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what is the best inventory system in crpg?

  • Monocled and best of all text-based list inventory

  • Shitty grid icon-based inventory

  • Worse of all absolute dogshit tetris grid icon-based inventory


Results are only viewable after voting.

Jigby

Augur
Joined
May 9, 2009
Messages
332
I think text-only items in inventories are fine if you have some regex mimicking functionality that allows you to browse through that efficiently. Without that it's just a bad console interface meant for TVs. Unless it's done for legacy/stylistic reasons.

For an imaginary item-hoarding crafting RPG where you have 1000 items in your inventory I can see how text + regex would be super efficient.
 
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Storyfag

Perfidious Pole
Patron
Joined
Feb 17, 2011
Messages
15,894
Location
Stealth Orbital Nuke Control Centre
The Sperg is strong with rusty_shackleford itt.
Because I'm 100% right.

Not entirelly, but I will get into details tommorow.
Yes entirely.
If you prefer icons over actual information, you enjoy licking windows. There's no compromise to be made.
Same kind of people who are responsible for dialogue wheels and such.

The key issue with text is that it tends to form lists. These, in turn, require scrolling. This conceals information. Your full inventory should always be visible in a single screen. Icons/tetris have a better track record in this regard.
 

Trithne

Erudite
Joined
Dec 3, 2008
Messages
1,191
nuphshB.png


Minimal Tetris fuckery while still preserving size differences between items, clearly visibly different icons for each item type, everything on screen at once, quick and easy to manipulate.
 

NerevarineKing

Learned
Joined
Jan 6, 2021
Messages
315
I liked the idea of the inventory system in Ultima 7, but it became a nightmare to manage later on. So at this point, anything but that system is fine with me.
Managing your inventory in ultima 7 wasn't really complicated. Just divide stuff by kind, using different characters and bags to avoid having things mix up.
Yes but what's the point when any half-decent UI will have categories that automatically sort items without having to simulate rummaging around in your bag.
 

Blutwurstritter

Learned
Joined
Sep 18, 2021
Messages
875
Location
Germany
Liking items is not the same as hating a clear representation of information, that is nonsense. A normal human is good at recognizing shapes and can skim them faster than dense lines of text. That is a clear benefit of icons. A good inventory should combine the best of both worlds. The names of the items in your example don't seem to provide any information that an icon couldn't, and I refer only to the name, not the numerical values that actually provide information. Good icons would make it much easier to skim that list and could reduce the horizontal space that is taken up by each entry.
what information does this image convey:
Wasteland-3-Satoshis-Mysterious-Case-Guide.jpg



at some point you guys should just admit you like console popamole garbage instead of actual information relevant to an RPG
Refer to the content of my post when you quote me or don't quote me at all. I do not defend shit inventories like this, neither do I care for your fight against straw men.
You said icons have a clear benefit for conveying information, I grabbed a recent codex GOTY winner that used icons and asked what information it conveyed, and you got extremely butthurt.
Icons don't convey fucking anything. You've memorized specific icons and associate information with those icons. Individually, they convey NOTHING.
I said icons can be skimmed quicker than text. Is that is not a benefit? Another point can be made that there are many shapes and images that are shared and understood across language barriers, something that is not the case for the written word and learning a language is harder than recognizing some icons. The inventory of Wastelands 3 clearly sucks at conveying information, there is your answer. It proofs that there are shitty icon based inventories which is a trivial statement that can be made for pretty much anything, since its easy to find a shit example, there is certainly no shortage of those. It doesn't take a Sherlock to figure that out and I thought that would be clear to everyone, my apologies. It would have been relevant to my post if I had claimed that all icon based inventories are good, which is something that I certainly have not said. A simple minded person could post a list based inventory in an obscure language followed by the question what information does it convey. That would be similar nonsense. I do not comprehend your "all or nothing" position with regard to icons, its seem like an extremist position with little substance.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
I said icons can be skimmed quicker than text.
the icons convey nothing, you have memorized the icons and associate them with information in your head
they could have just as easily used numbers or colors for what you use them for, do you not understand this simple concept?

that was the point of this entire exercise btw, wasteland 3's icon-based inventory is absolutely no different than the others -- you just haven't played wasteland 3 and therefore don't know what the icons represent. They are useless for conveying information when you need it.
 
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Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
the icons convey nothing, you have memorized the icons and associate them with information in your head

unlike text, which is magically beaming the information into your head without you having to memorize a thing
wow yes you are very smart, this is clearly the same thing because you can convey what damage a weapon does simply with an icon. You're very, very smart!
 

Peachcurl

Cipher
Joined
Jan 3, 2020
Messages
8,794
Location
(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
the icons convey nothing, you have memorized the icons and associate them with information in your head

unlike text, which is magically beaming the information into your head without you having to memorize a thing
wow yes you are very smart, this is clearly the same thing because you can convey what damage a weapon does simply with an icon. You're very, very smart!

they are not the same, yet both statements are wrong.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
the icons convey nothing, you have memorized the icons and associate them with information in your head

unlike text, which is magically beaming the information into your head without you having to memorize a thing
wow yes you are very smart, this is clearly the same thing because you can convey what damage a weapon does simply with an icon. You're very, very smart!

they are not the same, yet both statements are wrong.
With a text you can convey information you can't with an image. Shocking, I know. I'd imagine most of the people picking icons are zoomers who communicate almost exclusively in emojis while licking windows.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
If you don't want eye cancer, maybe pretty, colorful graphical representations of your inventory items would be better.

Checkmate.
If you enjoy having your information hidden from you because you hate RPGs and just want to look at pretty pixels, colorful graphical representations of your inventory items are better.
 

agris

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Apr 16, 2004
Messages
6,760
Are there any inventory systems that use something like a list or IEs simple (not volume representative) icons that offer both a numeric max weight and max volume? As you add items to the list/grid, both weight and volume meters fill up. Whichever fills up first limits the next item that could be added.
 

jackofshadows

Magister
Joined
Oct 21, 2019
Messages
4,488
Not exactly that but this reminded me Konung had a simple quantity limit (30-40 per character or so) in addition to usual max weight system. It was very reasonable.
 

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