Consumable items & you, a tale about inventory management!

[Mikara]

A thought popped into my head: We have a menu, we have a merchant, and we have save points, but how do we heal on the front lines? Obviously we have to have consumable items, right? Well, in that case, how will they be managed? Will I be able to hold 99, or only 9, or perhaps only limited to 5 on the super powerful rare ones? I'm sure that sounds reasonable, but now how do I go about using them? Will I pause the game, will I have a quick menu so I have to dodge while using items, or will I have a button I can set an item to so I can use it during combat quickly?

Anyways, enough fake questions, I'm sure you get the point. I was just curious what design you had in mind, and also it sparked an idea on how to give Hard mode a little more difficulty by limiting the consumable items from say 9 on everything to only 3 or something like that. Anyways, hope I gave you more ideas. =P

[Bodie]

The current design is to mimic the DS Castlevania games: In order to use items you have to pause the game and go into the Use Item menu. Quantities are maxed at 9 for each item.

I personally like the idea of instantly stuffing your face with steak dinners in order to win a fight ;D

I haven't really thought about changing how items work in NG+ or Hard mode, but limiting item stack caps could be an interesting route.

[Nel Celestine]

is there any harm in making items stack to 10 instead? It's just a nicer rounder number.

[ThatLlamaGirl]

Usually having 9 as the max means there's always only one digit to display the number of items you have, 0-9, so it's got less problems with spacing. With 10 as the max, then there's one condition where two digits are necessary. Not that I'm saying that this is a reason why/why not we will decide on 9 vs 10, just a reason why a lot of games seem to arbitrarily stop at 9 instead of 10.

[Jarno]

unless you use hex numbers

[ThatLlamaGirl]

Most games don't use hex for displaying values, since most people have no idea what it means. I have F items.... :C

[VicTheRipper]

Most games don't use hex for displaying values, since most people have no idea what it means. I have F items.... :C

F = 15 in decimal

[Darth Plagueis]

And I played Pokemon Red & Blue, met missigno, and ⚘9 [flower9] became a new number placement for my sixth item, which I learned it's representing value. Players are good learners, setting an inventory in any base or symbol scheme, will only make them clever.

now to force players to learn base85