Icons for Inventory System

[Domarius]

I don't see what the big deal is about "doing more work" to make icons. Like Spring said, it's basically jus taking a screenshot of the model. If the FM author has already spent hours making a new model of something, I don't think they're going to be daunted by taking a screenshot of it for the inventory.

I've been thinking the same thing.

[PinkDot]

Icons have advantage of artistic possibilities over models - because they don't have to look exactly like model does - you can customize them according to your needs. That surely won't be the first thing that people start doing after the mod is released, but I'm pretty sure that after years, people will want to play with such esthetic things of second importance. For example for my mission in dromed I was going to use 2 colour icons instead of models.

[Springheel]

It sounds like the only problems people have had with the icons is that they can't spin, and that they take a while to make. Seems to me that the latter isn't very significant, especially compared with what would have to be done to get models even partially working. The not spinning is unfortunate, but surely there's some other effect we can use to make the icons more 'interesting' while cycling through? I think a nice subtle fade effect, or something like what Gil did, would be fine, personally.

[sparhawk]

There were other issues as well. Models are more versatile, but well. The only real issue IMO is the skinnning.

[Springheel]

What other issues were there? Nobody mentioned any in this thread.

 

And how are models more versatile? It seems quite the opposite to me. You have to manually scale them, they won't show skins, they can't be semi-transparent, you can't add any special materials to them, etc..., all of which you can do to icons.

[sparhawk]

This is plain ridiculous and I think you are only arguing now for the arguments sake. There are a lot of things that you can also not do with icons, so there a pro's and con's for both of them. Hearing you , one could think that icons would be the ultimate saviour of gameplay, so I wonder why game engines don't still use 2D sprites, instead of 3D models.

 

I wont discuss this anymore because it's pointless. We can't do SOME things with icons and we can't do SOME things with models and that's about it. As I already said several times, the only REAL showstopper for using models is that we currently can't use skins there as well. The other points you mentioned are just peanuts.

[Springheel]

This is plain ridiculous and I think you are only arguing now for the arguments sake. I wont discuss this anymore because it's pointless.

 

Well, ok, but I was being serious. Switching from models to icons at this point requires time and effort, so I was trying to do a cost/benefit analysis. So far, I've only seen those two benefits I listed. Perhaps there are others, but I haven't found them mentioned anywhere.

[Arcturus]

On 2/15/2007 at 2:55 PM, New Horizon said:

I do wonder if we should reconsider trying to use the models rather than 2d images

I agree. I really liked those rotating 3d inventory miniatures in "Displacement".

Wish there was more.

[SeriousToni]

Nice necro !

I also like them because they are more Thief Style. However I could imagine that this feels distracting for some people because of the "moving UI". If it is optional or a mod, this sure would make a great addition.

@snatcher

Do you think this could be possible as a mod? 

[SeriousToni]

On 2/18/2007 at 5:31 PM, sparhawk said:

This is plain ridiculous and I think you are only arguing now for the arguments sake. There are a lot of things that you can also not do with icons, so there a pro's and con's for both of them. Hearing you , one could think that icons would be the ultimate saviour of gameplay, so I wonder why game engines don't still use 2D sprites, instead of 3D models.

 

I wont discuss this anymore because it's pointless. We can't do SOME things with icons and we can't do SOME things with models and that's about it. As I already said several times, the only REAL showstopper for using models is that we currently can't use skins there as well. The other points you mentioned are just peanuts.

Ah well, the classic and famous TDM forum discussion style. This post has really taken me back in time where there were page long arguments over multiple days until no one replied all of a sudden and the discussed feature gets ignored.

We occasionally have had them too in the past years but my personal feeling is that the forums got much more quieter and people get to experiment on their own a lot more. 

Maybe that's partly because TDM is already final and feature complete by now. 

[Amadeus]

Getting these rotating models to work is a LOT of work, and right now, they only work for non-stackable inventory items. I couldn't figure out how to get them to work for stackable inventory items or player weapons. That was a gargantuan effort that didn't lead anywhere unfortunately. Kingsal is working on a solution that might solve this, so hopefully that will pan out and we'll get a nice, comprehensive Thief-like inventory system that mappers can use for their FMs

I did leave a lot of comments in the relevant guis, script and def files on how to get these rotating icons to work, but I make no claims as to how elegant or efficient these solutions are, lol. 

On an additional note, I did notice one bug in that the rotations don't get placed into the save file, so if a player quicksaves with a visible rotating inv_item, then on reload that same inv_item will be frozen for a few seconds before it finally fixes itself

[New Horizon]

6 hours ago, SeriousToni said:

Ah well, the classic and famous TDM forum discussion style. This post has really taken me back in time where there were page long arguments over multiple days until no one replied all of a sudden and the discussed feature gets ignored.

We occasionally have had them too in the past years but my personal feeling is that the forums got much more quieter and people get to experiment on their own a lot more. 

Maybe that's partly because TDM is already final and feature complete by now. 

 

Passions ran high in the early days.   Everyone wanted things to be the absolute best they could and that often lead to disagreements.  It also didn't help that this was a global team and many contributors had English as a second language...I think quite often phrasing was interpreted differently.

[SeriousToni]

1 hour ago, New Horizon said:

 

Passions ran high in the early days.   Everyone wanted things to be the absolute best they could and that often lead to disagreements.  It also didn't help that this was a global team and many contributors had English as a second language...I think quite often phrasing was interpreted differently.

Yeah, and these were very exciting times as I remember!

I still miss your old avatar picture with you wearing a red shirt and a black hat smiling to the side haha

[New Horizon]

3 hours ago, SeriousToni said:

Yeah, and these were very exciting times as I remember!

I still miss your old avatar picture with you wearing a red shirt and a black hat smiling to the side haha

Well, I still have that picture.  I'll restore it for a week before updating to something more recent. haha

[sullium]

I really like the spinning models for the special loot and unique key items in Displacement! However, I think I would only want it for those kinds of items as a special "emphasis" for them. Having all common things like water arrows, health potions, lockpicks, etc spinning just seems excessively distracting or "busy" to me, I'd prefer to keep them as icons even though that differs from the OG Thief games.

Maybe an addition to the settings would be in order, something like "Inventory Models" with options "None", "Special Only", or "All".

[Wellingtoncrab]

Making an inventory icon isn't the hardest thing in the world, but it does add time and complexity to bringing props into the game. Just like anything there is an "art" to doing it well.

Depending on how it is implemented just passing a model to the gui potentially saves development time and reduces the amount of assets which are both good imo.

As is setting up 3d icon certainly didn’t save any time or effort. As amadeus pointed out it was/is a huge PITA. 

[Arcturus]

54 minutes ago, sullium said:

spinning just seems excessively distracting or "busy" to me

When I look at the middle of the screen I don't really notice that something is moving in the corner. The rotation could be slowed down even more.

[datiswous]

On 3/18/2026 at 3:44 PM, Amadeus said:

Getting these rotating models to work is a LOT of work

Is there documentation for this?

 

It would be cool if you could click on an inventory item and it gets shown large in the middle of the screen and you can rotate it manually.
Hmm, I guess the drop key already does this, sort of..

Edited March 24 by datiswous

[Amadeus]

5 hours ago, datiswous said:

Is there documentation for this?

No, not really. I could probably write down a few tidbits when I have the time

[datiswous]

So how did you figure it out then?

[Amadeus]

7 minutes ago, datiswous said:

So how did you figure it out then?

By reverse engineering the compass, reading the limited renderdef stuff on the wiki, and hours of experimenting. But there was no explicit article on "HOW TO MAKE A ROTATING INVENTORY ICON". At least none that I saw

[snatcher]

On 3/18/2026 at 1:38 PM, SeriousToni said:

@snatcher

 

Do you think this could be possible as a mod? 

As long as the object has a model it sure can be done globally.

Pros:

• Cool?

Cons:

• Distracting?
• Inconsistencies: custom icons without models
• Usability concerns while some models rotate away from their ideal view (a coin temporally displayed laterally or an idol showing its back)