Cycling Through Items

[Sir Taffsalot]

I was just watching Fen Phoenix's playthrough of Grayman's In the North and in part4 I think he brought up a very good point. He said that there should be a better way of selecting items in the inventory instead of having to cycle through all of them. Maybe have a screen that displays everything in your inventory that you can point and click at when you want to use it.

 

As someone who has played many TDM FMs and Thief FMs over the years I have found that on large FMs where you accumulate many keys, readables and tools over a period of time, cycling through the whole inventory is not only a chore but can kill the experience. Eg I want to unlock the study with the study key but I have to cycle through a tone of readables, other keys and tools before I can get it. Meanwhile a guard is about to walk right past me.

 

Thoughts?

[Krypt]

I had a similar problem and made a similar suggestion not so long ago. Springheel then informed me that several hotkeys exist that largely solve the problem. Every standard inventory item has a hotkey and there are hotkeys to cycle through lockpicks, keys and readables. It can be a lot of keys to keep track of, but once you start using them it's less of a problem except in corner cases

[Sir Taffsalot]

How would this work if you had multiple keys and readables to refer to?

[Krypt]

You push the cycle keys hotkey and it cycles through just the keys in your inventory with each press. The same for the readables hotkey.

[Sotha]

I'm not a big fan of existing inventory system as it is slow to use, especially in a pinch, but I can live with it. It is a game of patience and carefulness, so you really need to emergency-select the flashbombs, which I have under a hot key.

 

If someone would make a .pk4 mod which would present an alternative inventory system, I'd gladly use it. Maybe something similar to the hitman games? I dunno.

[Lux]

I actually find the current system fine and actually mORe immersive than other options. At least if you DO have the readables, keys, compass, lockpicks, sub keys defined in your controls.

 

Reason being, if you were sneaking about in a house and gathering a number of keys or papers, you would indeed have to take the time to search them to find the one you wanted or needed and actually with keys they wouldn't be labeled so you'd really have to check every key in every door before you found one that fit so by that reasoning what we have is still much easier. Of course over the hours during the mission you'd learn certain keys fit certain doors but when you found a new door you'd still check every key if none fit.

 

Kind of like the DayZ inventory system. Many find it clunky because they're young and are used to games that offer one-click selection but in an actual situation you would indeed have to fumble through your backpack and find the right item and it would take some time. Time that enemies are approaching, time that could be used to find cover, time time time and that introduces resource management in to the game which IMO is something sorely missing from many titles these days.

 

But yeah, everyone needs to be aware of the inventory sub section keys so they can navigate it mUCh more easily.

Edited November 14, 2013 by Lux

[demagogue]

My idea would be it brings up a grid of the inventory items, and a box is highlighted you use maybe the arrow keys to cycle through, then when you press use or bring the grid down that item will be the current inventory item, so you're still technically in control of the player and it's still in real time, like a readable (and maybe it could come up readable style). I wouldn't want a mouse system that takes you out of control of the player, I think.

[161803398874989]

Yeah, the item group hotkeys are what I use for navigating my inventory too.

[Lux]

Also, a bit of a correction since the OP is kind of 'out of context', it is Fen Phoenix's playthrough of Grayman's In the North and in part 5. Part 4 mentions nothing about the inventory as I watched it in its non-contiguous, jump around annoying entirety.

 

Part 5 mentions the bits you're explaining, Sir Taffsalot, at 6:25 which just after says, "oh you cAn scroll through documents using the wheel", rendering that bit more of an off-the-cuff comment which he retracted.

 

And then again at 7:40 which I believe is what you're describing where he talks about a single page where you can pick the item with a single click after bringing up a screen with a key press, so essentially two buttons to access.

 

Admittedly though he begins searching his inventory at 7:41 and cycles to the correct object at 7:46-7:47, so 5-6 seconds to find the right item. He then cycles back and forth describing the inventory.

 

6 seconds to find the right item in this case. I don't personally think that is anything to write home about and from an immersion point of view isn't even close to realistic, not that I'm comparing the game to realistic levels of gear searching. Its a nice compromise between as fast as it could be which in my view IS immersion breaking, and realistic, which none of us wants to forgo in a video game.

 

I also agree with demagogue that a screen coming up in front of you would be annoying and immersion breaking. A readable page as he describes would be more in keeping with the game feel, in the spirit of Far Cry 2, but I don't know.

 

I'm sure it would be a lot of work and just to circumvent a 6 second search? I personally enjoy the time management aspect as the system is.

Edited November 14, 2013 by Lux

[Bridge]

I like the inventory system personally, when I first played Thief it was clunky but I've grown so used to it that it really doesn't bother me anymore, even if it is admittedly not an optimal way to handle inventories. I think the real problem here is more an abundance of keys and items rather than a poor system, since having too many items in a good inventory system like System Shock 2 for example still makes it hard to navigate. I think since the ability to lock doors has been removed that once doors are unlocked (assuming they aren't master keys or work with multiple doors) FM creators should take care to remove them from the inventory.

[grayman]

I think since the ability to lock doors has been removed that once doors are unlocked (assuming they aren't master keys or work with multiple doors) FM creators should take care to remove them from the inventory.

 

The player can relock a door.

 

If the mission author has marked a door as "should be locked", AI will relock that door after they close it, assuming they have the ability to do so.

 

So, for run-of-the-mill doors, it would become cumbersome for the author to try to recognize the moment when a key is no longer necessary, assuming that moment could ever arrive.

 

For special doors (like vault doors or secret doors the AI don't use), the author could use scripting to automatically remove a used key from inventory. Even then, that might disturb the hardcore ghosting crowd, who like to put things back the way they found them.

[Oldjim]

Actually this is something which annoys - not readables or keys where I use the hot keys but other items I have picked up or even to check the loot status.

An example in the Lich queen you may have to cycle through a lot of items just to find all the bits you put in the pot

One option would be to have a hot key for the other items which ignores the keys and readables

Edited November 14, 2013 by Oldjim

[Bridge]

Even then, that might disturb the hardcore ghosting crowd, who like to put things back the way they found them.

 

That's a good point. How do you lock doors? I remember in the old Thiefs you could lock a door by simply having the key selected and frobbing. "Using" it on the door maybe?

Edited November 14, 2013 by Bridge

[RJFerret]

One option would be to have a hot key for the other items which ignores the keys and readables

 

That'd be nice, and skip pots, picks and mines, basically only cycle the non-staples.

[Thiefette]

You can also drop items once they've been used if you feel they won't be needed anymore. Example in Fieldmedics "Not an Ordinary Guest" I managed to get

all the rooms keys before grabbing the master as I was taking them very quickly. I found a spot in the attic - so I'd know where they were should I need them - and just dropped all the other room keys.

[Xarg]

The problem with dropping readables/keys etc... is that the mapper has to make them droppable in the editor. I remember playing Heart of Lone Salvation and collecting a massive number of readables, and eventually dropping most of them in the lower floor in a room out of the way. Those all had to be set as droppable by Fidcal, some missions don't have these things set droppable. What I'd like to see, is something like a journal system, where you have 1 inv item, your journal. Each readable you find could be added to your journal if it had interesting points, or discarded by dropping it. There'd be no point adding that 6 page book on weapons found somewhere in RTTC for example, but a 2 page letter with 2 paragraphs of interesting intel could be worth entering (or just putting the pages inside your journal, effectively adding pages to it). At the very least, being able to "merge" (you find readable A. You find readable B, which is appended to A (by removing A&B from inventory, and giving a new item that is A+B ), to cut down on inventory clogging. For immersions sake you could have a quill scratching noise, and the second readable is dropped into your hands so you can put it back, oh so sneaky like if that's your thing).

 

I might have a play around over the weekend and see how easy this is, I imagine it can be done with hidden, non-mandatory, irreversible objectives, though it could get messy.

Edited November 15, 2013 by Xarg

[Xarg]

Speaking of which, is it possible to have 2 different fonts on the same readable on the same page? For example, a typed/printed looking font with added in notes in handwriting (like a maintenance manual), straight out of the readable editor? That way you could have things like guest books, manuals with notes, all sorts of things that imply 2 different people have written on the same paper... hell, even a warning with a nasty retort written on it hidden in a guard's footlocker.

 

I get the feeling a "keyring" would be reasonably easy to produce, if player has key A and key B, remove keys A and B, give item Masterkey1 (icon of a small keyring) which would then have the opened by Masterkey1 set on a few doors. Having this happen automatically however might not be optimal, and doing it via objectives would clutter up the list really fast, and some people may not like the streamlining a keyring would provide, since you may have them all on a keyring, but you still have to put the right key in the lock, keyrings aren't magnetic keys after all.

Edited November 15, 2013 by Xarg

[Obsttorte]

Speaking of which, is it possible to have 2 different fonts on the same readable on the same page? For example, a typed/printed looking font with added in notes in handwriting (like a maintenance manual), straight out of the readable editor? That way you could have things like guest books, manuals with notes, all sorts of things that imply 2 different people have written on the same paper... hell, even a warning with a nasty retort written on it hidden in a guard's footlocker.

Yes. The font's used in a readable are defined in the specific gui files IIRC. To produce a certain effect you just have to create a custom one. If I'm right, you should also be able to rotate the text,

[grayman]

You can certainly create a multi-font readable as Obs stated.

 

I'm not sure, however, if the DR Readable Editor can handle any gui layout other than Title/Body.

 

You'd have to experiment to see. If the RE can't handle a different type of layout, then you'd need to create the xdata entry by hand.

[Obsttorte]

If you are only going to use two different font types, you could use title/body for that. If you need more, you would indeed have to create the xdata by hand.

 

Another approach would be to create the page in a graphic program like gimp and use the image to be shown (like with maps).