Oh items, they will be the bane of my existence in the end. This is not the first time nor will it be the last time I talk about this part of my game. I’m also not going to write daily updates about it either as it’s not the most exciting thing ever for most people.
What feels like quite a long time ago I wrote about Structure, Enumerations, Data Table. This at least from my limited knowledge and understanding is one of the many pieces of the puzzle to get items working at least from how I’m approaching the problem. Until a lot of things come together it is still a working theory that should work from my understanding of things as is everything else up till this point in my game before it.
About a month ago I talked about getting a killer deal that included 7k 2D icons. This included for commercial use, no attribution, and divertive works from a somewhat vague and short agreement with those assets.
In a lot of indie games, it’s not uncommon for there not to be 3D gear the players wear. A lot of times you get different kinds of weapons you get to see or the game might all together skip over even having gear to resolve the developer lacking the ability to make 3D gear meshes.
This is sadly one area I knew my game is going to be falling short on. It’s expensive, time-consuming and you already need to have some understanding to pull it off. This also is not a small game with a couple of items. I already have plans for over 700 and I won’t be shocked if I end up being closer to 1k when I’m done.
As such 2D icons are just the way to go. Without adding year(s) to my deadline or ending up making the game cost more to make than what it will more than likely ever bring in. That is one thing I always have to think about is keeping the costs reasonable.
Defining Some Parameters
With that all out of the way, it’s time to share what I’ve been up to over the past week. I needed to start defining quite a few things. Along with starting to discover holes and things I need to build out further. Scalability is also something I have to keep in mind.
The first thing to do was to work out what I actually have. This might be considered the best $20 I spent so far on making this game when I bought those 7k icons. While there are a couple of duplicates here or there that will reduce the account. Along with some misplaced icons in the wrong folders messing up my quick count at first.
I also kept a couple out of this count for later in-game. That way if I end up using everything I considered to be included in this table I’m fine with that. Just a couple of sets not too much so I don’t have a giant buffer to go over either.
A lot of the icons were quite random. With the expectation of RPG icons that were sorted into light, medium, and heavy. Outside of that, no other information comes with these icons. They are all just called things like Pants 1, Pants 2, and so on. Everything else you need to come up with.
Since I already know I had a bunch of icons that were created to go along a set those seemed great for my boss fight drops. At some point, I’ll work out the coding to make the actual set items that will include a set bonus. For now, everything including all the other stats on the gear doesn’t do anything in-game. Since they're quite are few things that need to build out for that to happen.
Before I go and do that at a later point in time. I wanted to flesh out everything I think I’m going to need. That way when I go in and make the actual characters sheets and give real meaning to the numbers I’m not going have to be going into those systems daily adding yet another variable for something. Though like most things I expect next year and the year after adjustments will need to be made.
Another thing I needed to work out so I can start getting a bigger picture for armor and other things are what level ranges do I consider each of my maps? The boss fights alone would increase in increments of 10. Then each zone having a level range of 2 or 3 as far as the item drops go. There is also a chance not all maps will make it into the final game so further adjustments might be made. Finally, the player’s character should be around level 50 by the time they face the boss on map 25 before they go onto the next part of the game.
After that and looking through the number of possible items I could make from the icons I purchased it was time to break things down a little more. I wanted some of the lower valued items to be easy to target and farm. Along with making some of the higher valued items harder to get. While rate drops will play a role in that I took things a step further.
Excluding the boss fight maps, my other 11 maps currently in the game are going have a drop distribution that looks like that. With the highest map before each boss containing the more sought after stuff since those will be the hardest.
This is still a working theory in how I plan to implement things. This also does not include all possible map drops for a given map. This is just for the items I’m defining for now. There are some other things I want to work out first before I spend the time go through and make a bunch of changes. Perhaps one day if it does work out I won’t be so vague and have an actual post about it.
Another thing I needed to work out was item type ID ranges. Something rather interesting about games is when the players get that kind of data. You can then sometimes work out what was made first and even how big the original developers thought they were designing the system for.
Now a day’s theory crafting about a game's loot is not as fun. As a lot of games just give types of items with a range for thousands of items. Granted the odd game title out there these days years later players can find odd things like a certain type of item going from range 200 to 400 and then the developer ran out of room so new items moving forward where be 1200 and so forth.
As far as my own game I already have a couple of ranges defined so these couple of new items needs to fit and still have room to grow. The armor itself would take up the 200 to 699. With jewelry taking up the range of 800 to 999.
I already have several weapons that will be taking up ranges 0 to 199.
This, however, does leave me with some small but still easy to fix the issue. I was not quite sure how much armor would be in the game in my first iteration at working out things. As such some other items will need to be reassigned since they fall into the 500 range. Which one day will be taken up by possible armor. This is why I need to think about these kinds of things now.
While it would be easier to give everything ranges of 1k’s. This is one constraint I want to impose by not doing so to make sure I don’t go overboard. It would be easy to spend ten times the amount of time I want just focusing on items. A lot of games out there have that issue where they only use a fraction of the items they thought up of. Which is just a waste of time and since I’m a solo indie developer I got to be careful to keep my roadmap on track.
Coming Up With Names Descriptions And Stats
With all of that out of the way, it was time to get down to the part that would take the longest. Coming up with item names, descriptions, and item stats. Some of these things I knew will change in the future like item stats. Other things I suck at like naming stuff so I hope to never change them again.
There are going be a lot of weeks in general of me working on this part of the game. For now, I have 42 columns of variables where I’m considering adding up to ten more. I also think my total item count will be 703 including other things than armor but that is not a set number. For anyone not so great at math that will be between 29,526 to 36,556 points in my table that I’ll have to entire in. I try and not think about it too much.
I first started with the set items that would be dropping from the boss fights. Since those are going be the better items when compared to lower rarity items they ended up being my limiting factor when considering stats for other items. There will be better armor in my game than set pieces. Just not for how far along I am with the number of maps I already have.
For each of the boss maps, there are nine pieces each for light, medium, and heavy armor sets. There are also two rings and two amulets as well they are not a part of any set and tend to focus on giving health or mana in the early arenas with better stuff later on. While there will be other things in the future this is just the part of the game I’m looking at for now. So 31 items per boss for now.
Set bonus items, for now, are just written in the description for each item. The above screenshot is just one example it’s also an early and low-level item.
I expected to find some shortfalls and thus why I am thinking I need to expand the system overall. It is at least good to start finding these things out now instead of later. I still have some considerations to consider including how I’m going get it all work. So, for now, I have that information just in that single place so it’s ready to go if I end up going that route of having set items in this game.
These were at least easy to name once I came up with a boss names I just named them after it. Then I came up with a very short story description for each set. Then I just needed to work out the stats like health, dex, damage, resistances. Which I at least wanted a decent attempt at doing. I know they will change they just reflect a starting point to move from.
While it was tempting to keep going and coming up with armor for all of my bosses maps even the ones not in-game yet. I thankfully have a deadline in mind so left that for when those are made in 2021 or later. The three boss maps I have now have 93 pieces in a loot table. There still some stuff to be worked on at a later date.
After that and having my upper limit bounds for things like stats it was time to work out the 11 other maps. Each map grouping (maps 1,3, 4; 6 to 9, 11 to 14) would have 2 belts, 2 boots,2 shoulders, 2 cloaks, 2 gloves,2 helmets, 2 necklaces,2 pants, 2 ring, and 2 chests defined in an early table of where they are dropping. Totaling 242 item drops.
While it was tempting to come up with individual items for each of my four classes each (only 2 of them I’ve worked out). That would be doubling the number of item drops I would need in these lower maps. Instead, each item I had in mind could be used with two different classes. They are more generic items anyways so that was easier to do.
After I got done with coming up with each maps items drop they got copied over from my master spreadsheet into an individual one for each map. That it will get imported into the game. From there I’ll need to come up with how I’m going to reference them so they can drop in loot bags for the player to pick up.
What I did over the last week resulted in 335 items. This will go along with the other 74 I have. Putting me a 409 out of 703 I’m expecting to have. This is a very nice chunk to have ready to go for later stages of development when they are needed.
Final Thought
I’m still quite a long way off from things being done. I, however, have completed what I consider to be item tables for my 15 current maps and have checked them off on my roadmap. This is what I was expecting to get done for that phase. I could have defined it better in my roadmap but I see no need to go back and clarify it further for each map.
There is nothing really to show in-game yet of these which is why everything is just screenshots of spreadsheets. I still need to build UI’s, widgets, character sheets, and use these variables to give most of them an actual meaning. Then you will have the late stages in the year 2022 or 2023 of me needing to make some big changes depending on the final direction, balancing, testing, and how I end up release this game depending on what I can all end up working how to do.
Up next I’ll be working on creating AI controllers, creature stats, and using some of the creature models I have from Unreal Engine 4 and one pack I have. Variety is going be a bit of an issue and I’m going have to work out how to fix some things that are broken for my current Unreal version regarding them.
This, however, is not my dream game so I expect many areas to fall short of where I would like to have them. This is a solo indie game after all. I swear every day I know less and less as I find out the more things I need to learn. For now, all I got to say is-- items are the bane of my existence.
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Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar. Cover image is from Unreal Engine 4.
