luttje/gmod-experiment-redux

'The Business' as an in-world shop

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luttje commented

Currently the 'Business' menu can be accessed anywhere at any time. This is great for testing, but not great for immersion. I've been wanting to have one or more NPC's in the world where you can buy the items.

My idea (not final, open to suggestions):

I've been thinking of the Terminal building as a place where you can buy most of the items. We'd rebrand it to 'The Business' and put some NPC's there to interact with. The whole area would be a safe-zone, protected by wall/ceiling mounted NPC turrets, besides also providing a temporary buff to those in the area (if they haven't been in combat recently).

We could limit the opening times of The Business, so players are forced to make tactical decisions on what to buy and how to get it to their base. I'm not sure if we should put a locker near the Business, or if we should force players to come together and protect each other while they hop off to the nearest locker with all their new gear in inventory.

Nelaif commented

Having a safe zone is important. But centralizing it with merchants would take away some fragrence of the game.
I think it is good if merchants could open up shop and disappear in random locations in the map. It would make the muggery more exciting. Some items should be alwayse available in the spawn, yes. But not everything

Also, I believe it is nice if you can create / buy ammo, kevlar, health when you can, but only if you have like this kind of perk or a work bench.
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luttje commented

When an in-game location of 'the Business' appears, it'll be accompanied by some signage like this:

experiment-the-business-sign.mp4

This shows the 5 skins the model has:

  • off
  • on (illuminated)
  • pattern1
  • pattern2
  • pattern3

Where the patterns switch between different dimming of the sign. This is so when the sign is placed in a row, they don't all look the same

luttje commented

At first I'll place some static locations for 'The Business' in the world where you can buy your gear. In the future they'll only spawn at random locations (e.g: every half hour), meaning you have to strategize to buy items.

experiment.-.shopkeeper.mp4
luttje commented

This is what it ended up looking like

experiment.-.business.mp4