Feature Update (0.1.5)
Look what's new in Untold Dawn's development, including mechanics around containers and held inventory.
This new version's focus has been on making the containers system; it involved implementing several features that we hope you'll find exciting. Dive with us to explore these new developments!
Around four days ago, we published our last feature update for version 0.1.5. If you have not looked at it, please feel free to in the following link:
It's been a busy week for me at work, and I honestly thought that we would make little progress, but a sprint this weekend saw us pushing through version 0.1.5-dev!
Containers
For this feature update, we've focused our attention on creating containers, which can now be integrated into almost any object. Containers are designed to interact with items by using the commands put <object> <container> and get <object> <container>.
Technically, a container allows an item to be placed inside the container through the put <object> <container> command. It's not that the container feature limits what can hold items; rather, it facilitates the use of PUT and GET commands (i.e. hands can contain objects they're holding, rooms are no more than objects containing other objects).
This only works for containers, naturally, and any attempt to do so in other item type will be refused.
In the same vein, we refactored get to be able to handle two scenarios: get <object> or get <object> from <container>. This allows you to get an object from the current room OR from a container.
We also revamped the way these containers look to the players and admins. While this needs some additional refactoring, I think it's looking good.
Looking at Held Objects
There is, no doubt, going to be many locations where this system will need to be integrated to. However, this week, we made it so that you can look at objects being held in your hands.
Swap Command
This command is likely temporary, and we'd love to hear ideas on how to tackle this problem better, but we've created a SWAP command that lets people with two hands to swap the inventory of one hand to the other.
This will only work on humans probably, and might get deprecated for another command that lets more granular control over bodyparts in the near future.
Here is it working in action:
What's next?
I've recently switched to Org-Mode (again) to try to organize my chaotic life, which comes with the added benefit that I'm being more efficient at managing my time.
While the last couple of weeks have brought considerable updates, I am hopeful this week will be the most productive of this moth so far, so stay tuned!
This version has just hit our main development server, so no doubt we might have some minor bugs to go through – although the core of the system has been working quite sturdily.
This week we're likely going to spend some time improving the look mechanics, potentially look into helpfiles and other various things. Although, the version is not yet set in stone.
If you have any suggestions on features you'd like to see in the long term or short term, do not hesitate to drop us a message in our forums!
We want to do things differently. If you enjoy our vision and progress and would like to help us field the costs of our growing list of services, please consider becoming our patreon.
