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UI Overhaul Suggestion.


Mustang

Feature quality  

12 members have voted

  1. 1. Yes or No ?

    • Yes, id like that new inventory.
      11
    • No, i like the current inventory.
      1


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Hello , so i was thinking of suggesting an UI overhaul to make it way easier to navigate through inventory.
(i love PZ) and i want it to be even better.
(Current inventory seems so old and outdated since it was created almost 10 years ago , and imho it could use some upgrade)
So here are some of my suggestions for this idea.

Also sorry for my poor english.

1. Overhaul of Character Cloth slots and Armor/Weapon Slots.
(this is just a image reference and could be done much better)
Pluses of such new inventory could allow players to easy understand what slots for cloth and gear is open.
Few things that can be added to this
- When hovering over one of cloth cell , open more cells to choose what slot to use (for example if we want a tie so we can attach it to middle cell)
- Adding name plates to cell items
- Adding option to rag the items from this screen
- We can also see our character in the left which is a bonus too.
- Adding slots for belts (i forgot to add one)
- Adding sub slots for other miscellaneous items

Cevilian.thumb.jpg.089969bb35374b8aca63cd9795fe7c48.jpg

Gear.thumb.jpg.a613cad0184dabdc3294fe671d156135.jpg
2. Grid Inventory , instead of a list one we have now. (Grid would make a great adition since its used now in almost every game as an inventory management style.
(the picture is just a reference, and could be done much better - adding more natural colors , names to the item cell , adding durability indicator especialy for armor , and other)
The pluses of such system

  • Easy naviagtion.
  • Sorting items (selecting item type in the left side of the scroll bar).
  • Rotating items , organizing inventory will also play a role now , since players will have to organize their inventory in order to carry more. 
  • Also there could be introduced a new system for bags and backpacks (actually for any container type item that) - so if a container gets damaged then less weight it can carry and some cells would go red making them unable to use until the container is repaired.
  • This new overhaul could also add a new put items in container that is in the backpack for example , if we want to put medicaments in our first aid kit , we could just open the kit in our inventory and put it there , which is much more easier to do then now.
  • Scrolling down-up via scroll bar in the right.
  • Fast understanding what type of item we have by seeing the color of item .
  • Adding Items durability indicator (i didn't do it in this screen , but as an idea we could have a durabiltiy indicator for Military Gear.
  • Same system could be used when searching for something , when the search is starting , showing a grid and items slowly appearing with a loading bar and also with an understanding if there are loot in loading cells).


NewInv2.thumb.jpg.650dca58646578bc2f74b8853c85c04f.jpg

3. Backpack and Containers Inside the inventory

  • This is a backpack in inventory (means its not equiped by player at the moment , so the one equiped by player can be either an option to select in the scroll bar in the right side or in player Gear inventory that i showed above)
  • While in inventory backpacks would take less space then they can actually provide (an image example bellow)
  • We can also see the name of the backpack.


Backack in inventory (not opened)
BackpackClosed.thumb.jpg.66a59922bc2caa452cb122d7ecefbf1e.jpg

Backack in inventory (opened)

  • When opened we can see thta backpack is offering more slots then its occuping in the inventory. 
  • Also the color of opened item would change to let the player see clearly what item he opened. ( also would be nice to open 2 backpacks at the same time in our inventory to move items from 1 container to another)
  • Another cool system would be to just drag items from inventory or other containers right into back pack that is in our inventory.


BackpackOpened.thumb.jpg.079a53577e7609ef5cb383720e9b35b6.jpg


Containers in inventory

  • Here is an example of a container which also grants a bit more space when opened)
  • An eample of a item rotation inside the inventory (rotation can be done for example by selecting item and pressing R)

RedContainers.thumb.jpg.242cd8036a19b87b8c8e1fd65bf193a3.jpg

Edited by Mustang
Added more examples
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Beyond amazing idea! Inventory in PZ works as is but this would take it into the next level. Sincerely hope devs take it into account!

 

I already spend so much time organizing my inventory and I consider it an engaging part of the survival genre as a whole.

 

It would be great to see this on containers that we loot as well, even going as far as showing a graphic that represents the container itself.

 

imagine opening a cabinet an seeing the objects inside represented as images. 
 

cool suggestion

Edited by Spiffosbestfriend
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It is really an amazing idea!

To be honest, I already have more than 400+ hours in this game, I personally have no problem with the current inventory UI, but maybe just because I already get use to it.

Grid inventory is really a realistic design, but just worry about it is not user - friendly enough, you know in PZ, half of the time is organizing our backpack. 

but consider PZ is really a hard core survival game, I guess realistic is more priority? 

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Personally I think as is the inventory system is "good" but could definitely do with at least a couple changes. I like your first option, mostly to hide gear items you're currently wearing in your inventory to keep from cluttering up the page. The second option you provide I feel just does not fit the game at all. Maybe it could be done? Over my lifetime I've already played enough inventory management simulator to last me the next century. I'd prefer just keeping the tabs as we have it, but with more specific item *types*

 

For example, instead of every single item being called "item, food, medical" and calling it a day, it could get a bit more specific to allow for better organization especially when trying to move loot into your safehouse/base. As is I typically carry around a good amount of meds in the current build, at least a little bit of everything for any situation. I don't store these in a medkit as that creates unnecessary weight when I'm traveling around. When I move everything into my stashes I sometimes accidentally leave too many medical items or don't realize I'm carrying a lot more than I thought.

 

The current UI has been revamped a few times over the years and I think it's honestly at a decent enough stage as it is. I started playing almost 10 years ago now and whenever I took breaks from the alpha to beta to now it seemed things changed enough to confuse me for at least a bit.

 

(Anything is better than the original inventory with slots on the left side of the screen even if I did play for months like that.)

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11 hours ago, Charleston said:

(Anything is better than the original inventory with slots on the left side of the screen even if I did play for months like that.)

The pain of this is much worse than the windows file explorer menu we currently have.

 

But there's plans for a rework in the future, at least. Grid-based has been brought up a lot but as far as I remember, it's not something they have any plans to do.

Removing the so-called top-level inventory and making clothing items have pockets to store things instead.

 

As said, this is a quickly constructed mockup by the developers from a blog, to give you a reference to what they're intending to aim towards.

mockup.jpg

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20 minutes ago, MadDan2013 said:

The pain of this is much worse than the windows file explorer menu we currently have.

 

But there's plans for a rework in the future, at least. Grid-based has been brought up a lot but as far as I remember, it's not something they have any plans to do.

Removing the so-called top-level inventory and making clothing items have pockets to store things instead.

 

As said, this is a quickly constructed mockup, to give you a reference.

mockup.jpg

I like this idea as well! its actually pretty great with a list, but having specific slots that add to the realism like this would also be really great

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6 hours ago, MadDan2013 said:

Removing the so-called top-level inventory and making clothing items have pockets to store things instead.

mockup.jpg

 

My main issue with a clothing/pockets inventory system is the way in which things would get convoluted, especially when you're wearing a lot of gear with a lot of space. I can see it working fine in some aspects (tactical rig, different pouches besides just your backpack) but when every hoodie and pair of jeans etc etc you have on has it's own inventory you end up having to scroll through tabs and tabs just to find whatever it is you're looking for. (Maybe I'm wrong and stupid I don't know)

 

The way I see it the best way around this is to take the approach in which whatever gear you're wearing contributes to your maximum carry weight.

 

If you have normal levels of strength and can typically carry 15/15, you put on jeans and you can now carry:

 

Jean inventory 0/4

Weight reduction I dunno 25%?

So now you can carry a maximum of 18/18. (Obviously don't even need weight reduction, just add a base 3 or whatever.)

 

Maybe this would lead to strength levels and the amount of weight you can carry getting decreases, where at mid range strength you can carry 8/8 before becoming overburdened. Then as you equip more clothing you can increase that over time. This would also add to the players choice in equipment where heavier gear that used to be seen as useless because of how much is slows you down over how well it protects against bites and scratches is now used because you can carry an extra 5-10 or whatever in your base inventory, as right now the vast majority of people just wear basic clothing (tshirt, hoodie, jeans, sneakers, etc) over armor (firefighters stuff or other) because that armor decreases your speed by 85% three times (Don't know if it stacks between pants, suit, and boots).

 

Also imagine getting your jacket ripped off of you by a zombie and becoming either overburdened or randomly dropping items down to your maximum weight and having to run off to recover.

 

 

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10 minutes ago, Charleston said:

My main issue with a clothing/pockets inventory system is the way in which things would get convoluted, especially when you're wearing a lot of gear with a lot of space. I can see it working fine in some aspects (tactical rig, different pouches besides just your backpack) but when every hoodie and pair of jeans etc etc you have on has it's own inventory you end up having to scroll through tabs and tabs just to find whatever it is you're looking for. (Maybe I'm wrong and stupid I don't know)

This issue is mostly solved with that system already. The former "top inventory" will act as a shortcut to those individual inventories, allowing you to view all items on the same screen. From there you'd be able to do whatever you want with those items.

 

This also is a more realistic approach as it gets rid of the general inventory thing, so you either store things in your pockets and bags or hold them in your hands instead of shoving them god knows where.

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1 minute ago, Burger_Time said:

This issue is mostly solved with that system already. The former "top inventory" will act as a shortcut to those individual inventories, allowing you to view all items on the same screen. From there you'd be able to do whatever you want with those items.

 

Yeah I see where you're coming from here, looking over it again I like it a bit, for some reason I thought it was just purely tabs on the sidebar and didn't realize you could see all of your inventory on the main page still.

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BUMP

 

the game is amazing but the one thing that always triggers me is how barebones the UI and inventory system is.

 

Also: Remove the default inventory and make clothes have item spaces.

 

If you start naked the ONLY items you can carry are the ones on your hands

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On 4/15/2021 at 11:48 AM, MadDan2013 said:

The pain of this is much worse than the windows file explorer menu we currently have.

 

But there's plans for a rework in the future, at least. Grid-based has been brought up a lot but as far as I remember, it's not something they have any plans to do.

Removing the so-called top-level inventory and making clothing items have pockets to store things instead.

 

As said, this is a quickly constructed mockup by the developers from a blog, to give you a reference to what they're intending to aim towards.

mockup.jpg

Thanks for bringing that up, here's the original blog entry for those interested: https://projectzomboid.com/blog/news/2019/07/reloaded/

 

The inventory definitely needs some work to do, I've talked about it with friends the other day, so let me add a few things we discussed as well:

  • The current inventory should at least have a search option, I mentioned it somewhere at forums before. Looking through the 200 units of unsorted loot lying in 4 surrounding floor tiles, full vehicle trunk, chest with organized or a full inventory (which in extreme cases can go past 50 by unequipping/filling stuff or as far as unlimited with debug/mods) or even regular bags with various little items can make finding specific items lengthy process, even if you know the name, they are sorted alphabetically and your screen is big enough and the window is extended. The search feature is already used in Item List menu in -debug menu. It's especially slow if you have low UI refresh rate (which in other hand helps performance). There should be a way to rebind inventory shortcuts too (especially ctrl+a as it makes your character move, or find a way for it not to move, as it's a well-known and easily memorable).
  • Adding to the previous one, some items share name, especially the water bottle and empty bottle share the same name. With the clunky way to check each item icon and fullness (see below), it's getting tidy. Some translations already implement different names for each bottle, and I make a post and pull request for English version as well, see my post here with poll here: https://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php?/topic/34297-should-empty-bottle-and-water-bottle-be-separate-for-each-item/ There are other name changes I submitted, some of which are already done in mods or translations.
  • Thirdly, seeing items properties, such as remaining amount (for drainables), durability (for weapons) or hunger value (for food) is tedious and while some properties appear as a bar, some appear as tooltip (such as thirst and nutrients for food, or cooking/freezing progress), some are represented as an icon/name (dirtiness, poisonous), so there's no inconsistency here. It's really hard to notice a missing pixel too, that's especially noticeable for not 100% filled water bottles but other drainables too.
  • Drainables and weapons should always sort automatically by amount/durability left, you can do it manually and I often do it, but it's tedious.
  • I love how drainables got a lot of fixes, though there's still some that should change weight depending on the amount left; most notably medicines. See also https://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php?/topic/29230-realistic-medication-names/
  • There's a bug where you sometimes can't fill the water container fully, a workaround is to put content to another container and then back in. Sometimes the rounding is weird though and you get more or less amount of water just by pouring it (while it could be a feature, it sadly is a bug of rounding floats at this stage).
  • There should also be more categories for items, there are mods that do that.
  • Finally, while I love how many items got it's use, having more use for them would make inventory management less tedious. I'd love if more items could be burnt (broken tools and new shoes), clothes torn down (see this thread) or smelting got back for metals, especially with jewelries, too much clutter, which also negatively affects performance. At least garbage bins can remove stuff now. Also, more use for existing materials like stones or electrical items (hopefully it'll come with the revamp down the road), and makeup items with more content to back it up, such as comb for certain hairstyles, rubber band for ponytails or cologne/perfume as antiseptic, basically the content of small but important suggestions, it'll pay back down the road eventually, generally lots of small jobs for Team Tanglewood that will benefit the whole game in the end. :)

The point being is while overhaul is much needed at some point surely, just the slow improvement on existing features should improve the situation a lot, too! :)

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