Adding an Inventory to My Multiplayer Pirate Game | Indie Devlog #42

In this indie devlog I added an inventory system to my multiplayer pirate game.
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In this indie devlog I added an inventory to my multiplayer game (built in Unity). After doing some major code refactoring and fixing a few issues that had been plaguing the project for a while, I finally added the second portion of the inventory system, which is a more traditional "item slots-based" system.
Although it's working, while recording footage for this video I discovered a few desync issues when multiple players are looking in the same barrel. There's also still a lot to clean up and polish off as far as UI input goes, not to mention that all the item icons are currently still placeholders, so there's a lot left to do.
#Devlog #GameDev #IndieDev #Multiplayer #Unity3D

[@tomweiland]

Should I limit how many items of a certain type you can have on you? Also, if you haven't already, join the Discord server! What are you waiting for: tomweiland.net/discord

[@michealsalib6131]

Make some items that can stack and items that cant. Also it would be harder for players to move and take stuff if the stack number is small.

[@tomweiland]

I thought of that, but consider that if I give the player 20 slots, they could hold 20 of an item even if it isn't stackable. In the case of food, that would be really overpowered in a fight...

[@michealsalib6131]

@@tomweiland then u can make unstackbel items more rare or hard ro optain so they dont have much of it even if they have much of it and stack it in their invintory if they die they lose a lot of rare items.

[@dtbrown01]

Or maybe you could change the walk speed based on how full the player's inventory. This could help to balance it so if someone is carrying less food they can dodge and attack faster in fights.

[@RugbugRedfern]

@@dtbrown01 Yeah but that really sucks to play with

[@SamHogan]

Woah Tom some next level editing on this one!

[@tomweiland]

Thanks, that means a lot! This is definitely the video I'm proudest of so far, but unfortunately the CTR is pretty bad-I think inventories just aren't very photogenic :P

[@SamHogan]

@@tomweiland well people are missing out!

[@tomweiland]

True 😭

[@sifatguai1252]

Ayyy brooo

[@tauheedgamedev2388]

Great job, Your definitely right about 90% of programming being knowing what to google and problem solving.

[@tomweiland]

Yeah, and then consider how many people ask for help on various help forums (or even on my server) without having bothered to even _try_ to google their question/problem first :P

[@dtbrown01]

YAY another devlog! I was also refactoring my project in the past month lol.

[@tomweiland]

It's definitely a good thing to do from time to time, and it was becoming _extremely_ necessary with this project :P

[@speedfastman]

The inventory UI gives that weird optical illusion effect where you see black dots at the corners of the dark squares when there aren't any :^)

[@tomweiland]

Oh yeah you're right 😅

[@canonigorigelkenty.4721]

As an aspiring game developer, you just gained a sub my dude!

[@tomweiland]

Thank you, that means a lot 😊

[@Rumplestiltzchen]

you know, That recoils system in the beginning for the pistol gets a solid 10/10

[@tomweiland]

Wait, what recoil system?!

[@nextProgram]

Nice editing, and the game is looking really cool. I love the low poly art style

[@tomweiland]

Thanks, I'm actually quite proud of this one-I definitely thought it was a step up from my previous devlogs, and it seems most people would agree which is really nice to hear :D

[@nextProgram]

@@tomweiland Yeah I liked it. I’d love to make a 3D game with this style some day, you gave me some good inspiration

[@tomweiland]

Low poly is one of my favorite art styles when it's done well-could look at it all day :P

[@netcore10]

I'm so proud of you for pushing through this! You're doing very well!

[@tomweiland]

Thank you, glad you like it :D

[@sw0745]

Food could expire in your inventory and there could be a second type of barrel called a "salted barrel" which allows you to preserve food

[@tomweiland]

Since food will probably be used to heal, having to maintain "fresh" food in your inventory could quickly become extremely tedious & frustrating to deal with, especially in combat situations 🤔

[@benrex7775]

I like the idea of not all inventories have the same stack size. I've never seen a game do that and it sounds like a smart alternative to different inventory sizes.

[@tomweiland]

Yeah I really like the idea as well, but I think I'll need to combine it with item amounts being limited by their type (like food for example), at least for items that can play a role in combat.

[@benrex7775]

@@tomweiland The game I know best is Minecraft. And in the beginning, food wasn't stackable. But since you have hunger and since you can experience damage from just running around, it needed to be more available. Then they made a eating duration and some sort of cooldown (Saturation). I can think of limiting the op-ness of food (or any other healing item) in several ways: - Duration of eating: This forces you to stop. Perhaps it can be tactical, but I do think it slows the gameplay too much. This method would be a fitting challenge for heavy duty weapons like cannons or for healing items which heal all health in one go for example, but I don't think the normal food items and weapons shouldn't have that. - Cooldown: Most games go with the simple cooldown or some more hidden version, like Minecraft is using now. Simple, intuitive, but it feels kind of lame. - Limit the number of available items: Here I have two approaches: 1. They are hard to find. This is the worst of the proposals so far. It will force the player to do boring stuff. 2. Make it abundant and quick to gather, but make it spoil after a day or two. That way the player can't just stack up food infinitely. I haven't seen a game where food spoils at a rapid enough pace to have an influence in fighting. People could hide for a short while and stack up on enough food to run or fight again. Because of that I don't know how practical this idea is. - Limit the inventory space available for food. This would basically limit the time someone can fight. Or they would just place a barrel nearby and then they grab a bit from it. I do think this is more hindering the battle-flow than it brings any advantages. - Don't limit food at all. It then should not have a direct influence on health. If you do then the player with more food wins. And if the food just influences the regeneration then it is slightly better, but it still is some sort of food to win. My favorite is the abundant but spoils quickly.

[@infinitenex8165]

I commend you for getting this far. 42 devlogs! Most of the game dev channels that started at the beginning of covid have stagnated or quit, but you keep it going. Thats dedication deserving respect.

[@tomweiland]

Thank you! This is a game I want to play some day, that's generally what keeps me going! Also I'd like to see the channel grow, and it makes for decent content :P

[@jonathanjonsson3143]

Excellent devlog!

[@tomweiland]

Thank you :D

[@Commander_Wolf32]

a comment for the algorithm... also great vid the quality of these videos just goes up with every vid you do, keep up the good work!

[@tomweiland]

Welcome to the boost squad! Also thanks for the kind words, I'm actually really proud of this one so I'm glad you liked it :D

[@bluewingtitan]

Heyy love your stuff. Thank you A TON (i am allready doing puns no one will understand, sorry for that) for your networking tutorial. I recently moved my own game (aton) to a custom made server (was using photon for unity before) and your tutorial helped me a lot with getting started. Your game looks awesome, can't wait to play it!

[@tomweiland]

Glad you like the videos :D

[@ed5215]

New Video! YESSSS

[@tomweiland]

YESSSSSSS!!!

[@arthurds4810]

Your editing skills are getting really GOOD now =)

[@tomweiland]

Thanks! I'm actually really proud of this video, so it's nice to hear that I'm not the only one that thinks it's good :)

[@_creare_2742]

6:46 And the quick print!

[@tomweiland]

Quick print?

[@_creare_2742]

@@tomweiland Like small print... But its fast...

[@RobLang]

Equality comparison on floats (by extension Vector3) should raise compilation warnings IMO! Inventory looks neat and I look forward to your next dev log!

[@tomweiland]

That would have saved me quite a lot of time 😂 Next one should be out soon :)

[@xzippyzachx]

5:03 Haha! Also, I liked the little bit of extra logic/code explanation you added this devlog! I think it was a good balance for people that might be more interested in the logic. :p

[@tomweiland]

I think 5:19 is my favorite part of the video 😂 I'll try to include more explanations like this in the future :)

[@michealsalib6131]

Nice work.😁👍

[@tomweiland]

Thanks :D

[@paradonmusic]

Nice to see more jokeyness, good job :)

[@tomweiland]

Thanks, I tried 😂

[@snarekeeper8053]

Very inspiring! Also wanted to thank you for your Networking Series. I went through it because i wanted to switch over from photon to my own solution to be able to scale better in the future and to be able to really optimize networking performance. I went ahead and implemented RPCs and also Room/Multiple Game Instances with Spectating Logic since it's a 1v1 game. Wouldn't be able to do that without your tutorial, great stuff!!

[@tomweiland]

I'm glad you've found the tutorials helpful :)

[@ofekifrah9206]

Hey, I know it kind of random but can you maybe tell me how you implemented the room? My discord: Ofek#8888

[@snarekeeper8053]

@@ofekifrah9206 yeah, Sure. Not sure if my implementation is actually good or not, but at least it's thread save as far as I know (I got multiple threads that each manage some of my minigame-rooms) Will add you :D

[@not__nugget]

The new imput system is a great improvement! Good luck implementing it, as the documentation is sparse like much of Unity's documentation, but there are lots of resources online that helped me learn the system. I look forward to seeing the next video!

[@tomweiland]

Yeah I've heard good things about it, and right now my Update method is growing like no tomorrow so I'd love to get that cleaned up :P

I can feel your pain! Just remember, you never compare positions on physics based objects, it's always the slightest offset that gets your bool to false. I learned this the hard way too.

[@tomweiland]

Yep, that is now on the things-to-never-do-again list :P

[@lucasgamingyt1138]

Best KZbinr in my opinion XD

[@tomweiland]

Thanks, that means a lot :D

[@justbob10]

For the inventory problem, you could do it the Subnautica way. More overpowered item take up more spaces.

[@tomweiland]

Maybe...although I'm not convinced that'll work the way I need it to 🤔

[@frenchbread4476]

another good vid :)

[@tomweiland]

I'm glad you liked it :D

[@owenlaundry272]

A little late but the man asked for help with his algorithm.

[@tomweiland]

Hahaha better late than never! Welcome to the boost squad :P

[@z̈̇i]

The ALGORYTHEM!!!

[@tomweiland]

Welcome to the Boost Squad :)

[@user-qc5hd6ih7q]

Awesome progress, will u add wind directions?

[@tomweiland]

Yep, definitely!

[@Skeffles]

Fantastic progress! I can almost physically feel your programming pains in this one.

[@tomweiland]

Then I accomplished what I set out to do 😂

[@Adamseslar]

Awesome Job this game is coming along great! I think maybe having different limits on certain items ex: 25 cannonballs in a stack 10food in a stack and if the player wants to keep a bunch of food then they give up inventory space by having multiple stacks of one item.:)

[@tomweiland]

But imagine I give food a stack limit of 10. The player currently has 20 inventory slots, which means you could carry _200_ pieces of food, which seems quite ridiculous to me. Even if I make the stack size 1, you could still carry 20 pieces of food and even that would probably be insanely overpowered in combat...

[@Adamseslar]

@@tomweiland That is a good point, but what if the food is a heal over time and not instant heal? Meaning in combat you could still out DPS the heal affect making the player retreat or eat strategically which would lessen the impact of a insane amount of food in combat and the value of taking that many slots with just food wouldnt be much help in combat as compared to say a different weapon or cannon balls?

[@tomweiland]

I don't plan on having weapons take up inventory slots, and in a lot of situations where you fight someone (on land or when you board another ship), having cannonballs on you wouldn't benefit you in any way, so I don't think that's something I can rely on. As for slow healing, that'll make combat much less fluid. On a ship you don't really have a lot of space to run away and give yourself time to heal, so making food heal you slowly would result either in combat being very drawn out where as soon as someone takes damage they start running away (instead of just backing off slightly), or whoever lands the first hit has a _massive_ advantage.

[@Nervniyak]

So you introduced the visual contrast illusion. 6:00 you see phantom black dots between 4 cells you don't look at :D

[@tomweiland]

I didn't even realize that until someone else mentioned the same thing :P

[@kalimbers1475]

Yay, New Dev log. Also Do You Have Plans On Making Your Multiplayer Pirate Game To Mobile With Local Multiplayer.

[@tomweiland]

Probably not. I don't want to be bound by the performance restrictions of releasing on mobile, so that's not something I'm planning to do.

[@thedude4039]

Maybe in the stars, you could have a North star, so that players can use it to find the north direction if they don't have the compass that you should also add.

[@tomweiland]

Maybe, although if I add a compass (which I plan to), no one will bother using the stars to navigate.

[@CharcoolDev]

Awesome devlog! When is this game coming out?

[@tomweiland]

Good question 😅 Honestly this is still in very early stages, so I have no clue when a full release will happen, but I'm hoping to get some playtesting going in early 2021.

[@fireart7128]

I need to buy your game soon man.. : )

[@tomweiland]

Well I'll need to finish it first, I can't sell you something that's almost still a prototype :P

[@thedude4039]

You should make the hook in the grapple hook curve down with gravity if you shoot it too far so that players have to try and aim it with the drop in mind.

[@tomweiland]

The hook already is affected by gravity.

[@hereticstanlyhalo6916]

HI TOM!!!

[@tomweiland]

Hello :P

[@cubingle6843]

nice

[@tomweiland]

Thanks :)

[@thedude4039]

2:32 Unimpressed. *cries in corner*

[@tomweiland]

😐

[@Rider-og5xb]

Usually in my player movement scripts, I make a ToggleCursorLock function. I have a variable called isCursorLocked and if it is true then you unlock the cursor. If not then unlock the cursor. Be sure to set isCursorLocked at the end.

[@tomweiland]

Yeah I have something similar, I just need to hook that into the UI states :)

[@FMontanari709]

Be wary of different stack sizes for inventory/storage, since players would expect that if they've an empty slot in their inventory they'd be able to carry as much as what they're taking from one slot of the storage. This becomes an even bigger problem if you want to implement different resource management systems, as the player would have to make unnecessary calculations to optimize their path (ie: if the ships needs 10 wood logs to be repaired and you have one empty slot in your inventory, if the max stack size of logs is 5 for your storage, then you'd expect 2 trips between storage and ship. But having different stack sizes for inventory and storage would break that assumption). TL;DR: having multiple stack sizes between storage and inventory would break consistency and be frustrating for the resource management part of the game

[@tomweiland]

You might be right, although I think I'll leave it this way for now. I'll most likely have to impose absolute limits on item amounts based on their type anyways (ie max ~5 food so you can't fill your entire inventory with it, which would be way overpowered in a fight). It's definitely something I'll revisit :)

[@thegameblazers1150]

I have a idea where at the beginning of the game there would be factions at war and You can choose to become a privateer And doing so would mean you couldn’t raid ships from the faction that hired you but it would be easier to raid ships from the enemy faction this could be a alternative way to gain the high level wood for your ship. Normally the faction ships should have very good good weapons and armor but if you become a privateer it will be easier to attack there ships So that there’s a reason To except an offer from a fraction.

[@tomweiland]

I'm not entirely sold about the "global" factions concept, partially because the number of players in each faction will inevitably end up being unbalanced (consider Pokemon Go where most of the player base chose the blue team, leading to players on other teams being at a big disadvantage due to being outnumbered).

[@thegameblazers1150]

Oh well one why to stop this would be to first not have the Factions be a global thing and your part in a fraction how many last between servers because I think that the war should eventually end no it’s good players that didn’t play game early as if it didn’t it will allow players to stockpile lots of weapons and materials which would make thar less consequences for dying. And the two should not have unique perks and instead having perks for joining a faction and perks for your faction winning. And to stop people from being out numbered . Fractions would instead give you the job offer from one, instead of you choosing one, the game could give out offers so that there is a equal amount of people on each team getting dominated the losing team would get more players. Also I don’t think that this should be such a prominent part of gameplay that is in balance ruined the fair experience, I just want to prevent high level players or people with significantly better gear to have to resort to kill low gear and low skilled people to progress once they reach a certain point because I think that will encourage server hopping which will make it harder for there to be lobbies with a exceptional amount of people playing. Which could result in the game dying.

[@thegameblazers1150]

Sorry if that was too long

[@thespud1094]

Yeah, you should definitely add item stack caps. Not really too much I can disagree with or come up with to say with this devlog.. It just turned out to be pretty good, you know by spending those few days to fix up your old spaghetti code you've probably saved yourself weeks of frustration and revising.

[@tomweiland]

I sure hope so 🤞

[@phee3D]

Hey, you mentioned you're a rigidbody on the player. How exactly have you set it up? Specifically, how does your client prediction work? Are you just using an independent movement code on the client and then periodically checking if its out of sync with the server? or is it a much more complex system?

[@tomweiland]

The prediction aspect works by executing the exact same movement logic that the server uses, and that's fairly straightforward. The complex part is getting the reconciliation right, since you need to keep the client's representation of the player accurate compared to the server, but you need to do your best to avoid yanking/teleporting the player around when his predicted position is wrong. Give this a read if you're interested: www.gabrielgambetta.com/client-side-prediction-server-reconciliation.html However, at the moment I actually have my prediction/reconciliation disabled, as it breaks down when you're standing on the ship. I explained why exactly that happens in a devlog a while back, but it essentially boils down to the fact that the local player and the ship both move, but they're in different "time streams" on the client, so the prediction code can't predict accurately.

[@phee3D]

@@tomweiland I see, and yes I remember that devlog. Thankyou for the explanation and the article link, I'm gonna go through all the parts.

[@Cooltrain]

The first problem you ran into sounded like the 0.30000000000000004 problem. For the inv you could always set it based on carry weight, so having a large amount of stuff is balanced by a move speed nerf?

[@tomweiland]

Are you referring to floating point math errors? If so, I suppose it's _somewhat_ similar, although at the same time it's completely different :P Edit: in response to your edit, giving food enough weight to avoid the player carrying tons of it wouldn't really work-at least not in a way that makes sense. Why should you only be able to carry ~5 pieces of food, while being able to carry 10+ cannonballs (which are obviously much heavier)? I think limiting item amounts based on their type is a better approach, as much as I'd prefer to avoid that :P

[@Songfugel]

Always try to use ranges of less than or greater than with floats due to how floating point values work, you should always avoid direct equality comparisons with them With ints it is ok, but with floats you aren't quaranteed for it to work, even if they are supposed to be of "equal value" since they are just approximations of the values due to conversion issues of bit and dec system representations

[@tomweiland]

Yep, I was a fool 😂

[@ofekifrah9206]

Hey, I know it has been some time since you made the metworking seriea but can you make a video how to implement rooms?

[@tomweiland]

See my reply to your other comment.

[@manual1080]

If you use Blender, did you re-create the materials in Unity and not use the Blender materials that come with the model when it gets imported? I only ask this because the colors seem a bit off. I had this problem on my game, Blender materials do not like Unity materials and never gave me a good color

[@tomweiland]

I'm not using Blender's materials-I set the colors of all objects in Unity. I recently fixed an issue in my code that was affecting colors, and afterwards I had to go through and "redo" all the objects' colors and I did it as fast as possible. The colors you see probably aren't final anyways, but if you can tell me what specifically looks "off" and what might improve it then I can take some time to try and fix that :)

[@CodemasterJamal]

I always thought your player controller used Unity's Character Controller. Rigidbody is pretty good too but, I notice a lot of people have that getting stuck problem.

[@tomweiland]

I used Unity's CharacterController in my tutorials, so that may be why.

[@sankalppatidar4975]

how did you set up collision for your shi/boat p

[@tomweiland]

I gave it colliders, but since that's quite an obvious answer I'm not really sure if that's what you're asking...

[@netpeggle4458]

i would advice against getting only x amount of something into a inventory it could confuse players. If food is supposed to heal make it heal over x amount of time and make it so that u cant extend the time so if u eat 20 or 1 banana at once u get x amount of health in x amount of time. This also makes healing in a fight not as strong of a game changer.

[@tomweiland]

I'm not sure about that-if regeneration is the only way to heal, that makes it almost useless in hand to hand combat. There's not much space to run/hide on a ship while you wait for that health to regenerate, so that would probably cause combat to often end before it even really starts...

[@nichegames9590]

Yeah, I had to do a distance check with my game too. This kept my objects from gittering.

[@tomweiland]

I think I need to take another look at it though, at least for the rotation check as I've noticed some other slight jittering with the ship 🤔

[@_creare_2742]

2:35 Am I glad I don't program Oh wait... I do

[@tomweiland]

Value your sanity while you still have it 😂

[@changedev.198]

For your camera controller issue, create a script called Game Manager or game god or anything, then create a bool called "IsInteracting"(Again Use any word) and then make the camera script inactive(i mean to remove the check near it) when "IsInteracting" is true and active when "IsInteracting" is false. I had this issue on my Among Us 3D while doing tasks and this helped. Speaking of Among Us 3D, Will you play it with me when it is completed?

[@tomweiland]

Yeah I have something like that already, but it's not in use together with the inventory system because the way I have it set up is honestly a pain :P

[@changedev.198]

@@tomweiland if the inventory was controlled using the keyboard it would be cool. Like managing it while walking or running.

[@HilistarionX]

Hey Tom...do it for the big G

[@tomweiland]

Oh no.

[@_creare_2742]

Definition of programing : 3:48

[@tomweiland]

If you can use google well, you've got 95% of programming in the bag already :P

[@Kasnickijakub]

6:40 what the palm tree isn't organic?

[@tomweiland]

Nope-the Royal Navy sprayed them with pesticides to keep the pirates away.

[@durrium]

Would be Nice to see ypur inventory coding 😊😊

[@tomweiland]

Debatable-it's a bit of a mess, and I've already discovered several issues with it 😂

[@durrium]

@@tomweiland well maybe when you feel done with it! Would be nice to learn :)

[@thedude4039]

2:19 Get it? Wave?

[@tomweiland]

Ha ha ha ha ha funny :P

[@ultraxgaming288]

The algorithm

[@tomweiland]

You've survived your initiation into the Boost Squad! Seriously though, I appreciate it :)

[@mustafamertaltinsoy]

Hello. I have a problem with my online game. I can only see the animations of my character. can you help Or can anyone who knows help?

[@tomweiland]

I don't have much experience with animations, so I'm not sure that I'll be able to help.

[@apollogeist8513]

If you're worried about hard item limits being unintuitive, why not just nerf food?

[@tomweiland]

Because if I nerf food then you'd be _required_ to fill your entire inventory with it, which would be quite inconvenient in most situations.

[@Vryformal]

AHHHHH

[@tomweiland]

Ahhh?

[@BigToeDev]

...just a comment for the KZbin algorithm...

[@tomweiland]

Welcome to the boost squad! Seriously, I appreciate it :P

[@thedude4039]

One day he will have too many viewers to respond to every comment. And the world will come to an end.

[@tomweiland]

But today is not that day!

[@ecykal35]

Hi

[@tomweiland]

Hello :)

[@g5haco]

woah i really want to make a inventory system but I cant figure it out >:|

[@tomweiland]

To be honest, it's quite boring, and with multiplayer in the mix it's just annoying 😂

[@g5haco]

@@tomweiland I use photon pun :/

[@tomweiland]

I haven't used that myself, so not much I can say to help :P

[@g5haco]

@@tomweiland rug can! :P

[@ParkerGameDev]

more comments :D

[@tomweiland]

More comments!

[@gtxo2104]

UI looks great m8 I am also a dev Im making a spiderman game devlog on my channe, us devs must support each other. I did, Im sure you will too cheers.

[@tomweiland]

Glad you like it :) You don't have any videos on your channel, so I'm not sure what you mean by "support _each other"..._

[@gtxo2104]

@@tomweiland wow ur right I did not save my channel edits, It up now I just forgot to add anything on my home page LOL

[@EnginCanUre]

A weight system would be interesting.

[@tomweiland]

It would, although what I've got now basically accomplishes the same thing. It's just a matter of whether or not I also put limits on item _types_ as a whole instead of just individual items.

[@sum2898]

ok

[@tomweiland]

Okay...?

[@g5haco]

FIRST AGAIN!!!11!!11!11

[@tomweiland]

I regret to inform you that you were in fact 4th :P

[@frankzander5946]

click the subscribe button: too late - already had! Does it make sense to unsubscribe and then subscribe again?

[@tomweiland]

No, not really :P

[@frankzander5946]

@@tomweiland another thing: what is the reason for the treadmgr? Did you have race conditions or is there another reason you made sure the packet processing takes place in the main thread?

[@tomweiland]

I didn't want to also get into threading in the tutorial series as networking is complicated/confusing enough on its own, plus you can only access/use Unity objects on the main thread, so with most packets you receive you'll need to put work on the main thread eventually anyways. The ThreadManager (assuming that's what you meant by "treadmgr") just makes that easy.

[@frankzander5946]

@@tomweiland cool inisght into the treadmgr :-D ...it all makes a lot of sense, Also I find it is a nice way to solve this. Many thx :-)