Terra Melior Phase 2

Terra Melior Phase 2 prototype now available.

Firstly it is worth noting that the name will be changing soon as I am not a big fan of "Terra Melior" which means "Better Earth" in Latin and was used as a backup when the name I wanted "Terra Nova" meaning "New Earth" was apparently used for a TV show in 2011 that ran for 1 season before being canceled and taking my name with it :)

What is Phase 2?  Well I am glad you asked, because phase 2 is the inventory system prototype.  The survival genre usually puts high demand on the player using and manipulating there inventory as well as sorting and stashing materials and items to whatever level of OCD the player has.  So, it is critical that we have a robust and easy to use inventory system.

Now we could take the easy path and reduce complexity by vast margins but using single stacking items.  Some games like Subnautica have managed to use this lesser complexity style and made it feel pretty good, but I personally prefer stacks and more complex inventory systems.

So, that is what we have done.  We have made a stacks and weights style inventory system akin to ARK survival in terms of function and style.

We have a suite of tools to manipulate your inventory such as;

-hot key mouse overs for transfer / drops
-hard selecting items and using buttons
-drag drop options
-mouse over and or drag drop to quick slot options
-modifiers such as ctrl and shift to enable single or half stack splits or transfers
-sort all, drop all, transfer all
-sort by new, weight, value, unsorted, and manual searching
-when searching drop and transfer all only affect the visible items
and more...

Hotkey instructions can be found in game under the controls menu, but hopefully it is all there for our players.

It is very important that using the inventory feels good, and I would love to hear your thoughts on the implemented system if you have a few minutes to jump in and give it a try.

Please note that the HUD visuals are just place holder and not to be judged.  This is especially true for the item icons I slapped together in seconds that look like a child's drawings.  Once we reach a stage where we are creating the world visuals this will allow us to decide the finalized HUD visuals and the icon art style, which I am pretty confidant will not be in the style of my 3 year old did them ;)

Game dev is not a quick process, and a good AAA game inventory often has dupes and issues.  That being said I believe the current system is super tight and might even dare I say issue free (I am sure it won't be once some maniacs get in there and figure out exploits).  Your feedback is valuable to me, and I would love to hear ways to improve the current system or any issues you do find.

The next version of this build beyond fixing / changing the inventory system based on feedback will be focused on player stats and save / load game states, followed by resources, resource acquisition, and crafting systems.

Thank you for your ongoing support, and please feel free to post here or in my discord with any feedback, suggestions, or crazy ideas you might have regarding this project or any future projects.