From the maker of Markistan RPG comes Hatchet. Hatchet is a heavy duty conversion mod for Deus Ex with a campaign all its own. Hatchet contains a unique storyline & employs free-roam mechanics to present a world we think will shock, satisfy, & puzzle you to the end.
We have yet to do the browsing and recipe management screen, but that should be the easy part compared to setting this guy up...
The recipe book. Because we had lots of individual recipes (a couple dozen or so as it stands) but it became apparent that having a couple dozen extra items (especially as we expand outwards with more items) lingering around the player's inventory isn't healthy. We do an encumbrance based system, so above 100 or maybe a bit more items tends to crash the game because the iterator runs for so long it assumes a runaway loop... that being said, we're able to nicely balance and setup cleanup methods of all sorts, and after much deliberation this was chosen as the next step.
The specs:
-A modest 1 item that is given upon new game to the player. It holds the data for up to 256 per-item recipes (that were previously split over no more than 10-12 with per-theme recipes) and after a lot of cataloging for hundreds of values, it's all setup nicely in just one night.
-Recipes that were previously held as raw pickup items have merely had their frob function overridden to feed some data for "unlocking" to the book's database before dismissing themselves, purpose fulfilled.
-It holds a window that has yet to be filled in that iterates a list with pictures, names, and skill listings for individual parts in a way that is more streamlined and informative while being less divided and confusing, effectively killing a small flock of birds with one stone.
-Testing with every single recipe in game in-hand, then opening the single largest field of items (materials currently, which are very unlikely to be expanded further) with all items enabled currently causes a fraction of a second's loading time/lag, and we may seek to reduce that if possible or make it process the index in small chunks, allowing lower performance (lower than the tested 4GB ram) to handle things cleaner, and although that would likely make the journey take longer, would be traveled cleaner.
Hey cool! Really nice.
I admit I was hesitant about doing from-scratch pixel art for its icon, but I'm incredibly okay with the outcome, all-in-all. Thanks for support!