Thoughts on inventories

Hello all,

I recently was thinking about inventories. To be honest I think they are one of the most unrealistic things in any game. Why? because nobody runs around with a board of slots or lists of items. You would throw your items in a pocket and that is all.

Please calm down your emotions. The pocket solution is real life, a game is pure fake. So it is indeed a nice gimmick to have a system that manages items that you -in real life- would find in a pocket after you washed your trousers.

Such an inventory is an incredible thing. It does not just ensure you do not loose your items while jumping from towers, swim through oceans, kill hordes of zombies or get hit by a truck. It presents you what you have so you see how rich you are right now. It can sort the items so you can see how many missiles you can shoot if you had a missile launcher. Yes, it even can even show you that you need one. It might be the luxury version that summarized attributes of the items such as value or weight so you do not need to put a calculator, pen and paper into the inventory. Wouldn’t an inventory be perfect for school?.

So what is this thread about?

A) What do you think is an inventory?
B) How should it look like?
C) What attributes should it have?
D) What operations should be possible on an inventory?

Are there different types of inventories? What do they have in common? How do they differ?

So here is my first sample:

Pocket inventory:

A) It can contain an unsorted number of items.
B) It looks like a pocket empty, in-use, full
C) size, occupation, hole size
D)

  • put an item into the pocket, as long as it fits through the hole, as long as there is space
  • to grab things from the pocket you have to grab the last thing you put in first (filo).
  • it can show you if it is empty
  • it can show you that it is full
  • it can show you there is something in (but not what it is)

Trouser inventory:
consists of two pocket inventories (left and right pocket)
Be aware there is no automatic load balancing ;).

Jacket inventory:
consists of several pocket inventories with different sizes. Manual balancing too.

Oh dear. These kind of inventories are not really that funny for a game. So lets look at a rea… game-istic inventory:

Ammunition
A) Keeps bullets of a kind
B) looks like a number
C) capacity, opacity
D)

  • load
  • get bullet (which one seems not to matter)

What inventories can you think of?

Just for fun
Monster

I think an inventory to do with warfare should look and work the same way an actual soldier would carry and control his weaponry. A realistic approach to where the weapons are held, the weight of the weapons and size should all affect gameplay. Things like hands free water satchels, food supply and anything else to do with actually surviving should be considered. How heavy is your helmet? Does it affect aiming? Do you wear goggles/glasses to protect your eyes? How much do the Kevlar vests weigh you down?
Basically everything down to the last detail. Equipping it would work with a model of the soldier and dragging the weapon/armor etc. To Where that would actually apply.

Would be better than being able to switch between your m16 and colt in just a fraction of a second, then instantly pulling out a grenade or knife in an instant. Then somehow you managed to carry an RPG with you AND ammo!

Might be a bit too realistic to be enjoyable though

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

That depends on how far you go with it, I think.
It could be interesting to see how far someone can take this and make it work for him/her game.

I have all my player’s inventory stored at a home base and you have to select which inventory items to take on each mission. The amount of weight that a player is carrying affects things like max speed, acceleration, and turn speed. As I base most damage on player speed, the player needs to determine whether they want fewer items with greater possible damage output or more items (for survivability, utility, etc)

I like the idea of being able to store as many items as you want (at home) but having to choose which items to take out into the field.

When thinking about role-playing game (3D), I always think inventory should be similar to Monster’s mentioned pocket inventory, but with bags.

Various packs (backpacks or shoulder-bags, etc) would have one big container area and maybe several smaller pockets to organize stuff.

Plus I always have liked the idea that when it comes to heavy items, you really have to choose what you pick up with you.
In Skyrim for example it killed the mood a little when you knew you could carry a lot of heavy items with you. Sure there was a weight limit, but still too casual for my taste.

Ofcourse there would be some issues when limiting completely what you can carry, so slowing down player when carrying over a certain limit would be good de-buff.

Shroud of avatar -game seems to have nice inventory (visually).

Perhaps indeed we have gotten too used to seeing the grid-based-inventory, so we see other methods a little odd. But it would make more sense to come up with other methods.

I would even play a third-person game where you actually had to click items currently on character’s model and pockets would work directly too. It sure would force me to think “Where did I put that damn items!?”. Good for memory :wink:

ultima 7 - the Avatar
inventory was amazing,

I had bags with traps, bags with food, bags with ingredients,
etc.

it was neat to be able to put a bag, in a box, in a dragon…

How about a magic hat?

I always like playing light fast characters in skyrim, that are sneaky, because tanks are no fun, if you dont ever die, your not playing it right :smiley:

There have been many times where I have a dead body packed with goods, and I drag it all the way back to the entrance, and empty out a loot pile, decide what to take, go sell it etc, and come back again if I desire.

Also, packing a corpse and reanimating it is a nice way to have stuff move itself :smiley:

so what we have now is:

  • object keeping inventories (I think all do that)
  • inventories without showing its content
  • inventories that influence attributes of other objects (character attributes)
  • multiple inventories
  • cascading inventories (inventories that keep other inventories)
  • external inventories (storage at a location in the game world)
  • unlimited inventory
  • categorizing inventories

more ideas

I guess it depends on the type of game, DayZ’s inventory system for example is reasonable for a survival zombie game, you really have to be picky about what you grab because it all effects you later on. But I doubt I would have wasted as many hours as I did on runescape when I was younger if it was a realistic inventory.

I always liked the idea of the backpack-style inventory in Pokemon, where you toggle through the different pockets of the backpack, each with different types of items. There wasn’t a weight or size limit that I know of, but it’s neat to see the backpack icon change to have the correct pocket open when you’re looking in it.

On a more immersive side, I vaguely remember seeing a game where the character stores things on the inside surface of the jacket, and the “inventory screen” was the character opening the jacket and the camera zooming in so you could see all the actual items sticking out of pockets or hanging in loops. Sort of like the interface in Far Cry 3, where the map is a physical map that the character holds up in front of the screen and so on.

For a pocket-style inventory where you take items back off the top, it might be neat if the contents can be jumbled around when the player dives and rolls or falls over or something like that. Maybe it has a soft limit to what it can hold, where you can go over the limit but you risk the top thing falling out, or something.

That game did indeed exist, and it was the Alone in the Dark remake. I heard it wasn’t very good nonetheless. Anyway, your pocket inventory idea could be cool. It sounds pretty inventive.

that would be interesting, go overloaded, and stuff could fall out etc

:smiley: while slowing you down and lowering your jump etc.

My thoughts are that video games are a fantasy world and super realistic mechanics take away from the entertainment factor. To that end, my ideal inventory system would be a limitless “pocket dimension” where items can be sent and retrieved instantly. It is a bit of easy way out for inventory management, but for a fantasy/magic world it works well. You would just need a simple list of all your stored items and select the ones you want, they would then appear before you and vice versa.

I think a Backpack or duffel-bag is the most realistic. Like in “The Last Of Us” .
Joel needs an item from his backpack, an animation plays of him removing the Backpack, the game doesn’t pause. He can be attacked while searching through the backpack. And the backpack will only hold a few items. When he’s finished animation plays of him putting on the backpack. game continues.
One problem I did have is the shotguns and rifles hanging off Joels backpack. Not realistic at all. But it didn’t matter to me, I still consider it a great game.

In “Red Dead Redemption” John Marston would hunt and carry bear, wolf, deer, hide, meat etc, all those weapons, and other stuff. I always wondered how the carried all this. But it didn’t take anything away from the game, for me. I still consider it a great game.

'Cause video games aren’t real, and that’s a good thing. :slight_smile:

Well, if anyone is serious about the topic it’s worth thinking about how you handle items in the game too.

Most games can be broken down in to three different ways of handling items:

  1. Score. There may be different kinds of items, such as treasure, coins, rings or gems or power pills or whatever, but essentially they are just part of a scoring system. They don’t do anything other than maybe give you a power up or extra life when you collect 100 of them. There may be items that increase your health or make you invulnerable for a short time, or it may include ammo for your gun. This kind of system doesn’t need any inventory, you can’t do anything with excess items, and there’s no reason not to be able to carry an infinite number of them.

  2. Loot. There’s loads of stuff, most of it is not useful, but you have to haul it around so you can sell it. This leads to you needing to be able to carry 5 suits of armor, 6 crossbows and a dozen swords and daggers, all while fighting without any penalty, otherwise you have to make multiple trips to pick it all up. Loot usually becomes boring, and you find only a few items are actually worth keeping, however, you need the cash so you can buy good stuff.

  3. Puzzle/adventure. There are quite a few items but they are all unique. You need everything you find in order to finish the game. Often there’s a hard limit to the number of things you can carry at once time (The hardest example I’ve every played was Dizzy, in which you could only carry one item at a time) this is to make choice of carried items an integral part of the tactics of the game. However, it usually just forces a lot of backtracking and repetitive play. The big problem with this time of game is that if you can pick something up it must be usable. It’s like Chekhov’s gun. Once the gun enters the plot, it has to be fired.

I think a good game needs to think about these points and perhaps find a different way of dealing with items. You need loot as a reward for making progress in the game (such as killing enemies or solving a puzzle) but the loot has to be useful. I think it’s better to have a small amount of valuable loot rather than lots of junk. Money or items such as potions or ammo, stuff you need to progress in the game is good for loot. If weapons and armor are found they ought to be as good as if not better than the stuff you already have.

On the other hand if you have puzzles, I think it’s good to have a little bit of junk in the game. If you find an old boot, is it a essential part of a puzzle, or just junk? But in that case you may need to keep everything you find, just in case it is important. One solution would be to have multiple solutions to each puzzle, you can use a screwdriver to open the lock, or you can pick the lock with an old hairpin. Also having some puzzles be optional and not required for progress could be a good idea if you don’t want the player to have to carry everything. They player would feel extra smart if they managed to find a “secret area” because they chose to keep hold of the old hairpin.

Anyway, which ever type of item usage model you use (and it could be a mixed model, with both puzzle items and loot) you’ll need a different inventory style.

What do you guys think? Do you usually keep all the loot you find, is selecting the valuable stuff and leaving the junk an important part of game play? Do you think it’s a good idea to have “junk” items in a puzzle/adventure game? How do you feel about only being able to carry a small number of items at one time, is it an interesting game mechanic or just annoying?

What do you guys think? Do you usually keep all the loot you find, is selecting the valuable stuff and leaving the junk an important part of game play?

If it doesn’t advance me in the game, or if I’m not able to sell it for something, then I don’t bother with the loot.
Like “Uncharted” The trophies or treasure or whatever didn’t mean anything, so I didn’t bother looking for them.
But in “Ratchet and Clank”, I went for all the bolts (breakables, boxes, etc) so I could buy armor, weapons, and ultimately the R.Y.N.O. (I actually made a device out of a car battery, a car windshield wiper motor and hooked up to the joystick, and ran it all night While I slept, so I could gain bolts and get the R.Y.N.O.) :slight_smile:

On games like “God Of War” I always look for orbs, feathers, and gorgon eyes. More magic, health, upgrades.

So, yes, if it’s important to the game, I’ll spend hours/days looking for loot or whatever.

As for the puzzles, sometimes I wish I could skip them. But I think they are important, and I would include them in my games.

IMHO Limiting the items you can carry makes for a good game. It forces you to make every bullet count.
or use your resources wisely. :slight_smile:

I like adventure games with backpack style inventory systems. If space within the backpack is virtually unlimited, it doesn’t really bother me, but I think you can make an adventure game more interesting by forcing the player (at least sometimes) to think about what s/he is carrying.

It seems to me like a good way to limit inventory space is to assign every item in the game a certain size, which could be represented by the number of slots it takes up in your bag. Lets say your backpack has 20 slots worth of space… So for example, you could carry one giant 20 slot item, or 20 single-slot items, and every possible combination in between. Maybe even tiny items could take up just a fraction of 1 slot.

Additionally, some items could even have a shape to them, like 4x2 or 1x5, making the player organize their bag appropriately to optimize the amount of space they have. I mean, who hasn’t thought of Tetris while packing a car or suitcase before a trip? This method of inventory management is both realistic and a little bit of fun, in a minigame kind of way.