Dev Log No. 1

Hey guys, today I will be showing you the interaction, storage and inventory systems we are implementing in Alone.

Our goal for these systems is to make them as simple and straight forward as possible. We want to keep our players immersed in the world and not have them switching context too often. So we have come up with a system that allows them to manage their inventory and interact with containers without breaking immersion.

You might notice that this system is not going to scale well if the player has lots of items. This is ok. In general we don't want to make item collection a big part of the game and there should be no incentive to carry or store large quantities of items.

In many of the survival games I have played you generally become stronger and more capable of survival based on the items you have. So you need to stockpile certain items and go around collecting rare items. This turns some parts of the game into an inventory/storage management mini-game.

We want Alone to be different. The experience you gain by playing makes you stronger, and you don't need to carry this with you in your inventory. You gain experience by discovering new areas and surviving challenging encounters. The longer you survive, the stronger you get.

But enough theory, let me show you what we actually made.

Interaction System

Here we are using a two-handed approach, giving players the freedom to equip anything in any hand. Items can either be carried in one hand or may require both hands to carry. You can drop, place or throw anything that you can pick up. Additionally items can have special actions that can be performed while they are carried, like looking through the spyglass.

Storage System

For storage we are making a system that puts everything in the world. Essentially you have items and containers. A container can be anything from a large chest washed up on the beach that you can hardly move to the bag you are carrying around your shoulders. These containers can contain a certain amount of items, depending on how large they are. When you open a container it shows all of the items it contains in the world, including the empty slots that you can put items into.

Inventory System

The player doesn't actually have an inventory. You simply have different slots where you can equip items on your body. One for your back, and one for each shoulder. When you equip a container, like a bag or a backpack to one of these slots it gives you the ability to store items in this container. The only thing the inventory system really does is give you a quick way of accessing everything in the containers you are carrying.

There's still a lot of work to be done on these systems, but so far we feel like they're coming along nicely and are excited to test them out more.

Today I will leave you with another quote by Antoine de Saint Exupéry.

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

We are not aiming for perfection, but we are trying to distill our game down to the essentials that actually make it fun to play. Nothing more, nothing less.

I hope you have a wonderful day and that I'll see you in the next one!

Isak