If you had to make a game that didn't use icons for inventory (like WoW , Diablo, etc) what solutions would you propose?

My current game has an inventory system that is icon and paper-doll based, very similar to WoW, but I'm considering innovative alternatives.   

For one, I  like the idea of allowing the player to manipulate actual 3d objects.   My thought is that the player could  drag and drop the object onto the character directly.  The game  might spin the character/camera around,  zoom into an equipment location,  and/ or highlight valid equipment locations for the selected object

Of course, this means that characters would have actual backpack objects on them that would open up to reveal their contents (3d objects). 

It certainly nods to realism, but that might be fine if it's done correctly.     

Any thoughts?   

Remember assassin's creed 1? It had a very basic inventory system, you only had a handful of weapons and quest items (if I remember correctly, you didn't see those). I always liked the simplicity of that.

I don't know how many items you plan to put in your game, but if it's not too many, why not get rid of the interface altogether? If the player carries the weapons visibly on his body, just assign a few keys and there you are. Maybe make them a little more intuitive by making the keys the initial letter of the weapon's name.

Today's gamers get spoiled with in-your-face icons, fast travel systems and quest markers. Whatever happened to immersion?

Also it may save you a lot of coding. I would have considered this kind of simple solution myself, but I ended up with too much stuff.

That's just a few random ideas of mine.

I remember playing Ultima 7 and they had a backpack inventory system (2d graphics) where you'd just drag and drop everything into a backpack and you'd have to rummage through it to find what you're looking for, at times never finding it because various graphics look very similar to each other. Kinda cool in that it's a little more realistic, except when you stuff numerous swords in. But it was quite a pain and somewhat annoying to actually find anything. And I swear things got permanently lost on occasion which is very disconcerting.

I do kinda like the inventory systems where you have a 2d grid representing backpack space and you have to make sure the stuff you have fits within that. It's a bit more organized ad easier to find things than the backpack idea. Maybe some kind of 3d version of that could be interesting.

On 2/2/2018 at 12:45 PM, kseh said:

I remember playing Ultima 7 and they had a backpack inventory system (2d graphics) where you'd just drag and drop everything into a backpack and you'd have to rummage through it to find what you're looking for, at times never finding it because various graphics look very similar to each other. Kinda cool in that it's a little more realistic, except when you stuff numerous swords in. But it was quite a pain and somewhat annoying to actually find anything. And I swear things got permanently lost on occasion which is very disconcerting.

I do kinda like the inventory systems where you have a 2d grid representing backpack space and you have to make sure the stuff you have fits within that. It's a bit more organized ad easier to find things than the backpack idea. Maybe some kind of 3d version of that could be interesting.

Yes,  I'm actually considering the U7 approach.     It would certainly reduce the level of coding required.   

I also really like a feature of Utlima Underworld's inventory, which allowed you to have containers inside containers.   

Inventory Tetris is something I'd like to avoid, but I can't deny the fact that some players love organizing their inventory. 

On 2/2/2018 at 12:06 PM, Felis Nigripes said:

Remember assassin's creed 1? It had a very basic inventory system, you only had a handful of weapons and quest items (if I remember correctly, you didn't see those). I always liked the simplicity of that.

I don't know how many items you plan to put in your game, but if it's not too many, why not get rid of the interface altogether? If the player carries the weapons visibly on his body, just assign a few keys and there you are. Maybe make them a little more intuitive by making the keys the initial letter of the weapon's name.

Today's gamers get spoiled with in-your-face icons, fast travel systems and quest markers. Whatever happened to immersion?

Also it may save you a lot of coding. I would have considered this kind of simple solution myself, but I ended up with too much stuff.

 

That's just a few random ideas of mine.

oh right, I totally forgot about that weapon wheel.   

The RPG game I'm creating allows the player to create robot / cyborg characters only.   I made this choice because I didn't want to create a ton of clothing options.  With robots, equipment slots are reduced to hand held items and a few augmentation items.    It's also a multi-character party based game, allowing the player to create up to 6 characters.     So the total number of items a player must deal with is distributed across many characters, allowing for more realism. 

With that said, I do like the idea of looting corpses and chests.  I just have to think about how that would work with such a system.