Hi there,

I am currently developing a 2D top-down sandbox game in my spare time. The game revolves around collecting resources (which are each standard sized tiles in the game) to build various machines and components. My question is, does anyone have any ideas of how these resources could be stored and used, in my opinion there are two current routes of managing this:

• The (in my opinion) unrealistic route of having containers which store these resources, such as in Minecraft where everything magically fits within a chest or container of some sort and there is the concept of an “item” or a compressed version of the actual resource.
• The most realistic way, in which everything in the game takes up a set amount of space and cannot be magically compressed, this way the player must find clever ways of organising their resources. However, I feel this may get too complicated and decrease the fun of the game.

I am struggling to think of any other options and I don't think either is a good fit for the game, any help in designing this aspect of the game would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

zipper9998 said:

Hi there,

I am currently developing a 2D top-down sandbox game in my spare time. The game revolves around collecting resources (which are each standard sized tiles in the game) to build various machines and components. My question is, does anyone have any ideas of how these resources could be stored and used, in my opinion there are two current routes of managing this:

• The (in my opinion) unrealistic route of having containers which store these resources, such as in Minecraft where everything magically fits within a chest or container of some sort and there is the concept of an “item” or a compressed version of the actual resource.
• The most realistic way, in which everything in the game takes up a set amount of space and cannot be magically compressed, this way the player must find clever ways of organising their resources. However, I feel this may get too complicated and decrease the fun of the game.

I am struggling to think of any other options and I don't think either is a good fit for the game, any help in designing this aspect of the game would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

In the realistic way: What if you include warehouses that the player will need to build to store things.

But i would say to stack things like Factorio does :D

@undefined Hi there, stacking is a great idea! perhaps nearby resources could congregate together and then a number above them could denote the amount, there could be a max stack size before another stack would have to be made and these stack would just float around (its a space game). The stacks could be dragged around and then stored in some warehouse way perhaps. I think this idea has a lot of potential. Ill look into factorion as well as factories, machines and automation will be a part of the game. Thanks a lot! I'm still open to other suggestions also if anyone has any.

LorenzoGatti said:

Realism doesn't mean lack of abstraction.

In a game about the coarse time and space scale of building large machines that occupy several map tiles with commensurately large resource units, boring details like workers, trucks, containers etc. can remain implicit to show only important things (like resources moving on the map to the tiles where the player sends them to be stockpiled or used).

I like this perspective, thanks!

Albedo said:

You could also do what the Factorio devs said about their insanely large amount of storage space per container: say it continues underground.

Yeah factorio seems like a great game for me to research, it’s very different to what I’m aiming for but I feel it has a lot of abstract similarities if that makes sense.

@zipper9998 You could always have some things be compressible like clothing, or bookshelves (urgh, ever put together a bookshelf or other piece of furniture.) And then some things not be compressible, like maybe tanks.