I love inventory screens (thoughts on a personal project)

A bit of a random sketch after the subject of inventory/equipment screens popped into my head again tonight. I've been wanting to do a project for a while now that combines some of my biggest loves - front end coding, cute art, and RPGs! More for personal reasons than anything else, and to learn new stuff along the way (database integration using django for example, which I'm *still* trying to get my head around!).

I've not got far yet (I'm a panda, we don't rush these things..) but, I have a lot of ideas and one is that it must include levelling up because - I love levelling up! :D And also, as the title of this post says - I love inventory screens. XD One of my very favourite things about RPGs is acquiring new equipment, heading to the inventory screen and seeing what the effects of equipping it will be, and how it might power you up :D Not all games allow you to see your stuff on the character right then, but I quite like when they do, especially cos I like to see the effects of how stuff looks together, etc. (yeah, girly ;)

My vague coding related RPG idea is something to do with wanting to level up my skills myself, and maybe because I just want to make everything more like a videogame! I also like the idea of something humorous, cute and fun, hence my "geeky joke shirt". Deathspank on XBLA is a bit of an inspiration for this particular sketch too, it's a funny action RPG created by Ron Gilbert who also worked on the Monkey Island games, and it's just all very silly. On a sidenote, I miss Monkey Island style humour in videogames! It feels harder to come by a funny game these days.. :)

Deathspank Equipment Screen

So yeah anyway, I think I'd like to work more on lots of different parts of this, besides how it might all work on the back-end (how you level up, and collect items etc), I think designing various items and the effects of them would be pretty damn fun too. XD And then drawing the graphics! As usual, I'm being way too ambitious at this point but, it's fun to think about anyway and we'll see how far I get next year..

Oh, on another note, something I think also fueled my equipment/inventory love is Ragnarok Online, a very cute Korean MMORPG, that I used to play for the SOLE reason of acquiring more hats. XD Here's a little shot of one of my characters, with a friend I used to play online with. HOW cute are those hats?

Ragnarok Online - more like Cute Hats Online

Bye for now, and happy equipment hunting!