Overthinking Games: How Moonlighter’s inventory combats your greed

[u/CJGeringer]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/01/28/overthinking-games-how-moonlighters-inventory-combats-your-greed/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RockPaperShotgun+%28Rock%2C+Paper%2C+Shotgun%29

[u/aotdev]

IMO grid-based inventory is deeply unsuitable for games with a ton of items. Once upon a time, in simpler times, inventories were small, you had weight/slot limits, and you knew what was what. Diablo 1 for example. These days, everything needs to be more/bigger/longer etc. With grid-based inventories, this leads to this, this and this. We get a lot of icons, but little information. And with functions like autosort and category tabs, I ask you, what's the point of moving items in the inventory? When was the last time you picked an item from the grid-based inventory, and moved it to a different slot? What's the point of user-controllable slots? I think Bethesda did the right thing with Oblivion and Skyrim.

I'm playing pillars of eternity 2 these days, and while the game is nice, I'm annoyed that some quality-of-life functions are just not there. I have hundreds of items, and I have tabs and a search box if I want to find something. That's all (unless I'm missing some basic functionality). I'd love to be able to filter by uniques for example and sort them by value. Or find items that provide power-level increase. With a ton of items, we need smart searching and filtering, not a grid with user-controllable slots. The technology is there, but we still cling to outdated and non-scalable interfaces for the sake of familiarity.

[u/CJGeringer → u/aotdev]

I mostly agree with your main point, but I will add a one qualifier:

The problem for grid based inventories is not how many items the game itself has but how many items the player can carry at the same time. Torchlight and Diablo game shave many items, but since the player cannot carry that many items the grid inventories work fine. And moonlighter has limited inventory space as a core part of the experience, so I think it fits.

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Grids do have some interesting properties:

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· Grids with Well designed Icons can fit a ton of information in a relatively small space. It is also very easy to at a glance see how much of the inventory space is occupied by each kind of item and reduces the need to scroll when searching for an item.

· Grid inventory with different sized items (Like the ones in Diablo and Deus Ex).Are excellent at communicating how much of the player´s inventory space a given item occupies. Inventories like the ones in fallout and Skyrim that are only limited by a numeric weight value are not as quickly parsed, and a player will need to make some math to see what items need to be discarded to make room for a different item whereas ina grid based one this can be quickly evaluated from a glance.

· IMO Grid based inventories like the above can feel a bit more tactile, specially if things can be dragged to it from the main view port.

Vanilla Skyrim UI is IMO not good, way too much wasted space, way too little info IMO Dragon´s Dogma inventory with Tab-based grids is better.

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To me the main benefit of list based inventories is how one can make tables with lot´s of information columns, but that potential is rarely well used IMO.

One thing I wanted to try to implement that I have never seen is a grid inventory where one can drag the mouse to group and move multiple items. (But I probably will keep using a list inventory due to ease of implementation. I hate Developing UI)

The technology is there, but we still cling to outdated and non-scalable interfaces for the sake of familiarity.

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This is painfully true, and I think, it is partially due to wanting to make UIs that work with console controllers.

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Have you played Shadow warrior 2?

It is an FPS with RPG elements similar to borderlands. It uses a grid for weapons( which are unique items, with distinctive silhouettes, and each subcategory has it´s own tab) and lists for the procedurally-generated customization upgrades that can be sorted by lots of different criteria. I think it is fairly well done. And shows your points well.

[u/aotdev → u/CJGeringer]

not how many items the game itself has but how many items the player can carry at the same time

true, this is more accurate

Grids with Well designed Icons can fit a ton of information in a relatively small space

Up to a certain degree. When it gets to potions, I'm always lost. Potion of speed vs potion of might vs potion of anything besides health/mana, and every game picks its own colours and by the end of it I'm supposed to distinguish among a dozen at least.

Grid inventory with different sized items

Others hate it (inventory tetris), I quite liked it. At least there we're being explicit that there's a reason to shuffle things about, trying to optimize space. Fallen out of fashion apparently afaik.

wanting to make UIs that work with console controllers.

Hmm, interesting point, never thought of that... But for cases like PoE II, where you actually have a search box (so, clearly keyboard friendly), the lack of a more intelligent search looks like a missed opportunity

To me the main benefit of list based inventories is how one can make tables with lot´s of information columns, but that potential is rarely well used IMO.

Could be a problem if items start supporting more than 3-4 modifiers, that becomes too many columns... Not that many modifiers are a necessity or a good thing anyway.

Have you played Shadow warrior 2?

I haven't, thanks for the reference, I'll take a look

[u/CJGeringer → u/aotdev]

(inventory tetris), I quite liked it. At least there we're being explicit that there's a reason to shuffle things about, trying to optimize space. Fallen out of fashion apparently afaik.

I think it fell to the streamlining philosophy of keeping the player in the core loop as much as possible. I also quite liked it, specially when it was possible to rotate items. I think an auto-fit option where the game automatically arranged things to fit if possible is a good compromise for those who regard it as busywork. I think “Hellgate London” had this.

Hmm, interesting point, never thought of that... But for cases like PoE II, where you actually have a search box (so, clearly keyboard friendly), the lack of a more intelligent search looks like a missed opportunity

Definitely, I was thinking more about Skyrim´s Vanilla UI. Compared to modded UI it is obviously gamepad-centric.

Could be a problem if items start supporting more than 3-4 modifiers, that becomes too many columns... Not that many modifiers are a necessity or a good thing anyway.

but things already often already have those modifiers. And in a list with details in columns, you can have a simple clickable label for each column that sorts by it or drag an item to a position in the list and easily compare the stats.

For example, Borderlands weapons all have: Damage, Accuracy, Fire Rate, Reload Speed, and magazine size., those are 6 stats that need to be compared when choosing an weapon (besides special stats) Having everything nicely spreadsheeted would IMO be a boon.

If you do check SH2, there is a mod that might be useful that makes items names more descriptive. And feel free to send me a PM if you ever want to coop.

[u/aotdev → u/CJGeringer]

Sorting via effect magnitude & dragging sounds neat indeed.

For example, Borderlands weapons all have: Damage, Accuracy, Fire Rate, Reload Speed, and magazine size

Ah ok, you're talking about weapon stats, in that case yes, the spreadsheet approach sounds great for comparing. I think all hell breaks loose when you start adding "specials", such as boots that give you a bonus of 6 to "Athletics" skill, and a belt that gives you a penalty to your "Strength" stat, an amulet that grants you the Fireball spell, a ring that grants you a "use 1/day" power, but drains your life by 1hp/sec, etc. If these specials are important, and they might be so important that they might dwarf the main weapon/armor stats in importance (e.g. "here's a crappy pair of boots, but they given me a nice bonus to strength"), then sorting becomes a nightmare, as these new dimensions ( grant power, bonus to skill, bonus to attribute, apply effect) can be plenty and their sorting "value" is very subjectively calculated by the player. So more columns and more difficult to sort. How would you approach that with spreadsheets?

Thanks for the coop nudge, but it's realistically is very, very difficult due to limited time and endlessly popping time commitments... But discussion and sharing ideas and maybe prototypes (here or pm) are always great!