I had thougth about maybe putting a box there that would let you drag and item in there, and it would tell you how much the item was worth, and what the item was made of, so you could get a general idea of what is needed to craft that same type of item.

That's a good Idea except for the dragging part, don't overcomplicate things. Like KenjiSenpai said, leave it at hovering. An even better approach would be to toggle a floating box with the item info when hovered. But then the empty area is still empty.

Do you mind if I ask why you need that area at all? Usually you put areas, boxes, whatever because you have a use for it. What you're doing is trying to find a use for an allready existing box. What's the point?
Some kind of optimal size for the window? I would say the best thing would be to just remove the upper part, since it will look empty and misplaced when neutral, and showing item information has better solutions.

How about when you select an item, the top space provides more detail. Such as a bigger picture, all it's stats, options (such as equip, drop, bind, whatever).

Do you mind if I ask why you need that area at all? Usually you put areas, boxes, whatever because you have a use for it. What you're doing is trying to find a use for an already existing box. What's the point?

Well, i wanted to see if I was missing something that others might not want. I had originally designed it for a specific height but later found out that i didnt need that much room. If you guys provided me with some insight as to what could go there I would make it work, if not I would just cut it off.

Ultimately, after looking at the size of the inventory and the size of the crafting combined ( which you need both open to work ) the screen on the 1024x768 resolution was FULL... so i need to rethink how i want it to work anyway. I want the size of the icons to be big enough to recognize them but i want to have 40+ for their inventory... a tough choice on how to make that all work. Thanks for the information though. I should have a rework posted shortly.

Going off of that, why not make the inventory system with a smaller width, moving the boxes up? This makes sure you have more room for the rest of your system.

Going off of that, why not make the inventory system with a smaller width, moving the boxes up? This makes sure you have more room for the rest of your system.

hm... that is so simple.. why didnt i just think of that, Ill see how that looks. Thanks for the suggestions!

Depending on what sort of game this is, I always thought it would be nice to have a quick way to get rid of "vendor trash". Like the pets in Torchlight where you can just drag items into their inventory and have them go off to sell it all in one go.

In this case, maybe have a way to flag various things as "junk" like older obsolete equipment or general animal parts or whatever. Then when you open your crafting window then those items are given priority to find a use for, or when selling stuff they are given priority to sell. Though if you are having multiple windows open at a time, it might make sense to just have another spot to put things lik give them to a pet or a minion and have buttons to send them off to either sell or melt the stuff down into crafting materials as needed.

Other than that, I'd recommend having a big spot where you can see the items stats and some sort buttons (or alternatly have the items stats appear in a text-box when you mouse over the top and only the sort buttons on the menu proper). Since you have multiple windows on screen at a time, try to make them as small as possible so there is empty space between the menus when they are all onscreen.

Okay, to save myself the headache of having to do the fine details without a solid layout i have simplified it all and will post it here for you guys to discuss. I appreciate the help in the mean time.



Craft Screen:
1) Category Bar
2) Crafted Item ( based off of the category )
3) Item Name ( modifier objects will let you make a custom name )
4) Materials ( place them to craft Item )
5) Recipe List
6) Craft Button

Inventory Screen:
6) Sort Icons ( so you can sort your items based off of those things )
7) Inventory Slots ( where the items go )
8) Search bar ( helps you find items by highlighting them with a glow )
9) trash bin ( drag and drop an item to destroy it )
10) Gold Bar

What are your thoughts about this layout?

When you are messing with the recipe list, where does it list components? I'm assuming that area is for the recipes you know of (as in the names).

When you are messing with the recipe list, where does it list components? I'm assuming that area is for the recipes you know of (as in the names).

Yeah, without going into too much detail, you learn recipes from actually crafting or from books. Once you learn a recipe you can save it. You can even create your own recipes, and from doing so you will see a list of them on the right.

What I mean is, where do you see the actual recipe, not just the name? I would need to know what ingredients to use to make what I want to make.