After going live with their Kickstarter project last week, developer Nerd Kingdom has revealed several new updates for the upcoming multiplayer open-world sandbox-RPG title TUG. The most recent update has revealed a lengthy discussion on inventory management and scaling, an issue prominent in many games revolving around a large array of items, including the infamous Tetris-like management of Blizzard's Diablo series.

In TUG, the design philosophy is to keep game logic as close to real life logic as possible. This is critical in keeping with player immersion, but even more importantly, this design approach gives us the ability to offer true consequences for the player to make decisions around. When approaching the idea of the player’s inventory, or work surfaces where they assemble their tools, we are going with a 1 to 1 scale ratio.

What this means for the player is that when you have a large sword or shield in your inventory, that item literally does take up a large portion of your inventory! In addition to the size, we also have weight for all items, adding another level of consequence for players, who must choose not only what they want to carry, but how much they can actually carry.

Alongside the reveal of a more realistic weight scheme, Nerd Kingdom also discussed the design scheme behind how realistic inventory management will be in TUG. Restrictions on what and how much you can carry will develop new decisions on how exactly to play. Playing a gatherer? Pack light and with only enough to survive so you can harvest as much materials as possible without heading back as often. The same applies with a hunter, who "will perhaps pack specialized weapons, or medical supplies for the hunt."

The update also delves into how crafting will work, revealing that individual pieces of an item will need to be forged or crafted separately, pushing a more realistic tone. As with the realistic approach TUG won't offer the ability to just simply place the ingredients into a window and have it appear from thin air, but instead require several procedures before finally being made. A spear head will need to be crafted separately to "the rest of the tool or weapon, and then assembled with other components at a final assembly station."

For the full run down of inventory management and the other previous updates which include a look at companions and narrative design check out the Kickstarter project, which is currently sitting at just over a quarter of its goal.

TUG is currently expected to be released in 2015 for PC, however an alpha version will be available starting July 2013 for certain backers.