Inventory
Learning paths through this topic
Keep picked-up items gone when the player leaves and re-enters a room
Walk out of a room and back in, and the medicine bottle you took is lying there again, ready to be taken for free. This entry remembers what was taken, handles a pickup that only half fitted into the bag, and lets chosen things grow back on purpose.
Make saving cost an item without ever leaving the player unable to save
Scarce saving is a classic way to make a scary game tense, until a player wastes the last ribbon and faces the rest of the game with no way back. This entry keeps the cost and the fear but quietly rules out the dead end, without giving the trick away every time.
Search a drawer or body bit by bit, keeping what was found when interrupted
Searching a cupboard in a scary place should take a moment, reveal things one at a time, and be something the player can abandon when a noise comes. What was found should stay found, and the half-finished look should start again. This entry tracks that progress.
Add a sell-all-junk button that never sells the wrong thing
A single button to sell junk saves players minutes, until it sells the sword they were saving, the item the quest still needs, or the gear they are wearing. This entry builds the rules that decide what counts as junk, and a list to confirm and undo.
Decide whose order wins when a team spends from one shared treasury
Three teammates press buy in the same moment and the treasury can pay for two of them. If every computer decides in the order messages arrived, they disagree. This entry puts the orders in one agreed sequence, lets the starting player rotate so nobody always loses, and says who was turned down.
Set shop buy and sell prices so players cannot farm gold by trading
A charm discount at the shop and a bonus for selling sound like harmless perks, but combined with rounding they can let a player buy an item and sell it back for more. This entry makes one price rule that stays honest whatever bonuses stack up.
Show huge stock numbers short without ever showing more than the player has
A counter that says one thousand kilo when the player holds nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred is a small lie that ends in a refused purchase. This entry shortens big numbers to thousands, millions and beyond, always cutting off rather than rounding, and handles the jump between units.
Show whole numbers while a slow producer still earns its fraction
A well that gives four tenths of a bucket per second looks broken if the counter rounds every frame, because it never moves, or runs twice as fast on a quick computer. This entry keeps the exact income behind the whole number you see, whatever the frame rate.
Add a sort button that tidies the bag and joins half-empty stacks
A sort button that only reorders still leaves three half stacks of the same potion, and one that reshuffles on every press makes players lose track of their things. This entry gives a stable order and tidies the leftovers too, so the second press changes nothing.
Split a stack in half and merge it back when dragging items
Dragging half a stack sounds simple until a stack of seven needs splitting, a full stack receives more, or two different items are dropped on each other. This entry covers the rounding, the leftovers and the cases where nothing may happen.
Split unequal loot between players so nobody ends up far behind
After a battle there are a few big prizes and many small ones, and a plain taking of turns can give one player all the big ones every time. This entry hands out the biggest prizes first, always to whoever has the least so far, including what they won in earlier fights.
Stack several build discounts without letting a cost drop to zero
A guild gives ten percent off, a technology twenty, and a festival fifty. Applied one after another with rounding in between, the same discounts give different prices, and enough of them make a wall cost nothing. This entry adds them up with a ceiling, rounds once at the end and keeps a minimum.