Inventory UI concept design v2.1 (window based)

[spammy@live.de 19]

Is this official artwork?

looks kinda nice, but too messy in general.

Current screens:

1) Clothing, items & modifing

2) backpack items

3) 3d view

What I'd do:

1) items & backpack items (stuff that player often changes)

2) Clothing & 3d view (stuff that player rarely changes)

3) Modifing & crafting

Also, screw rotate & flip. Should happen automaticly, no Tetris in DayZ plz.

Edited August 24, 2012 by SamSpam

[wraylir 1]

Yours character inventory is very good but im not happy cause there isnt view of character in inventory screen in all of ur pictures only for some.

I think new game inventory should be simple.

It should have all on one screen including view of character, items on backpack and items on ground visible by pictures.

I think making items with only letters is not good and there should be pictures of items on ground and on inventory.

Here look at this female character picture:

http://i303.photobuc.../testing111.jpg

and in next picture male character:

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn156/ianopolos/test999.jpg

Also they should add skills or perks for running stamina and ur carry capacity.

You get perks in game and lose them when you die.

I like game but i cant buy it.

Edited August 25, 2012 by wraylir

[Nalyid 28]

Looks great, I just hope you guys don't plan on making it so guns take up soo many extra spaces like in the mod.

[keosan24 55]

Every place where you can put a item is sort of blacked out and has a box, so does that mean we will not be able to change the striped shirt/ blue jacket?

[pawlzz 18]

All in all i like it, but it's a bit too complex. Why couldn't you put beans where you put your journal? There are too mutch particular slots.

I like the design though.

[santiagoaquino6@hotmail.com 37]

That's pretty awful compared to the other stuff I've seen. A click and drag interface? 3D models?

I like blAke139's version much better.

[joeyslucky22 638]

More concepts!

L0G!N, I took your advice on some of these changes.

No gear (besides some clothing, which you should still be able to take off! woo naked party in Cherno)

Fucking LOADED

Opening the backpack (double click?)

Moving the backpack (can be placed anywhere you want it and has a "return" button to put it back in place)

Trading stuff (dropping things into the blue area will highlight items in blue. This would really only be for when you and another player are checking eachother's gear? Not totally sure how the trade mechanic would work yet)

Thoughts? Questions?

[Lady Kyrah 1109]

I like the look but it's giving you access to too many items. You shouldn't be able to carry this much on you. Hatchet OR crowbar OR main weapon, sorry.

[joeyslucky22 638]

I like the look but it's giving you access to too many items. You shouldn't be able to carry this much on you. Hatchet OR crowbar OR main weapon, sorry.

With the possibility of weight being considered, you could easily carry an axe, crowbar, bat and quiver on your belt, but it most definitely would slow you down.

[DemonGroover 8836]

Is that a baseball bat??

[Bratalise 26]

I think it looks amazing there somethings liek arm band and leg band that confused me but hell i figured this inventory system out im sure this one will be 10 items easier than the current one.

[Krobar 75]

All important question:

Do we need to wear pants?

Edited August 27, 2012 by Krobar

[Hetstaine 10852]

Looks good , seemed a bit cluttery at first glance but it makes sense and i dont think it would take to long to get a hang of it. The size of the ui you have in the very first post is spot on too, still plenty of game showing through and not too much real estate taken up.

Will your backpack eat items or will we get a popup like 'hey dickhead, three dmrs wont fit in here, i'm a backpack not a fucking mobile shed !' ;)

Nice work man :)

[Daerk 8]

I *love* the new layout, joeyslucky22!

I like how you also moved the weapons boxes down to around waist area, where they are usually naturally held while in use or movement.

Question about headgear and possibly other gear areas:

Will I be able to layer up like with the shirt and overshirt idea? For example, I would personally wear a bandanna/doo-rag/zandanna, with the option of a baseball cap or balaclava over it depending on weather... Not to mention the possibility of armoured head protection. Also, thermal underwear or "longjohns" would be an option underneath regular clothing during winter to reduce or even eliminate requirement for a fire or heatpacks.

And for those of you saying it's not realistic to carry the amount of gear currently being shown without some extreme deficiency in movement, let me correct you based on experience. I'm military. My ruck alone usually weighs out at around 90 pounds not including weaponry. I can hike at a fast pace over 20 miles while wearing my ruck and carrying my weapon. I'm 6'3" and about 200 pounds. My boots are around 2 pounds and my clothing is around an extra 40 to 50 pounds including body armour. So fully decked out I'm usually able to tip the scale at around 360 to 375 pounds. And I can hike 20 miles carrying all of that without much of a problem other than feeling like a hammered turd afterwords. I'd be able to tote the kit currently being shown here for DayZ indefinitely without ANY decrease in mobility and even without feeling tired after a full day and night of roughing it. Now, if you're the type of person that breathes hard after moving 3 metres... then yeah. This is too much for you to carry without falling over and having a massive heart attack. Heh... but let's face it... if we're in a situation like DayZ, then the survivors still left AFTER the world has gone to shit are more like me and less like the overweight couch potato who has never run a mile without stopping.

Edited August 27, 2012 by Daerk

[wolfstriked 143]

First off I love the look of this and this screams to get rid of the bandit and hero skins.If Dayz adds full clothing piece by piece then this mod will sell like hotcakes but the bandit skins ruin this experience.Maybe have the hearbeat that the instant you place the cursor on a person you hear the hearbeat and loud??

EDIT....NM this as a baclava mask is perfect and forced clothing is kinda a punishemnt yet it looks good.On the other hand good people will have access to moth covering bandanas,hats etc to also look kool but not evil. :)

The full 3D view is such an excellent idea allowing a player to view how they look yet still play in 1st person only servers.Bravo for this one!!I agree with Wraylir in a separate screen for outerwear to get rid of the excessive clutter.So when you first press G the full contents of the backpack should open up and below it the stuff you carry on your self in pockets etc.Then click on a body icon and all the stuff your wearing is there.Think the 3D body shot showing whats being worn and each individual piece of clothing/equipment in their respective boxes.Feel this would tidy it up greatly.

And for the love of realism,make it so you cant carry a huge toolbox,hatchet,crowbar,baseball bat all on your belt.This stuff should make the player have to choose what they will carry and all go in the back pack or if thats not gonna happen at least show the stuff on the 3D model.

Edited August 27, 2012 by wolfstriked

[pidian 19]

sweetjesus monkeyballs those are some sexy concept mock-ups

to those calling for more of a streamlined interface: have you ever gone out in the woods with various bags full of gear? i can say with conviction that whether im hunting, camping, backpacking or whatever, i usually have to dig through my gear a bit to find what im looking for. i say keep it complex but easy to understand. currently ARMA's interface is wonky just because its somewhat unintuative and you can lose your gear if you do something in the wrong order. thats bad.

keeping the inventory system somewhat complex to give the authentic experience of looking through your pockets or pack would be cool as long as its intuative (which it was for me at least during my quick once-over). inventory management is a huge part of the game, which is meant to be complex and hard. here's one more vote for not dumbing it down to appease the i-want-it-now generation

[Photolysis 25]

Justifying a bad UI design because "it should be complicated" to perform fairly trivial tasks is asinine. If I want to take something out of my pockets and put it on my wrist, or move it somewhere else, it is very easy and takes seconds to perform. Even in a large backpack this does not take that long, and the game could easily add a delay to represent you getting the item out.

Inventory management should be an important part of the game. The point you miss, is that inventory management should lead to hard and interesting choices. It should not be hard because of a clunky and limiting UI.

[L0G!N (DayZ) 149]

Justifying a bad UI design because "it should be complicated" to perform fairly trivial tasks is asinine. If I want to take something out of my pockets and put it on my wrist, or move it somewhere else, it is very easy and takes seconds to perform. Even in a large backpack this does not take that long, and the game could easily add a delay to represent you getting the item out.

Inventory management should be an important part of the game. The point you miss, is that inventory management should lead to hard and interesting choices. It should not be hard because of a clunky and limiting UI.

So you have a 30liter backpack and your watch obviously sunk to somewhere in the middle... GOODLUCK FINDING IT !!

As i said in some other discussion on the interface, you should realy try this out for real. You surely have a clock somewhere and some sort of backpack (and to make it 'real', if your backpack has full zippers around the front, only allow yourself to open the top) ... pack the bag full of stuff, small/medium/big items. Just toss them in, its not hard... Ok, now please, pick one item to grab out of the bag (or write the stuff you put in down, and have someone else pick for you), now use the clock to determain how long this takes! Do this for say 10 items, then please enlighten us on the average time it took you to get items out of your bag!

Now we don't wan't realism, in case you start to worry that finding things in your backpack will take minutes in DayZ now, we want 'authenticity' and that is not a MMORPG full overview interface! (this mostly relates to any bags being 'open' by default, that is just not authentic... As far as the slots on clothing go, i think there is a choice, in my DayZ-mod mockup for the interface (that is in the thread linked in my signature), i choose to keep these slots seperate from the clothing, but still very much the same in regards to the amount of slots clothing offers. This interface (with slots on the actual clothing) is just another way of doing it, i think it's even more authentic than the one i proposed (though my mock-up may be usable for the DayZ-mod, while this one here is more suited for the standalone). More than likely this interface will feel more authentic too, you will learn fairly quickly what can go where, and you will likely develope your own habbits of where to store what. Just like IRL, where you put certain items in certain clothing pockets just because you are used to picking them out of that pocket.

[koze 113]

Doesnt seem very practical, i think the arma3 gear inventory is the way to go

[Yatagan 62]

Moving the backpack (can be placed anywhere you want it and has a "return" button to put it back in place)

There you go, brilliant! That fixes the issue without forcing it into another place.

May I simply request one additional feature? (Which may or may not already exist) When you move the backback, then close it, please have the game remember it's last position. If I move it to the top left part of my screen then close it, please have it reopen in the top left of my screen. Otherwise every time I open it I'll have to move it to wherever again. :)

[joeyslucky22 638]

There you go, brilliant! That fixes the issue without forcing it into another place.

May I simply request one additional feature? (Which may or may not already exist) When you move the backback, then close it, please have the game remember it's last position. If I move it to the top left part of my screen then close it, please have it reopen in the top left of my screen. Otherwise every time I open it I'll have to move it to wherever again. :)

Yup, anywhere you would put your currently equipped backpack, it would save the location. The same would not apply for a backpack on the ground however.

Opening an equipped backpack could be done one of two ways:

- Dragging an item over the backpack

- Right clicking and choosing "open pack"

Closing an equipped backpack would work like so:

- If the backpack is not moved, dragging an item out of the backpack will close it

- If the backpack is moved, closing the pack is done by right clicking and choosing "close pack" or by a button I could put somewhere on it.

I've also given some thought to how one should carry large, heavy items like a spare tire / rotor / etc. A backpack could be placed on the shoulder slot and the tire could be worn on the back. putting a spare tire inside a backpack or on the body should not be possible so either this or a 'drag' mechanic could work.

[EduardBezer 11]

Some men say - Day Z is a killer of World of Warcraft. And there is a beginning LOL.

[Photolysis 25]

So you have a 30liter backpack and your watch obviously sunk to somewhere in the middle... GOODLUCK FINDING IT !!

Then you're packing your stuff very badly. It's a good way to get stuff damaged as well.

If I had a lot of stuff in there and/or it was properly packed it would not move around much at all. I would be able to store smaller items in pockets of the pack for easy access, and I would have a model in my head of where items were placed in the pack to speed the process up. Taking everything out would take a few minutes, but unless it was a large item at the very bottom it would not take that long to retrieve a few items.

I shouldn't have to fight the interface to do stuff in the name of things being 'authentic'. UIs are used because of the limitations of the software and are completely unrealistic by nature. A bad UI is no more realistic than a good UI. It's just a bad UI. The purpose of a UI is to be as minimal as possible, to display things clearly, and to allow users to interact with the software. If the UI makes things more complicated and difficult than they need to be, it has failed. Difficulty is also not the same as something being time consuming. Counting to 1000 is time consuming but very easy. Retrieving something from a backpack and moving it to a pocket is time consuming (in cases) but not difficult. The UI should facilitate this and make it easy for players to tell the game "I want to move this here".

I would support adding a delay and an animation to show your character extracting items from their backpack. That is authentic and fine and the right way to increase the complexity of inventory management in a realistic way.

[Yatagan 62]

For closing the backpack, also save it's open/closed state when the inventory is closed. If I hit G and close my inventory, with the backpack open, the next time I hit G the backpack should remain open. That would allow me too always have the backpack open and in view (Whenever the inventory is open) if I want too. :)

[joeyslucky22 638]

For closing the backpack, also save it's open/closed state when the inventory is closed. If I hit G and close my inventory, with the backpack open, the next time I hit G the backpack should remain open. That would allow me too always have the backpack open and in view (Whenever the inventory is open) if I want too. :)

Yes, that's how it would work.

I would support adding a delay and an animation to show your character extracting items from their backpack. That is authentic and fine and the right way to increase the complexity of inventory management in a realistic way.

To me, it sounds like you want the current ARMA2 UI, with a timed delay between moving items?

Please tell me how you would be struggling with my UI design so that I may improve upon it.