I've got some design questions that I'd like you all to answer for me. I've been thinking about the item system over the last week and I've been pondering what the user should be able to do with the items. Originally I wanted the user to be able to use, equip, or destroy items from the inventory menu. Now I'm not sure that destorying items is needed. I think if the user wants to get rid of items they should just sell them off. I don't have any plans to have an inventory limit on the number of items or number of slots that a player can have. If there was I could see a reason to let them destroy items. So what do you think? Should there be some kind of limit on how much a player can carry? Either way should the player be allowed to destory items?

Right now vendors are loaded with the same inventory everytime the game is started. I started thinking about when I put real items in the game I'm going to have certain things that I don't want multiple of or maybe very few in the game. So my solution is to save the vendors during a save to keep their inventory updated. This led to this question. If the player sells something to the vendor should they be allowed to buy it back? If so should the vendor never get rid of this item until they sell it back to the player?

Got some more work done of the menus last night. The Vendor's buy and sell menus seem to be working, next is actually buying and selling items. The spell menu is also working. Next up is the item select menu and actually casting spells from the menu. Only ceratin spells will work from the menu. After that its on to the combat menus. Then combat itself.

I've been seeing posts like this in some of the blogs that I read. So I decided to copy them and post how my goals for last year went and what goals I'm striving for this year.

2007

• First on the list was to learn and use Linux as my main desktop environment. I think that I completed the first part of that. I messed around with the desktop side for my bot PC. I got a server up and running. It had apache, php, mysql, ventrilo, and subversion running on it. Unfortunately it didn't survive the move, but now I have a different PC running as my server. This time its a Debian box instead of an Ubuntu box. I have not converted myself fully to Linux though. I still find myself addicted to games and too unwilling to give them up. Hopefully my desire to create games will overpower my desire to play them. Maybe even just playing the games that I create will be enough to satisfy my addiction.
• Learning C/C++ was the next on my list. This didn't happen at all, but this goes hand in hand with...
• The Mod this started out as the big project of the year and never left the planning stages. Due to things like graduation and other projects time for this monster never seemed to be available. Maybe once Nate finishes Raidninja and I can get the rpg out the door we can resurrect this beast.
• Lastly is the rpg I'm working on. While I hoped to be in either alpha or beta by now I'm not disappointed at all at my progress. Working full time as a programmer leaves me with very little desire to work at my computer when I get home. Also having the new house has left me with very little free time anyway. I'm still very pleased with what I've created so far and I'm hoping to have this finished up by the end of the spring this year.

2008

• Finish rpg by the end of spring.
• Make Debian my default desktop enviroment.
• Start working on my next game. I'm not sure if this will be a sequel to the rpg. Or maybe a top down shooter similar to Project Skirmish.
• If I can talk Nate and Jon into it we will get working on the mod.
• Do some Factor hacking