Ugh, sorry about that. I was thinking about something else.

Anyway, I think I remember the menu system from Zelda: Ocarina of Time was pretty easy to use, though that game did have a fairly limited number of items in it.

How about you have a graphical inventory screen with say a 10 by 5 (or smaller) grid of graphical icons. In addition, you could add bags or boxes which each take up one spot on the grid but can hold another 10 by 5 grid of items inside them. Players could then rename boxes and use them to store things as they see fit. That way even if you had a whole row of ten boxes for storing stuff (like scrolls, cloths, trade fodder, potions etc).

I suppose it would be similar to how files and folders are set up in Windows. Have smallish screens where everything is easy to see and access and let them add bags and stuff to sort things as they see fit.

i like Deus Ex inventory screen
I dislike Deus Ex 2 inventory screen

I like morrowing inventory screen
I dislike oblivion inventory screen.

What do these situations have in common?
there sequals were made for a console.

So, you should design your inventory screen to use a mouse and keyboard. You should then have no problems.

Restricting what resources the player has availiable during the adventure seems worthwhile.

A "bag of banking" that teleports your gear to the bank allows for easy looting of items, but limited "gear on hand".

"Bags of holding" just removes the "what do I carry with me" problem entirely.

Note that "expendable arrows" (or other "bulky" items you need lots of) often ends up acting alot like the looting inventory management annoyance (having to return back to town quite often during an adventure).

You could plot-point around this with "quivers of unending arrows" being somewhat common.

Some interesting ideas flying there ...
I think the inventory itself isnt much of a problem ( i dont mind icons , and even small unsorted inventory ) . But i think it must be kept small ( realism ).
And the real problem is that in rpg's there is too many loot ... yeah like if every goblin had to carry like 4/5 items !

I always prefered the text based Final Fantasy ones. You could sort all your items by type, or other things, and then quickly find everything you wanted in a big list.

I have played a lot of games with paper dolls and a bunch of inventory spaces to drop icons in. I hated always having to click thought the pages and hunt a tiny icon, or find a place to put a bigger item by re-arranging other items in the inventory pages.

A little popup list I could sort by type of name was always so much quicker and more convienient.

A combo of the two could be nice maybe.

Quote:

Original post by Ey-Lord Some interesting ideas flying there ... I think the inventory itself isnt much of a problem ( i dont mind icons , and even small unsorted inventory ) . But i think it must be kept small ( realism ). And the real problem is that in rpg's there is too many loot ... yeah like if every goblin had to carry like 4/5 items !

I'd expect every goblin to carry a full set of armor/clothes, weapons, some food and maybe a small amount of coin. Possibly a good luck charm, a tool or two...

If anything, existing RPGs have NPCs with not enough gear.

On the other hand, the filter "only show the stuff that isn't junk" might be useful. =p

Based on what you are saying inventory should be organized by category.

Weapons
Potions
Trade Goods
Valuables

I always find myself organizing my gear so this idea does have merit.


This leads me to think that all inventory screans should allow the player to sort by category, item name, value, weight, type etc. just a simple grid would work well for this with a few filters.

Some thoughts:

- Less Is More(tm): The more 'features' and compensations for logic and basic physics that you have in your inventory system, the more your players will be obfuscated by the inventory system. You should consider reading up on GUI development guidelines as you develop your system. I highly recommend starting here, and moving up.

- Ultima Online's inventory system (paperdoll + backpack) was a tried-and-true inventory system, was logical, and simply made sense. Its ultimate downfall was lack of realistic weight limits (at least in some incarnations). Regardless, I'd recommend it over anything, if only to give players the quasi-tactile sense of touching the things they carry.

- In a past life I was an admin on a semi-popular smalltime (e.g. 20-75 players regularly online) UO server, and one of the problems we had (which was catalyst to server-side lag) was overpopulation of items. Recycling should be paramount. You should focus on this goal for the long term; one person owning 1000 items should not be a big deal, but 10,000 player accounts, each with 2-5 semi-active characters, and each with 5k items (e.g. 250,000 world objects) will play hell on your server memory. If limits are first implemented based on character strength, then later limited by container weight and size limits (e.g. forget carrying more than 1-3 swords, one suit of armor, and one shield, and whatever literally fits into one backpack), people will learn to cope with the limitations (or find ways around it, but anyways...), and keep only what they need (as opposed to the inevitable packrat-nature of "I might need it someday, so why not keep it?" attitude that many players exhibit).

- One user-friendly idea I had come up with some time ago was to assign a backpack filter based on object type. Having always played a mage/wizard character in RPGs, I often had to collect obscure and strange items, and organize them for convenience. Wouldn't it have been great to assign "Bag #1" to automagically accept "all magic components dropped into the backpack", "Bag #2" to accept "all scrolls dropped into the backpack", "Bag #3" to accept "all Bones of the Evil Dead", etc etc.

Look at the way iTunes manages your MP3 files. That's dope.

Personaly I think there needs to be more limitations as to what you CAN carry, and then a much wider variety of items period. Everything that the opponent is carrying at the time, he should have on him. If he is killed of course, many of these items can be damaged and considered junk (discarded perhaps). The limits of weight should be enforced, with alternatives including carrying a cart and cooporation to get items to storage facilities. This increases coop, slows down looting, keeps items at a minimum, and makes the grind more strategic. Most people should not be able to fight while wearing a full plate mail and carrying another. Thus either carry a cart, or leave your original armor on the ground. Now if you make things difficult to identify as in nethack, your in for some new grounds.