Carts are coming to Olvand, pt. I news

My feelings about the inventory system so far
Hi all! As most of you probably know, the inventory system in Olvand is quite unusual: instead of one inventory, you have two (one representing your hand, and one representing your back), and instead of limiting them by number of slots, they are limited in a more realistic way by size and weight bars. These limits can be extended by putting a larger bag on your back, holding a larger bag in your hand, or by using even more efficient ways of transporting goods, like carts. This realism has the potential to add all kinds of nice little details to the game; for example, I like to imagine busy roads with lots of people with carts and pack animals.

Although Olvand's system might be a fresh and possibly interesting take on inventory systems, I've been worried from the beginning that it might be too complicated or frustrating. I mean, it might look nice that people are walking around with carts everywhere, but as a player it might be rather annoying to discover that you can't go on doing what you were doing because your bag is full, and that you're going to have to walk all the way back to your house to store your stuff, so you can start collecting the material and the tools to craft a cart.

Extending the inventory system
It's mainly for this reason that I never really dared to continue work on inventory system. The game so far has two types of bags, which is just enough to make it usable, but I never added anything more out of fear that negative responses would make me decide to rebuild the whole thing from the ground up. So this message, which has been in the game from the very beginning, has always been misleading, as carts simple weren't implemented yet.

Surprisingly, however, the responses to the inventory system so far haven't negative, or even neutral, but super-positive. Sure, it's a bit confusing at the start, and a bit annoying at times, but players seem to grasp its potential quite quickly. And now that larger buildings are (1) possible and (2) more visible (so players KNOW they can craft them) I actually get quite a lot of requests from players for an item that will allow them to store more stuff than regular bags. In other words, instead of asking for a new inventory system, players are asking that continue work on the current one, so that building larger buildings becomes more convenient.

Implementing carts
So I'm currently implementing carts! I expected things to be quite hard and complicated, but so far things are going very well, partly because I could reuse a lot of code and graphics from the building sites:

But of course, you can also equip a cart to your hand, so you can use it as an actual inventory and move it around. As you can see, carts can store a lot more space and weight than a regular bag, making it perfect for when you want to move around a lot of stuff:

Next up (besides fixing all the bugs I created): adding all the graphics and animations for when you have a car equiped, so you can actually see the player moving around a cart. I think/hope this will help Olvand look more charming, so I'm really looking forward to it!

Oh, and on final note: I'll be on holiday for the next two weeks (I'll be visiting Paris!), so there will be a little break in blogposts. See you after that!

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