Avoid: Crappy Inventory management

[DraygonZero]

Perfect example, Skyrim's inventory/power management menus. I dont want to have to resort to mods to fix a broken/tedious menu system. Dammit Bethesda! *shakes fist*

[gotthammer]

Yeah.
Wouldn't some of the more 'problematic' inventory systems be caused by 'consolization'? (or just bad design, I guess?)
Of the more recent CRPGs that have this 'problem', that immediately come to mind, are the recent Fallout games (3 and NV), Skyrim, Kingdoms of Amalur (I have this on PC, but I played the PS3 demo, and the inventory, and combat, handled better w/ a controller), and The Witcher 2 (I kinda preferred TW1's inventory...at least you see 'everything').

[Drool]

Honestly, Skyrim's inventory was reasonably laid out, with items being stored by category, spells by school, etc. Where it broke down was when you had a lot of a given class of item (Keys, Potions, and Misc probably being the biggest offenders). And that could have been at least partially ameliorated by having a page down function.

I mean, the original Fallout's was pretty horrible once you got past a dozen or so items too.

[Shady314]

Honestly, Skyrim's inventory was reasonably laid out, with items being stored by category, spells by school, etc. Where it broke down was when you had a lot of a given class of item (Keys, Potions, and Misc probably being the biggest offenders). And that could have been at least partially ameliorated by having a page down function.

I mean, the original Fallout's was pretty horrible once you got past a dozen or so items too.

This is true.
Also DragonZero you may want to resurrect this thread. See what you think about the inventory many people actually want to see rather than focus on what we don't. We all already agree we don't want crappy inventory but what would be good?

[suz]

I mean, the original Fallout's was pretty horrible once you got past a dozen or so items too.

Original fallout was 1.5 decades ago, you'd think designers would learn something by now.


This is not an okay UI for pc, it's a shitty console port with a braindead design

[Drool]

Original fallout was 1.5 decades ago, you'd think designers would learn something by now.

He specifically targeted recent offerings. I was simply pointing out that there have always been crummy inventory designs.

And frankly, the implications of your image aren't any better. Personally, I prefer the list that needs to be scrolled to only have names. I don't need fifty pictures to tell me what my inventory is; I can read just fine. If I'm looking for a carrot, I'm going to look for the word "carrot", not a 10x10 picture of one.

[Shady314]

That's why a hardpoint system (ala JA2) is my favorite. Limited realistic inventory. Icons + Placement for quick identification (obviously that's a grenade if it's in the grenade slot and that icon is for a flashbang) Mouse over for text if you need more info or forgot.

The problem with inventory systems seems to be trying to figure out how to best organize the MOUNTAIN of items players are hauling around. I don't think there is a good way. I think the best solution is to eliminate the mountain.

[ravenshrike]

I mean, the original Fallout's was pretty horrible once you got past a dozen or so items too.

Except with Sfall installed it's a million times better than the gamebryo engine menu system, even with the mods for that. Plenty of color, clear knowledge of when you select something, and you can easily scroll with the middle mouse.

[deus]

Original fallout was 1.5 decades ago, you'd think designers would learn something by now.

He specifically targeted recent offerings. I was simply pointing out that there have always been crummy inventory designs.

And frankly, the implications of your image aren't any better. Personally, I prefer the list that needs to be scrolled to only have names. I don't need fifty pictures to tell me what my inventory is; I can read just fine. If I'm looking for a carrot, I'm going to look for the word "carrot", not a 10x10 picture of one.

You are going to recognize a picture of quicker then through X words sorted alphabetically.

Fallout's inventory was cumbersome yes, but what made it work was that at least there was some proper constraint on what you could carry.

In most list based inventory as the kind bioware started pushing since kotor, not to mention Betshedas Oblivion. There sorting barely helped since each sort contained more items then what a fallout 1 char carried with him in an entire play through.

At the very least if you are going to include an unimaginative console inventory attleast give the the players a quick search function, where you can quickly input the first to or three letters and it filters out the excess until you find what you look for.

Meh, grid based inventory i say.

[J1811]

Wouldn't some of the more 'problematic' inventory systems be caused by 'consolization'?

Definitely. Morrowind (the prequel to Skyrim/Oblivion) had a vastly better inventory because it was designed for PC users.

[Fuzi0n]

Perfect example, Skyrim's inventory/power management menus. I dont want to have to resort to mods to fix a broken/tedious menu system. Dammit Bethesda! *shakes fist*

Well, Bethesda makes shitty games with a crappy UI tailored for 6 year olds and morons... that is nothing new.

Well anyway, the UI has already been discussed here pretty thoroughly.

[Vryheid]

Christ, the inventory system in Skyrim was fine. Not the best, but it was certainly better than old school RPGs which had no inventory management organization at all. The real pain in the ass in that game was trying to sort through 300 items you have stored in a cabinet or something, trying to find the one item you actually need. Apparently letting you alphabetically order your items was far too difficult. The spacing, though, is a total non-argument. Unless you're half blind that screen font is perfectly legible and it's actually kind of cool being able to examine 3D models of objects like that.

Personally my favorite inventory system is a simple slot based system similar to Deus Ex. It should be easy to manipulate, only take up one screen and have larger items take up multiple slots. This would also remove the need for a convoluted weight based inventory limit.

[Drool]

You are going to recognize a picture of quicker then through X words sorted alphabetically.

You might. I won't.

[suz]

You might. I won't.

I actually agree with textual representation and alphabet sorting. However here's some points that would make a better UI:

Inventory screen should take up most screen estate, that's why it's inventory screen and not an inventory peep hole. Skyrim had a HUGE chunk of the screen dedicated to item model, which is used like 10? times throughout the game. It would make way more sense to have 'examine' context menu for that.

Inventory should be able to display a relatively large amount of items and do it QUICKLY, oblivion had ~2 second lockups if you had relatively large selection of items, chests could take up to 10 seconds to open.

Inventory should allow you to find the item you're looking for(or discover you don't have it) QUICKLY, by any means necessary: icons, color coding, categories, search field.

UI shouldn't bug out and go batshit crazy when you use mouse on it or even hover near - using a mouse in skyrim is basically asking for misclicks, bad selections. When selecting with the mouse and 'using' it by LMB it's possible to use another item that's on a nearby line and isn't selected, wtf!

Icons or color-coding would help figuring out what is what a lot.

Compare:
this as a bad console port
mediocre-bad design
a fairly good design (still doesn't take up full screen, no color coding except icons)

[Equidistant]

A big yes to color coding and icons - though there needs to be a decent assortment of icons for that to work; Dragon Age 2 was extremely bleh. Also keep color-blind folks in mind when you color code. No blue=rare purple=epic nonsense.

[DracoRanger]

I think the best way to avoid the issues that plagued Skyrim would be to use a almost pyramidal layout with the main categories at the top, which should include favorites/most used, and it breaks down by category. So, you go into Weapons-> Ranged-> Rifles-> M16. After selecting a weapon, it should be added to a temporary save file, so you can quickly retrieve it. The selection should bring up at least a rough sketch of the weapon and be toggle able between stats, design, and (possibly) history/description. It should also have a weight per item, weight total, value, and "best" sorting option, in addition to the standard alphabetical. Also back should return it at most to the top of the pyramid, rather than exiting out completely.

[rakenan]

Honestly, Skyrim's inventory was reasonably laid out, with items being stored by category, spells by school, etc. Where it broke down was when you had a lot of a given class of item (Keys, Potions, and Misc probably being the biggest offenders). And that could have been at least partially ameliorated by having a page down function.

My problem with Skyrim's inventory system was that the menus would tend to close on me when I was trying to select an option. They were far too sensitive to mouse clicks just barely outside of a too-small active zone. I would routinely click the 'misc' tab to sell off some gems or something and get kicked out of the merchant menu and have to ask the guy to trade again, and listen to him tell me the same asinine "Trinkets, odds and ends, that sort of thing," line again, four or five times in the course of what should have been a single trading session.

This felt, to me at least, like a very poorly done port of a console game, instead of a thought-out PC interface. The real problem, though, was not that it was a port of a console game, but that the inventory portion was poorly ported, so it was too easy to close the inventory menu. It was otherwise at least tolerable, although I won't perjure myself by calling it good.

[Fuzi0n]

All the game needs is a slot based system (maybe with some tabs), then we won't have any inventory problems.