In the previous two posts you saw beauty renders of some ammo boxes in the inventory screen and got a look at a few of the firearms you can use. Now it's time to see how those things will appear on the ground. Here's Dave strutting past some sprite renders of various weapons and ammo boxes in a GIF.
Mousing over any gun or ammo drop on the ground will highlight the item and display an information box. Please note that this UI is still a work in progress.
Reading the box from top to bottom you first see the item type, which is "GUN". Next to that is the number 5 in blue, which will be explained in a moment. After that is the silhouette of the weapon to make it easily identifiable at a glance, followed by the gun class (SMG), name (Heino9!) and what ammo type it uses (9mm). Below that you can see how much ammo is in the weapon, which in this case is "0/34 9mm FMJ", and lastly the prompt to pick up the weapon.
Remember the blue number? That value is the "capacity" the gun will take up in the player's inventory. "Capacity" in this context is an abstracted combination of both the weight and its overall size. Compare it for example with the Kriel rifle, which has a capacity of 12.
If this number is blue and the pickup prompt is visible, it means there is enough space in the player's inventory to carry the weapon. If the number is red, however…
…Then this means the player's inventory is full and does not have the capacity to pick this item up. The player can access the inventory by pressing Tab, and on the left hand side of the screen they will see what gun weapon slots are occupied and what capacity space is available.
In Dave's case you can see that his Battledress Backpack has a capacity of 25, and his Chest Rig has an additional capacity of 5. Notice also how the gun slots Main-1, Main-2 and Sidearm have capacity values of 15, 15 and 5 respectively. This means Dave can, in addition to whatever is stored in his backpack or rig, wield weapons up to these capacity values in those gun slots. Weapons that exceed these capacity values cannot be wielded by Dave in his current state, meaning Dave will need to upgrade to something like a carmine suit.
After suiting Dave up in a carmine, his chest rig capacity has doubled to 50, and the gun slot values have also increased. This allows Dave to wield the Cut Fifty heavy machine gun, which has a capacity of 30.
Ammo boxes have a similar mouseover information box to weapons with some slight differences.
The blue capacity number on the 9mm ammo box is 0 but this is because the mouseover does not display decimal values. Much like with the weapons, items like this ammo box have different capacity values. Refer to the image below to see different capacity values for the RPG rounds, the jerry can and so on.
In addition, the 9mm FMJ box has a COUNT of 40, which means the box contains 40 rounds. This number can be changed via the map making tool Stellar Jockeys uses to make levels, which is called Tiled.
In Tiled it's possible to set custom properties for placed objects like ammo pickups. The quantity (highlighted with a red box) of a specific pickup can be changed to whatever is required, so for instance a separate box with twice as much ammo can be placed.
This is useful for the level designers who may want to put specific amounts of ammunition within a level depending on the design goal.
One big difference in the appearance of weapon and ammo pickups is the sprites for ammo pickups are only rendered from one angle. In other words, the ammo boxes will always face the front so that they are clearly identifiable.
Since firearms are wielded by the player, they are rendered out at the full 128 sprite rotations, meaning they can appear on the ground pointing any available direction.
This also means that when a group of enemies are eliminated and drop their firearms, those weapons won't all drop in the same direction and look a bit odd as a result.
This concludes the trio of posts looking at Brigador Killers' inventory. In next month's news post we will take a look at some of the vehicles available to the player.
Back in April we wrote that we were planning to be in October's Steam Next Fest. Unfortunately, Brigador Killers will not appear in that Next Fest. Our priority is updating the build on Itch first and, if we are satisfied with it, then a demo will appear on Steam sometime after. We very much appreciate your enthusiasm and your patience for Brigador Killers.
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The archive of previous newsletters stretches back all the way to 2019, long before news updates for Brigador Killers were posted here.