your back, an SMG in your hands, and maybe a pouch for bottle caps strung from your belt. You wouldn't really be able to carry any food or water. How about a Camelbak? Ha! A serious implementation of this concept would require the creation of new armor types or armor add-ons to expand your carrying capacity--not in terms of weight, but in terms of bulk. Think Army gear. If you get a uniform with tons of pockets and one of those vests with a bunch of pouches, you can carry quite a few various things.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. For now, I just want to explore the concept and technical feasibility of adding the property of bulk to items. Actually adding a property might require modding the editor itself, which is probably too much work to be worthwhile. But let's just brainstorm here. A simple numerical value would not be enough, I don't think. We want to make this realistic. Bulk can't just go anywhere on your person. Certain things are best carried in certain ways. Strapping that rifle to your leg wouldn't make much sense, now, would it? So maybe we could have bulk "slots" configured differently for each type of armor. Maybe each slot could also have a type. The sheath for your knife could also hold a flashlight of comparable shape and size. The point is to be fairly restrictive in what the player can carry.
Maybe we should think about bulk from the other side--from the side of the possible ways to carry it. So let's go back to the example above. You're just wearing your leather armor. You'll always be able to wear armor, so we don't really need to worry about bulk here. We just need to prevent the player from picking up more than one set. That'll apply to other things and is a whole different problem, so we'll get back to that. How specific do we want to get? Are pistols the only thing you can strap to your thighs? More or less, I think. Theoretically, you could just strap random pouches on and carry random stuff inside, but that would be damn uncomfortable and would impair movement in combat. Are all pistols gonna automatically come with a holster? Will the player just get a holster at the start and keep it on him the whole time?
Perhaps it would be best to categorize the kinds of things one can carry based on their size and shape:
- armor
- pistols (including energy weapons)
- SMGs
- rifles/shotguns (including grenade rifles, energy weapons)
- heavy weapons (including machine guns, flamers, launchers, energy weapons)
- grenades/energy weapons power cells
- dynamite, explosives, mines, bombs
- unarmed/fist melee weapons
- short/small bladed/blunt melee weapons (knives, machetes, axes, batons)
- long/large bladed/blunt melee weapons (pipes, boards, clubs, shovels, spears, sledgehammers)
- standard ammo/shotgun ammo
- missiles/rockets
- ammo boxes/books/holodisks/weapons mods (including snow globes)
- consumables/miscellaneous (most food, drugs, small/light items, money)
- consumables/bottles
- consumables/meals (you can't carry a bowl of soup, dammit)
How's that? I'm sure we could all quibble with the exact categorization and combine some things, but the point is to assign bulk categories that correspond to the player's bulk carrying capacity. So if you're not carrying a backpack, you'd only be able to carry a few things of certain bulk types. If you have a backpack, you can arrange stuff in there however you want because it's fairly spacious, but you still can't put a flamer in there. In fact, if you picked up any heavy weapon, you'd have to have it permanently equipped. To keep things interesting, we could make such weapons more powerful, probably as they should be anyway. A rocket should tear any humanoid to bits. But that's a much bigger question.
So someone's back (for a sling, say) could be a "medium-oblong" slot that could be used for rifles, shotguns, spears, etc. A backpack could be a "medium-spacious" slot that is assigned a bulk "value". Each item, in addition to a descriptive shape, would have a numerical size/volume. So we'd check for both. The player must have a slot both of the right shape and big enough, unless it's something like a backpack. I think I'm starting to repeat myself. You guys probably get the basic idea.
I think this kind of thing would drastically change gameplay. Maybe it would break the game, adding a level of realism that is too much for us who take to games to escape reality. It shouldn't be a chore, right? But maybe it'll force players to make very difficult decisions about what to carry. You won't be able to rampage across the desert because you'll only be able to carry enough for a single firefight. If you want to keep exploring, you'll have to be sneaky or diplomatic. You simply won't be able to afford to shoot your way through everything without great inconvenience and many resupply trips. I'm sure that'll be a topic of much debate.
So how could this be implemented? As I mentioned before, modding the editor to add new properties to items doesn't seem feasible. And there don't appear to be any properties that are unused or extra. What about scripts? What about the encumberance script? Could we write a similar script to check...check what? It would seem simple enough to prevent the player from picking up things that could only go in bulk slots that are already filled. But how would we keep track of what slots the player has, based on his armor, what kinds of slots they are, and whether they are filled? Can all that be done with scripts? Could someone point me in the right direction to get me started?
TL;DR: Want to add "bulk" to items. Think Diablo-style inventory, where only so much fits independent of weight, but more complex, based realistically on what a person can carry on his person. How could it be scripted?
So let's say you don't have a backpack or a Brahmin or anything like that. Realistically, what can you carry? The armor you're wearing, a pistol holstered on your leg, a knife sheathed on your belt, a couple of grenades in pouches on your belt, a rifle slung across your back, an SMG in your hands, and maybe a pouch for bottle caps strung from your belt. You wouldn't really be able to carry any food or water. How about a Camelbak? Ha! A serious implementation of this concept would require the creation of new armor types or armor add-ons to expand your carrying capacity--not in terms of weight, but in terms of bulk. Think Army gear. If you get a uniform with tons of pockets and one of those vests with a bunch of pouches, you can carry quite a few various things.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. For now, I just want to explore the concept and technical feasibility of adding the property of bulk to items. Actually adding a property might require modding the editor itself, which is probably too much work to be worthwhile. But let's just brainstorm here. A simple numerical value would not be enough, I don't think. We want to make this realistic. Bulk can't just go anywhere on your person. Certain things are best carried in certain ways. Strapping that rifle to your leg wouldn't make much sense, now, would it? So maybe we could have bulk "slots" configured differently for each type of armor. Maybe each slot could also have a type. The sheath for your knife could also hold a flashlight of comparable shape and size. The point is to be fairly restrictive in what the player can carry.
Maybe we should think about bulk from the other side--from the side of the possible ways to carry it. So let's go back to the example above. You're just wearing your leather armor. You'll always be able to wear armor, so we don't really need to worry about bulk here. We just need to prevent the player from picking up more than one set. That'll apply to other things and is a whole different problem, so we'll get back to that. How specific do we want to get? Are pistols the only thing you can strap to your thighs? More or less, I think. Theoretically, you could just strap random pouches on and carry random stuff inside, but that would be damn uncomfortable and would impair movement in combat. Are all pistols gonna automatically come with a holster? Will the player just get a holster at the start and keep it on him the whole time?
Perhaps it would be best to categorize the kinds of things one can carry based on their size and shape:
- armor
- pistols (including energy weapons)
- SMGs
- rifles/shotguns (including grenade rifles, energy weapons)
- heavy weapons (including machine guns, flamers, launchers, energy weapons)
- grenades/energy weapons power cells
- dynamite, explosives, mines, bombs
- unarmed/fist melee weapons
- short/small bladed/blunt melee weapons (knives, machetes, axes, batons)
- long/large bladed/blunt melee weapons (pipes, boards, clubs, shovels, spears, sledgehammers)
- standard ammo/shotgun ammo
- missiles/rockets
- ammo boxes/books/holodisks/weapons mods (including snow globes)
- consumables/miscellaneous (most food, drugs, small/light items, money)
- consumables/bottles
- consumables/meals (you can't carry a bowl of soup, dammit)
How's that? I'm sure we could all quibble with the exact categorization and combine some things, but the point is to assign bulk categories that correspond to the player's bulk carrying capacity. So if you're not carrying a backpack, you'd only be able to carry a few things of certain bulk types. If you have a backpack, you can arrange stuff in there however you want because it's fairly spacious, but you still can't put a flamer in there. In fact, if you picked up any heavy weapon, you'd have to have it permanently equipped. To keep things interesting, we could make such weapons more powerful, probably as they should be anyway. A rocket should tear any humanoid to bits. But that's a much bigger question.
So someone's back (for a sling, say) could be a "medium-oblong" slot that could be used for rifles, shotguns, spears, etc. A backpack could be a "medium-spacious" slot that is assigned a bulk "value". Each item, in addition to a descriptive shape, would have a numerical size/volume. So we'd check for both. The player must have a slot both of the right shape and big enough, unless it's something like a backpack. I think I'm starting to repeat myself. You guys probably get the basic idea.
I think this kind of thing would drastically change gameplay. Maybe it would break the game, adding a level of realism that is too much for us who take to games to escape reality. It shouldn't be a chore, right? But maybe it'll force players to make very difficult decisions about what to carry. You won't be able to rampage across the desert because you'll only be able to carry enough for a single firefight. If you want to keep exploring, you'll have to be sneaky or diplomatic. You simply won't be able to afford to shoot your way through everything without great inconvenience and many resupply trips. I'm sure that'll be a topic of much debate.
So how could this be implemented? As I mentioned before, modding the editor to add new properties to items doesn't seem feasible. And there don't appear to be any properties that are unused or extra. What about scripts? What about the encumberance script? Could we write a similar script to check...check what? It would seem simple enough to prevent the player from picking up things that could only go in bulk slots that are already filled. But how would we keep track of what slots the player has, based on his armor, what kinds of slots they are, and whether they are filled? Can all that be done with scripts? Could someone point me in the right direction to get me started?
TL;DR: Want to add "bulk" to items. Think Diablo-style inventory, where only so much fits independent of weight, but more complex, based realistically on what a person can carry on his person. How could it be scripted?