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GameDesign: Inventory

Volourn

Pretty Princess
Pretty Princess Glory to Ukraine
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:o

Anyways, back to the topic.

I believe npcs should drop whatever they are using - be it wepaons, armour, or other equipment. It makes sense, it is logical, it is easy tos cript, and it does not take much resources.

And, my mod will rock!

And, VD's game will rock too espicially if it has people drop their armour!
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
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Volourn said:
And, VD's game will rock too espicially if it has people drop their armour!
It has. What you see is what you get (when you kill someone who has what you like :lol:).

Commonly dropped stuff aint worth a lot (that's how all those people were able to afford that in the first place). You can sell it for some pocket change to restock on your supplies or get some tools IF you didn't find a better source of income yet. High quality stuff is a different matter, but such items are rare, as they should be.
 

Volourn

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"It has. What you see is what you get (when you kill someone who has what you like )."

Good. I win. Sarvis loses again showing why he had the dumbass title. I hereby give evidence in the form of VD that I'm not the only one who prefers armour is dropped by those who wear it.


"High quality stuff is a different matter, but such items are rare, as they should be."

Agreed.
 

Sarvis

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Volourn said:
"It has. What you see is what you get (when you kill someone who has what you like )."

Good. I win. Sarvis loses again showing why he had the dumbass title. I hereby give evidence in the form of VD that I'm not the only one who prefers armour is dropped by those who wear it.

This just shows how much of an incoherant retard you are. There has never been a dumbass title, and I certainly never had such a nonexistant title.

So far you've proven that TWO people are interested in that feature, certainly no majority.


Vault Dweller:

Another problem I hope you take pains to avoid: Make sure corpses don't drop right on top of each other, otherwise you end up HAVING to loot all kinds of enemies just to see what everyone had. Say the guy with the magic longsword went down first, then his 20 henchmen died in the exact same spot (which happens far too often in the NWN engine) it gets really annoying trying to get down to that magic longsword...

Of course, Volourn will probably start ranting about how realistic that is and that it's how things should be. Tedium is ALWAYS a great feature for games!
 

Vault Dweller

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You don't loot manually. You get a screen after a battle is over that shows you all the available junk you've fought so hard for. You pick what you like and leave the rest. No need to do the pixel hunting thing or pick arrows one at a time.
 

Sarvis

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Vault Dweller said:
You don't loot manually. You get a screen after a battle is over that shows you all the available junk you've fought so hard for. You pick what you like and leave the rest. No need to do the pixel hunting thing or pick arrows one at a time.

Ah, like in the old Gold Box games? Probably the absolute best way to do it... heh.
 

Volourn

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"Of course, Volourn will probably start ranting about how realistic that is and that it's how things should be. Tedium is ALWAYS a great feature for games!"

Don't troll. You suck. I don't care for realism. I just care for logistics. If a stupid barbarian is protected from my blows because of hide armour he wears; I want the chance to loot it. Simple as that. Otehrwise, you might as well have everyone fighting naked.

As for the title, dumbass, DUMBFUCK, dumbmoron; it';s all the same - you've been branded for a reason.

R00fles!

As for there "only being two". That's more torlling. VD is a genius. If he deems it correct to agree with me; it's damn sure there ar eothers. I sure don't see an army of posters ready to back you yup.

Hahahahahahahahaha....
 

Sarvis

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Volourn said:
"Of course, Volourn will probably start ranting about how realistic that is and that it's how things should be. Tedium is ALWAYS a great feature for games!"

Don't troll. You suck. I don't care for realism. I just care for logistics. If a stupid barbarian is protected from my blows because of hide armour he wears; I want the chance to loot it. Simple as that. Otehrwise, you might as well have everyone fighting naked.

You still want the chance to loot it if you're wearing platemail+1?

As for the title, dumbass, DUMBFUCK, dumbmoron; it';s all the same - you've been branded for a reason.

Yeah, the reason just isn't what you like to believe. Anyways, Dumbfuck is still a higher ranking than Bioware AI. ;)

As for there "only being two". That's more torlling. VD is a genius. If he deems it correct to agree with me; it's damn sure there ar eothers. I sure don't see an army of posters ready to back you yup.

They must be hiding behind the army of posters backing you up.

Oh, and VD a genius? ROFL!

He's the only person around here wrong more often than you... ;)
 

Fez

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I liked being able to loot the junk off of people in Arcanum, even when I was high level. I like having the choice to do it or not.
 

Volourn

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"You still want the chance to loot it if you're wearing platemail+1?"

Yes? Would I? It depends how wealthy my character is. In BG1 & 2, I would loot everythingg at the start including silly studded leather just to sell. Eventually, I got rich I didn't need to be a packrack. It's all about CHOICE.


"Anyways, Dumbfuck is still a higher ranking than Bioware AI."

LOL; but no.


"Oh, and VD a genius? ROFL!

He's the only person around here wrong more often than you... "

R00fles!
 

Fintilgin

Educated
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Feb 18, 2005
Messages
83
I really didn't like the KOTOR inventory system. Like Deus Ex 2 it was really designed for the the console and didn't really let you use the mouse to its full extent. Drag and drop is an extremely powerful and intuitive way of interacting with the computer, and manipulating my inventory without it seemed clumsy and awkward.

I didn't really like the Fallout system in large part because the scrolling list didn't allow me to see my whole inventory at once or get to the items I wanted as quickly as I might have wanted. I'm a packrat at heart, and I didn't like paging down through the list every time I needed a key card or specific item. Any individual item isn't a big deal, but over the course of the game it adds up to a LOT of clicking and scrolling.

IMHO the best systems were IWD/BG and Arcanum. A paper doll and a clear representation of my entire inventory at once. I really liked the space/volume/weight restrictions of Arcanum, but I'm not sure they're really worth the tradeoff from the extremely simple, fast, and intuitive BG style iconic inventory.
 

DarkUnderlord

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Vault Dweller said:
Diablo - space restriction
Was all right for a game like Diablo where you only ever needed "a weapon" and "a shield". You didn't carry much back. Even then it was annoying if you had something drop a lot of phat lewt. It takes a few trips back and forth to sell it all. Especially annoying when you have umpteen potions of whatever taking up one spot each. I don't enjoy sorting my potions one by one and re-organising them just so I can fit that shield in.

Vault Dweller said:
Arcanum - space+weight restriction
My personal worst implementation of a space + weight restriction I've encountered. The weight was okay because you'd slow down depending on how heavy you were / how much you were carrying. However, notice how each single cocoa leaf took up one whole slot? You could literally fill your backpack with bloody leaves, all of which weigh as light as a feather but took up too much fucking room for what they were worth.

However, Arcanum had "junk piles" which if you dropped enough on one spot, created a container item which you could open and pick and choose from, rather than playing "hunt the item" as you do in ToEE.

Vault Dweller said:
Fallout - weight restriction
Enjoyable. A single, easily navigated list of objects. Items stacked too so those 81 stimpaks were all in one easily accessable spot, every time you needed them there they were. No hunting around for them in your pack or re-organising them just to fit in that extra combat shotgun. The weight was also fairly well thought out, you couldn't carry too much but not too little. Downside is scrolling the list as has been said.

Vault Dweller said:
MW - weight restriction (different model)
Bonus points for everything being sorted however you still had the inane option of scrolling through pages of potions just to find the one you wanted because they all looked the same.

Vault Dweller said:
BG/IWD - weight+max items restiction
KOTOR - no restrictions
No iea, never played them.

Vault Dweller said:
Enemies should drop what you expect them to drop, i.e. if your opponent has an armor, a sword, and a shield, than that (plus some minor stuff) is what you should be able to pick up after he's dead or knocked out. If it's a rat it shouldn't drop anything other than a rat's tail, not that I have rats in this game.
Make sure they don't drop everything all the time. I mean hell, if I kill you while you're wearing a suit of armour, I'd do a fair bit of damage to the armour. If you have it, make sure item durabililty is an issue. If not, make some items become "destroyed" during the fighting so that not every Standard Raider Model #2 drops a small sword and leather armour.

  1. Items need to stack. If I have 81 Stimpaks, I have one Stimpak image and a little number "81" in the bottom right hand corner.
  2. I personally like having a little "storage area" for my Neat Stuff I can Use Laterâ„¢. So not being able to carry everything on me would be a good idea, as it lets me leave stuff behind at my base in various different containers (for each type of item).
  3. Bags in Fallout 1 were cool. Bags meant I could put holodisks in one of the little pouches to keep them all in one place. Quest items went in another. Keys in another. Now if I could just label those bags...
  4. Did I say Arcanum had junk piles?
  5. In Arcanum (and Bloodlines) keys went on a keyring. No need to worry about individual keys in your inventory.
  6. Fallout let me re-organise the list of items into whatever I liked and it stayed that way, making stuff easy to find. Stimpaks up the top, ammo next, weapons and them random junk and so on.
Ultimately it depends on what stuff you have, how much of that stuff you have and how much of that stuff I can (or should reasonably expect to) carry. Nothing worse than being a techie in Arcanum and finding it's not worth hauling all the cocoa leaves around when I could've just taken the armour, sold it and bought way more tech stuff with the money.

Money should weight something too so I can't carry hundreds of thousands of dollars. It'd make a bank or safety deposit box worthwhile...
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
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Thanks for the great post, DU. Agree with everything you said.

DarkUnderlord said:
Make sure they don't drop everything all the time. I mean hell, if I kill you while you're wearing a suit of armour, I'd do a fair bit of damage to the armour. If you have it, make sure item durabililty is an issue. If not, make some items become "destroyed" during the fighting so that not every Standard Raider Model #2 drops a small sword and leather armour.
Sounds good, will do.

Items need to stack. If I have 81 Stimpaks, I have one Stimpak image and a little number "81" in the bottom right hand corner.
I used Fallout as a model of "things done right"(tm), so everything including armor is stackable with a nice little number "in the bottom right hand corner"

I personally like having a little "storage area" for my Neat Stuff I can Use Laterâ„¢. So not being able to carry everything on me would be a good idea, as it lets me leave stuff behind at my base in various different containers (for each type of item).
Containers for each type of items? Hmm, sounds good.

Bags in Fallout 1 were cool. Bags meant I could put holodisks in one of the little pouches to keep them all in one place. Quest items went in another. Keys in another. Now if I could just label those bags...
I don't have bags yet, but I'll look into that. Labeling sounds like a great idea too.

Did I say Arcanum had junk piles?
We've handled that differently (the Spiderweb model). You click on a button (the eye icon), a window comes up giving you access to all available items around you. Stuff in containers isn't included.

In Arcanum (and Bloodlines) keys went on a keyring. No need to worry about individual keys in your inventory.
Keyrings are in.

Ultimately it depends on what stuff you have, how much of that stuff you have and how much of that stuff I can (or should reasonably expect to) carry.
Agree

Money should weight something too so I can't carry hundreds of thousands of dollars. It'd make a bank or safety deposit box worthwhile...
Money are currently weightless, but there are "banks" (the Merchant Guild will hold on to your money or wisely invest them, see your local branch for details today!). Since you are NEVER a demi-god, you could be defeated and thus lose all the money you have, so dealing with banks is a good idea.
 

DarkUnderlord

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Vault Dweller said:
I personally like having a little "storage area" for my Neat Stuff I can Use Laterâ„¢. So not being able to carry everything on me would be a good idea, as it lets me leave stuff behind at my base in various different containers (for each type of item).
Containers for each type of items? Hmm, sounds good.
Actually they're just normal containers. Like in Morrowind I'd find an area with a bunch of creates. In one crate I'd put potions, in another I'd put scrolls, in another would go books. Just as a way of sorting them rather than containers being specifically for certain items.

Sounds like you've got the inventory system sorted. :)
 

Dark Elf

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Or, like in Morrowind, where you could decide on what your inventory should show at the moment. Quite handy when you have an overflooded inventory and need to find that particular potion...
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
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DarkUnderlord said:
Vault Dweller said:
I personally like having a little "storage area" for my Neat Stuff I can Use Laterâ„¢. So not being able to carry everything on me would be a good idea, as it lets me leave stuff behind at my base in various different containers (for each type of item).
Containers for each type of items? Hmm, sounds good.
Actually they're just normal containers. Like in Morrowind I'd find an area with a bunch of creates. In one crate I'd put potions, in another I'd put scrolls, in another would go books.
Yes, I realized that, but you just gave me an idea to have different looking containers at places you may use for "headquarters". A big-ass chest for armors, weapon racks, alchemy table for potions, etc.
 

thesheeep

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Fallout or MW for me...
No item restrictions, as it doesn't make any sense.
Weight restrictions as it makes sense.

That for RPGs, at least.

For H&S or Action-RPGs, things can be different. Item, weight and place restrictions like in.. well most or all H&Ss are annoying, to say the least.
 

Major_Blackhart

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Now, here's the good and bad thing about Fallout. I liked their inventory, but it could be a pain in the ass sometimes to go through it all. I suggest being able to display several rows at once, and being able to filter out items with inventory buttons (weapons only, armor only, etc): Something akin to Wizardry 8 but much more organized and with more room so you can see more at once instead of having to constantly scroll. Weight based is fine for me.
 

cardtrick

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Argh. You guys get that this is another ancient thread recently necromanced, dealing with an AoD game design issue that has long since been decided and implemented?
 

cardtrick

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Glad I could help. ::bows::
 

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