Art: Inventory System

RujiK

Member
Any of the first three look really good. The only reason I dislike the last one is because of how small it is and how much empty space your room has. It might look better if your pixels/views were upscaled, but I'm judging by what you've posted.

Also slightly odd, but I'm also working on a notebook/folder menu system, so I like your idea ;)
 

GMWolf

aka fel666
I like the fact you get large icons and names in the first.

I like the number of items you can display in the second.

Third is much less visual.

And I agree with Rujik, fourth is my least favourite.
 
#1 is a little too inefficient with space for me.
#2 is good but it doesn't show the item name. Really annoying in an RPG. Adding it to the description box would fix that. Something like
Bottled Water

Bottled spring water.
Restores 5 energy.
Discard after use.
#3 is very nice. Really fits the notebook aesthetic. The crosses and checkmarks make the menu functionality a bit hard to read, though. Usually games with that kind of UI use that to specify how many items you're selecting so you can mass delete/move items. It might look better using empty square boxes and having a checkmark in the currently selected item.
☐ Flashlight
☐ Kitchen Knife
√ Bottled Water
☐ Lighter
☐ Apple
#4 is far too small. @RujiK said almost everything I wanted to. I will add that just like #2, it doesn't show the item's name.
 
#1 I like, if your game won't have too many items.
#2 Is good except it doesn't show item names. @nacho_chicken mentioned that. Could add to the description.
#3 Is okay, I like the aesthetic. I think it would look better if you moved the images to the beginning of the name so they all line up vertically.
#4 Too small, but the design itself looks nice.
 
One other thing I just noticed about #1 is that you had to abbreviate "Kitchen Knife" in the menu because there wasn't enough space. Abbreviations are a pretty glaring flaw in a game with as much free UI screen space left as yours. Neither #2 or #3 have this issue.
 
#1 is still my favorite out of all of them. I like the chunky little boxes, and having two items per line makes it feel more like a notebook and less like an inventory screen. I don't think the abbreviations are a problem at all - RPGs have abbreviated long item names since the dawn of time, and again, it looks more like a notebook! Putting the full name of the item on the right side page, either as "-kitchen knife-" or whatever in the header, or simply in the description erases any ambiguity, anyway.

The rest don't feel as satisfying to look at to me. I think those boxed items look really nice!
 
having two items per line makes it feel more like a notebook and less like an inventory screen.
I dunno, one item per line reminds me of this...
screenshot(13).png

And since you brought it up, I might as well clarify what I said about abbreviations. Abbreviations in RPGs as we know and "love" them didn't really start until the NES era and only manifested with regularity on Console RPGs that were in languages that used Latin alphabets. PC RPGs of the same era didn't have this issue to the same extent. They were more of a necessary evil rather than something done intentionally. They stopped appearing almost immediately around 20 years ago, which coincides directly with when consoles got powerful enough to display at 480p as standard. At 480p and with a VWF this small there's really no excuse -- especially when the fix is as easy as increasing the size of the UI when it's barely taking up half of the horizontal screen space:
screenshot(14).png

I really don't have too much issue with #1 when the minor flaws are fixed, but #3 is my personal preference :)


Good points all. So I've re-worked the system based on the comments:
Looking much better! Items and text aren't aligned horizontally, but for what's surely a quick prototype I think it's a significant improvement.
 

Zizka

Member
That’s a good point regarding abbreviations, I think there’s also the possibility of Japanese to English conversion as the writing systems are different and manage space.

Regarding your comment about the text not lining up, it’s a good point and something I also noticed when I was drawing. The thing is that the icons not being confined in boxes take different space which in turn messes up where the text would display. I could save some space for icons only but since the icons have different sizes, the saved space between icons and text would be uneven which would bring me back to the same problem. I don’t really see any way to solve this.
 
H

Homunculus

Guest
I like #3, it's the most compact solution (you can fit more stuff in without having to scroll, which is always a plus in terms of usability). Unless the player is asked frequently to find items in the inventory by their name, having the item name on the left page is a bit redundant if you provide that information on the right as well. If I had to reimagine solution 3 a bit, I'd go for something like this:

O9ZAptU.png
 

Zizka

Member
So you would do away with the lines then. I also prefer without lines but have trouble justifying from the ´notebook’ aesthetic point of view. I mean, I might be splitting hair but it’d be interesting to find a way to justify the absence of lines theme wise.
It’s a matter of finding the best user friendly approach which fits with the theme.
 
H

Homunculus

Guest
It doesn’t really seem out of place to me, i’ve seen a lot of “specialized” notebooks with all kinds of page designs depending on the content that’s supposed to go there.
 

Zizka

Member
Could very well be! I'm not very familiar with notebooks in general apart from the more typical ones.

Minor corrections this time:


But, I also have a new design which I think might fit the theme. The idea is to use stamps of the inventory items as representations of the actual objects:

I'm hoping it can bring the icons of one version with the overall design of another version.
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
I feel like there's still plenty of unused flavor text space, and the notebook's spine now adds a clear divide between the left and right sides. Not sure if it would be possible to make the text flow naturally across that. So how about we use the break to our advantage, and put pure flavor text that just adds flair and has no gameplay connotations there? Could get worldbuilding across and set the mood and stuff.
 

Zizka

Member
So since I'm going to expand the book area, I'll need to re-tweak the inventory system. I though of changing the new layout while I'm at it as well.

I've done a few changes here and there to make the screen appear less busy visually:
 
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