Incline Icon-based inventory vs List-based inventory

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Borian]

Morrowind killed any interest I had in icon inventories.

Literally the perfect UI.

The funny thing is that it's easier to find items through the hotkey interface than it is through the regular inventory because it's presented as a list

 

[Ol' Willy]

Half way through the game you get trouble finding anything

Don't be like Al-Fabet, throw away the trash and unneeded stuff.

 

[Cross]

Grid-based inventories that are instantly accessible and don't pause the game, e.g. Diablo, Arx Fatalis, Jagged Alliance 2 and System Shock 2.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

It depends on how well the developers designed it. A simple list sorted by type is useful, but when its not obvious where an item is, it isn't. An icon system in something like Dungeon Master or Jagged Alliance where everything has its own unique icon is even better. An icon system where my potion of healing looks like thirty other potions is not, looking at you Morrowind.

Inventory tetris is the patrician's choice though.

 

[Nano]

Voted for icon-based but the best is definitely inventory Tetris.

My favorite is probably Deus Ex. Intuitive, straightforward, and doesn't use any fancy graphics and animations.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

I prefer icon-based, but it's very hit or miss depending on the style and diversity of icons. Voted list-based since it's the safer bet, although aesthetically less pleasing.

 

[BING XI LAO]

per say

per se

 

[Alex]

(...snip)
Honorable mentions:
Whatever the fuck Ultima 7 was

Spoiler

(snip...)

GUMPs based inventory!

Ultima VII introduces Graphical User Menu Pop-ups ("gumps"), which are on-screen representations of containers, later employed in Ultima VIII and IX. For example, clicking on a drawer or backpack will show the contents of the container on screen, allowing the items within arranged freely with the mouse. Gumps are also used for books, scrolls, the spellbook, the status display, maps, and character equipment management; double-clicking on the Avatar opens his or her inventory, after which the inventories of other party characters can be opened by double-clicking them in turn.

By the way, that is also my vote.

 

[Ranarama]

Ultima 7 reminds me of Divine Divinity. God that was horrible inventory management.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Ultima 7 reminds me of Divine Divinity. God that was horrible inventory management.

Ultima games(7 especially) were the primary inspiration for Divinity games.

 

[Goblino]

Probably not the thread for this, but i really appreciate Brigand Oaxaca's inventory system. You're limited to just 10 items of any type at any given time, and it forces you to specialize and take only what matters. Too many games have you running around like a damn hoarder, with shit you will literally never use and never sell. Hell you can't even sell items in Brigand. it really keeps you on your toes, having to pick between lizard hearts, medkits, and JUICE.


Also, i liked the messy inventory in gothic, the layout was ugly but you get really fast moving through it with the keyboard based controls.

 

[Bruma Hobo]

It obviously depends on each game and what their goals are, only hacks believe there's a single solution for all cases. Think of Expeditions: Viking, where adding a generic "RPG inventory" and hiding loot in barrels (an obvious marketing move, as many people got the previous game wrong and thought it was a strategy game) made these vikings look like hobos, while in Conquistador our adventurers felt way above such things. Minimalist and elegant games like the early Wizardry games, Telengard and the like, wouldn't improve by having an inventory grid with tons of different icons, while other games like Morrowind and Divinity: Original Sin on the other hand needed their convoluted inventories, as these are games about rewarding experimentation and clever interactions with their worlds.

Inventories in grand epic adventures, minimalist combat-focused crawlers, grand-scale historical games, gritty survival simulators, complex tacticool combatfests and open-world action games should not look alike.

 

[Bad Sector]

As always, It Depends™.

In general i'm in favor of lists but not dry Skyrim lists... i always liked M&M3/4 approach (i'm sure there were older games that used this approach, i just first noticed it on those games) where you get a big list and next to each item there is also an icon. In addition, having color coding, filtering and search is nice - especially for games where you get craptons of items.

But for games where you aren't really meant to hoard everything that can be picked up (and then sell it to every merchant with money later) and can only carry a handful of stuff, icons or inventory tetris is fine. Though it is nice when said icons have captions describing the item too. Sadly i've played several games where i had to hover over each item to see what exactly it is because the icons weren't that great (or at least i couldn't tell the items apart).

 

[Catacombs]

How about Grimoire's horizontal item bar:

 

[HansDampf]

Why is it not possible to have both options, unless inventory tetris is part of the game? Display items as big, medium, or small icons. Or display them as a list. Then sort them by name, type, size, date... Oh, wait. That's Microsoft Windows.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Both

 

[Horvatii]

inventories are not lists...
they are associative arrays
and thats how i like em!

 

[Horvatii]

Realistic inventories would be nice though.
JA2 1.13 and its pouch management (tm) comes to mind. Hard weight limits. Separate big sack inventory. Mules. Actual ones.
"Hard points" for certain big items.

Now that I think about it. NO INVENTORY AT ALL.
No pointless shuffling of trash. Go an fight.

 

[Citizen]

Tetris is the most monocled one cuz it's the only one that makes player consider BOTH weight and size of equipment/objects. Just like in real life, some objects are heavy but compact and pretty easy to handle in a backpack, while others are big and awkward to carry around, even if pretty light

 

[Lord_Potato]

Inventory tetris + weight limit. Like in Arcanum. The best system even if it forces some micromanagement from time to time.

 

[Butter]

Inventory tetris + weight limit is mostly cargo cult design. Unless you're going to troll the player with the giant boulder in Arcanum it doesn't serve much of a purpose other than to make Strength a more important attribute. Inventory management is probably the least compelling part of any RPG that features it, and yet it's fucking ubiquitous.

 

[mondblut]

Both

Stole my response.

 

[DraQ]

Well implemented inventory tetris has the most potential as it can track mass and volume of an item independently and in very intuitive manner, as well as deal with compartmentalization (for example you have a backpack and three belt pouches) which in turn can be used to implement hierarchical, container based inventory. Best tetris inventories I've seen were DX:HR (rotation + auto-arrange) and Chrome (compartments).

Then grid - exemplified by Morrowind - offers much better scalability than list at the cost of some clarity.

Finally list has the advantage of being able to convey more information about all visible objects and sort them by various attributes, maybe augment that with colapsable tree (which would also handle compartmentalized, hierarchical containers neatly, although at the cost of having to track size as yet another number) at the cost of scaling very poorly.
The best example would be... uhh... probably ls -l or that roguelike in the OP.

 

[Jarpie]

Liberation: Captive 2 had icon based inventory without any kind of grid, so it was 'fluid', and items could collide with each other. It was fucking PITA to deal with if your inventory was full, as if you had to slide items out, you had to move other items out of the first if the said item was in middle of the inventory.