It's been awhile since I've posted on the Developer Blog and I apologize for that. There are tons of little reasons but it mostly boils down to the fact that the majority of work lately has been "behind the scenes" so to speak, and not easily demonstrated. I've recently been rounding out tons of features, the latest being item stacking, and had a great opportunity to make some animations to show you. Here is a look at the more feature complete Item Stacking system.
This GIF demonstrates one of my personal favorite aspects of item stacking, the ability to stack similar items directly on the map. If after slaughtering a horde of enemies you find yourself standing in the middle of some remains, you can save some time and drag similar items together instead of dragging them one-by-one into your backpack. Items can similarly be combined the same way in both a backpack and the bank. Down the road I'd like to have the artwork change as the stack count gets higher, but it won't be anytime soon.
In this GIF you can see that not all items can be stacked. Heavy and unique items are collected one at a time. Stacking is currently used for usable items like food, trade skill resources, and currencies. Demonstrated by the Blue Bat's Wings, you can also have multiple stacks of the same items, they aren't all forced into the same pile. If you pick up an item by dragging it from the map directly into your backpack it will be placed directly where you drop it. If you pick up an item by dragging it onto your character it will either be added to the first stack of that item, or if it's the first one you have, it will go to a random position in the bag.
With these features done, I'm focusing on the next big feature: Item Weight. By adding weight restrictions to both backpacks and the bank, players will have to frequently return to town and either sell or store items. Up until now there was little motivation to return to civilization and players tended to spend nearly all of their playtime out and about. Next up is, another long overdue, Video Update demonstrating the weight system. I'll be sure to post on the various social sites when it's ready.
