I’ve uploaded a new development version (D) on the downloads page, see the changes here. The biggest change in this version is the inventory management system that is described in this post.
Improved Inventory Management
There were some of bugs related to full containers in the last dev version of v2.5. The bugs were actually quite unrelated, but I still took the opportunity to rewrite a part of the inventory management system. This has luckily led to:
- Almost all inventory related bugs are fixed (there’s known bug remaining involving empty bottles).
- A very old issue of not being able to drop things when inventory is full has been fixed.
- More elegant and less complex code
- A lot of QoL improvements
Overburdened status
Instead of being forced to use or drop items when you have a full inventory, you’ll get “overburdened” when you inventory is overfull. When overburdened you are always “very slow” and your melee and block attributes drop to zero. So instead of forcing you to act immediately, the game now lets you move around and drop things when and where you want. You get a clear warning everytime you get overburdened, and you get reminded when you leave your inventory screen overburdenened.
The intention of the overburdened status is that it should be so penalizing that it is never worth to be overburdened, but lets you choose how and when to deal with it.
Improved Pickup and autopickup
Another really nice QoL feature is that autopickup now scans you containers when you pick something up. It then automatically tries to put them in a stack you already have, if possible. In addition, if your inventory is full, but you have a bag with available slots, the game will try to place things you pick up in your bags before declaring you overburdened.
This means that almost all manual “container”-management will be uneccessary (but still possible) as the game automatically tries to optimise your inventory.
The meat autopicked up to a foodbag which already had some meat. Grilling one piece of meat made the grilled meat overflow to the backpack!
Another nice feature is, as you can see, improved messaging regarding containers. You will be told when and where things are being placed.
Other Side Effects
If something happens that makes a bag/scrollcase/potionbelt in your inventory overfull (such as food rotting, or you upgrade something in a container) the item will “spill over” to the parent container. So if you for example have a full food bag with stacks of food, and one piece of meat gets rotten (and don’t fit in the bag anymore), it will be placed in your main backpack instead of disappearing or dropping to the ground.
Furthermore, things can no longer get “lost in the flames” when grilling things on a campfire, the worst that can happen is that you become overburdened and can deal with it when you please.
When you manually stow an item in a bag, the game again tries to find if there’s anywhere in this bag the item could be stacked, and does so if possible.
> The intention of the overburdened status is that it should be so penalizing that it is never worth to be overburdened, but lets you choose how and when to deal with it.
YES! More choices, though choices, I like it! Thanks!
“it should be so penalizing that it is never worth to be overburdened”
I can’t be the only one that thinks an overburdened pacifist build could be viable. Melee and block are sometimes but very rarely irrelevant.
I’ve never heard anyone succeeding (or even attempting…) a pacifist run in TGGW. Do you think it’d be possible, even very slow?
If so, I don’t mind “abusing” overburdenedness for that purpose, it would actually be interesting if someone succeeded 🙂
But yeah actually… if you’re using thief weapons, then melee is irrelevant.
Pure pacifist is almost certainly impossible. But I think I only killed 1-2 enemies in my Apple Pie run. Many of the Lab enemies are very durable but not too good at hunting you down.
Er, I meant 1-2 Lab enemies.
Cool! Would you find it interesting if the game acknowledged that? Such as listing number of kills?
another elegant change! people are really sleeping on this roguelike imo and it breaks my heart
Thank you! I don’t know if they are sleeping on it. Remember that this is a fairly young, windows-only, ascii-only roguelike with almost no marketing efforts. Considering that, I think it has reached quite a large audience. v2.4.2 has been downloaded over 2500 times 🙂
TGGW is not windows only 🙂
I am playing TGGW all the time under Linux Mint which is a Ubuntu based. I use a Wine 3.0.4 and the following command:
wineconsole The\ Ground\ Gives\ Way.exe
It works like a charm.
I use Windows 10/8/7/Vista version of TGGW.
Ah yes, I am aware that it works on Linux and Mac OS 🙂 I just meant that it is a bit less accessible than older roguelikes since it doesn’t have native Linux builds.
overburden means that aliens are pointless and an item stash will be used again.
Ah you are right, it must be impossible to rest while overburdened as well. Thanks for pointing that out!
You may want to make it impossible to use stairs/portals as well. I found overburdened to be useful for lugging loot to the nearest merchant to sell.
Ah, good call as well!
It looks like the game crashes when you attempt to make character sheet if you have too many “statuses”.
Here’s a chunk of my character sheet that I managed to dump after I rested away some effects (sorry I forgot to check what they were):
Attribute Base Prm Eqp Tmp Ctx Total Prm immunity to diseas
Max HP 10 -1 +3 12/12 Eqp open melee
Max MP 5 -6 0/ 0 Eqp bloodlust
Melee 60% -10% +20% 70% Eqp scare humanoids
Armour 0% +40% 40% Eqp martial combo
Missile 0% +30% 30% Eqp fast
Vision 3 +2 5 Eqp slimy
Noise 7 +6 13 Ctx martial combo
Ctx slimy
Resists Prm Eqp Tmp Ctx Total Ctx in light
rCold +25% 25%
rAcid -50% -50% Melee Attack:
Reach: 1
Ins damage
Ins knockback
Ins poison
Thievery:5+Vision(5)-Noise(13)=-3 rSpell:MaxMp(0)*5%=0%
Missile:
Range: 3 Ammo: 22
You can see it overlaps with the Thievery/rSpell line. I suspect this might be the problem.
After I made that, I shuffled some equipment and gained another status (detect undead), and when I tried to dump that to a character sheet, the game crashed.
Thank you for reporting! Yes, it indeed is because it is trying to use more space than available. Will fix!