I was in the middle of a regular procrastination session when I came across a streamer known as Healian, known for his silly hats and Hades speedruns. Between run sessions, he plays a variety of other roguelike games, of particular interest to me some new indie releases that are passed on to him by developers to promote their games.
Relevant to this devlog is a game called Tails of Iron by developer Oddbug based out of Manchester. ToI is a sidescrolling 2D narrative driven Souls-like game, with heavy attack, light attack and dodge based combat, where as a little mouse king, you must fight off the frog kingdom’s invasion and rebuild your castle and empire. The key element of ToI that caught my attention is their adaptation of the Estus flask healing mechanic. In ToI, your character carries a flask of Bug Juice that can be refilled at certain taps, and by hacking up bugs for their juice (ew). This is then consumed continuously by holding a button, reducing the characters move speed for the duration, and refilling health at a certain rate while consuming juice, during which time the character visibly gulps from his flask on screen.
Not only did this mechanic feel incredibly satisfying to watch and listen to, including the refills from both bug corpses, and taps, it also allowed the player more control over their healing mechanic, choosing to temporarily hamper themselves to heal. They can then stop consuming juice at the correct time to dodge or attack an enemy, or when their health is filled.
Reserve Tank Fuelling System
This mechanic greatly appealed to me with regards to replacing the refuel mechanic that I currently had in place in Scrimshaw for two reasons:
First, the previously mentioned benefits of satisfying haptic feedback and more control over the refuelling process greatly advantaged this approach over a straightup timed refuel. This is added to by the added control this affords the player over what they can do while refuelling.
The second benefit, was that it allowed me to convert to a fully inventory based system of resources, rather than the current split I was working with of integer based resources, and inventory items. By refuelling a “Reserve Tank” directly from the inventory, it allows a player to control their fuel in a similar manner in their downtime, while also having more control in their active gameplay over their fuel and reserve tank.
This also had the added benefit of making the core inventory centric mechanics in Scrimshaw more apparent, as inventory items now had more varied uses, and the player would be less likely to just collect items, and let them sit in their inventory indefinitely as was previously projected to be an issue with gameplay.
In addition to converting to a Reserve Tank style of refueling, another conversion was necessary to complete this rework, and streamline all resrource mechanics through the inventory system.
Scrapshot Cannon System
Previously, the cannon had been designed to fire single cannonballs that could collide with objects to destroy them, clearing paths for a player, or destroying obstacles. Frustratingly, this system was very inflexible when it came to combat, as the cannon was very difficult to aim, and the single shot made collecting cannonballs very important. This was compounded upon by the need to keep the amount of resources available to collect low.
The fix that I designed, spurred by the creation of the Reserve Tank, was a ‘blunderbuss’ style scrapshot system, where the cannon would now fire a shotgun blast of scrap. This could then be powered by a scrap macerator, similar to the fuel deposit, that would take in items, and convert them into a scrap value, storing them in a float and consuming an amout of that scrap each time the cannon was fired.
Design Outcomes
With the two primary resources now streamlined through the inventory system, I could now focus on the player experience of collecting and managing their inventory. Previously, a player would collect items, and organize them in their inventory based on nothing but aesthetic sensibilities.
With the new systems in place I added new Item Slot modifiers:
- Hidden: Slots are hidden when all surrounding slots are either null or contain a ‘concealer’ item like a crate. Concealed items cannot be taken at inventory events like ‘customs check’ and ‘tax collection’
- Shiny: Slots are shiny when they contain a shiny item. Shiny slots are more likely to be taken from when encountering inventory interaction mechanics like ‘tax collection’ or ‘bribery’
- Consumable: Can be consumed for some effect from the hotbar.
From the combination of these two new systems, item organization in inventory was now a more complex decision for the player to navigate. Not only do players have to organize their inventory to hide specific items behind crates, to prevent their theft or destruction, they would also have to regularly choose to scrap items either for fuel or for scrapshot, in order to power the two primary resource based systems in the game.
UI Design & Implementation
I then had to design a UI to accomodate these new features. I started by doing a quick stylized wireframe in Photoshop
In the centre of the screen the standard UI grid where items will be stored initially when collected. Below them, the consumables hotbar, where items can be placed to be consumed with number keys
On the right, the ‘Fuel Deposit’ and ‘Scrap Deposit’ reside that items can be dragged into and converted into reserve fuel and scrapshot respectively.
Finally on the left, I added an experimental feature to display the scrimshaw that the player currently has posession of on a string, as they will be stored separately from the rest of the items and the player can’t have too many at a time.
After the quick mockup, I designed and recoded the UI, to rework the logic of the drag and drop system, to scrap items for fuel and scrapshot if they are dragged into the corresponding slots, and to prevent items from being placed in consumable slots if they are not consumable. Similarly I put a catch into the fuel and scrap deposits to prevent items from being consumed if they do not provide any fuel or scrap.
As can be seen above, items become darkened when hidden between crates, signifying that they can’t be found in searches of the hold. This effect will be amplified in the final design as it is still not clear that the slot iteslf is hidden, instead the item seems unavailable for use. The final effect will likely be an overlay applied to the slot itself.
This is the final design I settled upon for the UI, with visual and flavour updates coming soon as the art is produced for them.
Next I’m planning to move onto a small rework of the Dialogue system, based upon a GDC video presented by Greg Kasaving and Darren Korb of Supergiant Games. I’m then planning to create some ingame challenges for the player to navigate, and use their new resource systems to conteract.