Devlog #9 - item system

5 years ago by Neguli

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This devlog will explore the item system in Point & Sin. There’s also a video version of this devlog further below if you prefer to consume information that way.

Intro

At the time of writing this, it had been 1 day since I had returned from GDC. This being my first trip to both GDC and the States, it was a very humbling and surreal experience. Perhaps later I will make a dedicated video with a look back on the conference.

The trip to San Francisco and back consisted of five flights, all of which lasted several hours, so I had a lot of time to think about the project and how it could be improved. My current priority is writing a plot and creating a separate prototype for the narrative of the game.

However, I’m very lucky to have some people helping me out with the project and they are focused on other aspects, such as improving the existing item system and creating a pixel tileset for the first environment. So because of this, I also had to think a little about items and how to make them more interesting than they are now.

Current Item System

In case you are not familiar with Point & Sin, then let me very briefly explain how items work. In the latest prototype, there are three item bases - hand, eye, heart, all of which are dropped by enemy mobs. They have random names and affect 1 to 3 stats. There are also two unique items, which have predefined names, item image, and stats.

Besides the obvious fact that there should various UI and quality of life improvements over the current version, I’ve heard feedback that item system is generally boring and I have to agree.

For now, I have drafted an outline for giving the system a little spice.

Proposed Changes

#1 - Equipping

The first change affects the equipping of items. At the moment you have these four slots. Each of them can only contain an item of the designated base. So a hand goes in hand slot, heart goes in heart slot and so on.

In the new version, there would, first of all, be a bunch more of slots. And these slots would correspond to regions of the body, not item bases. For example, a torso region, in which you could equip a heart or lungs or something else.

This wouldn’t have much influence in terms of gameplay, but it would give some flair, especially if you could equip multiple items of the same type in one area, giving the player an ability to have a character with three hearts, six eyes or four legs.

#2 - Effect

The second change is about item effect. At the moment, items only provide a boost to the player’s stats. To fit the theme of hell and sin, they could also reduce certain stats.

In addition to this, items could provide a direct effect that would depend on their base. To illustrate, all lungs would provide increased mana regeneration and all hearts would increase max HP. This is similar to item implicits in Path of Exile. I think this change would make each item base a bit more unique.

#3 - Item Sets

The third and final change which I will look at today is about item sets.

The basic idea is that if you have equipped a group of certain items, it will unlock a new active ability or improve an existing one as long as the items remain equipped. In a way, this is similar to crafting recipes, but instead of using up the ingredients, you wear them. I haven’t seen such a mechanic in games that I’ve played until now.

This all provides an interesting alternative to unlocking new skills through skill tree and I also think it makes certain sense logically. If you want to do something that is physiologically impossible to you, you just need to change your physiology, your body parts.

This being the most unconventional of the listed changes, it also comes with various design challenges. For one, item sets should encourage experimentation in what you equip rather than feel like something that forces you not to equip a shiny new item because it would result in losing your set bonus.

Final thoughts

So that was a short summary on some possible ideas for improving the item system in Point & Sin.

I left out many questions and technicalities on this topic. One of them includes the issue of using low-level items in the end-game. It is a common practice in action rpg’s to switch to new gear as you progress, but you may get attached to a single piece of equipment for one reason or another (cool artwork, name, color scheme, etc). In the perfect case, I would like to offer a way to keep low-level items relevant in the end-game as well.

How would you go on about solving this issue? Adding a possibility to craft improvements? Let items gain experience the same as your character does?