Inventory Systems

A well designed, simple inventory system can greatly improve a player's enjoyment of a game. This is especially true in games where players must frequently change their character's equipment to adapt to situations in the game, such as the Resident Evil series. So why do so many games design their system so poorly?

Here are some requirements for a good inventory system.

1. The inventory must be able to easily hold the items that are needed for regular use in the game. This includes things like weapons, ammunition, healing items, and especially plot items. If you do not have sufficient room for these "must have" items then the player certainly will not have room for other items that are of only situational value. You can certainly have a limit to how much stuff a player can have in their inventory, that limit just needs to be set with a realistic look at how much stuff players HAVE to haul around with them to be able to play the game.

For a game that does this well, look at Baldur's Gate II. You can have a party of up to 6 characters, each holding 12 items, in addition to three slots for weapon ammunition and three quick slot items (which can be magic scrolls, potions, and other consumable items) per character. Additionally, weapons and armor that are equipped on the character are not stored in those slots, they are put on the character's actual body. This system provides easy room for all of the needed items, allowing the player to use the remaining 12 slots per character for situational and plot related items. Additionally, the game offered some items, such as bags of holding, that could hold 20 or so items each, freeing up additional room.


The inventory system of Baldur's Gate

The game frequently requires players to hold on to items for a long time until the party can find a town to sell them at, so all of the inventory space is extremely useful. However, there is still depth to the system because even with all this room there are still many situations where players will need to decide what they want to keep. Additionally, items have weight so players need to balance where they put the suits of plate mail.

A game that executes this extremely poorly is Resident Evil 5. In this game, players have two characters with only 8 slots each that they can put items in. Every weapon takes up a slot, armor takes up a slot, every healing item takes up a slot, ammunition takes up a slot. So, if you want to have armor and three different guns, you only have one slot available for healing items. Additionally, the method for exchanging items between the two characters is extremely cumbersome when both inventories are full. This system makes the player frustrated when trying to strike a balance between necessary healing items and necessary weapons/ammunition.


The ridiculously small inventory of Resident Evil 5

2. Make the inventory easy to organize. In systems where items are stored in a long list, items that are used in combat, such as healing potions, should be at the very top of the list. This makes them easy to access when they are needed in a hurry. Ideally, the system should have options available to have the computer auto-organize the inventory for the player. This minimizes time spent moving items around on various menus to make room for the new sword that the player just found.

3. Pause the game when the player is accessing the inventory screen. There is nothing worse than being killed while trying to find a healing potion that is dug five screens down in a poorly designed interface. One exception to this rule might be that if the player is in active combat then it is fine for the game to keep running, to simulate the problems with trying to grab another weapon or something while you're in a fight. However, if the inventory is cumbersome this is not a good way to add tension to the game, you're only going to make the player mad.

4. Make the inventory menu large enough to easily see what you have access to. All of the Final Fantasy games do this extremely well. You have a lot of items, but the inventory screen fills the entire game screen so you can see everything in a few moments. Resident Evil 4 does this with skill as well. You have an attache case screen that shows all your weapons, ammunition, and such graphically and it only takes up one screen.

King's Bounty is a game that executes this extremely poorly. You have a screen with your character and below him you only have five slots with arrows on both ends to scroll through them. Unfortunately, every single item you pick up in the game, from armor to consumables, goes into this inventory and to use them you have to scroll through them one by one every time. This takes a lot of time and is needless-a separate inventory menu should have been created to ease this for the player.

5. Stop trying to represent item size in inventories by using grid based systems-such as making a battle axe take up 6x4 spaces. This is the method used in almost every action RPG-which is kind of funny because you end up being taken out of the action and trying to rearrange your items so you can pick up that new weapon you just got.

Have fun trying to fit everything in here!

It's much more convenient for the player to have a slot based inventory and let smaller items, like healing potions and magic scrolls, stack. Look at World of Warcraft for a decent system. If you must represent item size, use weight instead of grid hexes, as in Baldur's Gate.

There is one notable exception to this rule and that is in Survival Horror games. In these games, part of the tension is that you have limited resources in a hostile environment. In those cases, organizing your inventory actually adds to the tension because you have to consider whether every item is worth picking up. I'm low on shotgun ammunition, but I have to drop a healing item for it... is that worth it?

Resident Evil 4 had one of the best inventory systems I've seen for a game of this type. You have an attache case that you can spend money to upgrade to hold more items. This adds more strategy to the game because you can buy new weapons or improve those weapons, or you can spend the money to hold more stuff.


I'm not sure how Mr. Kennedy fits a rifle, a shotgun, a machine gun, and a handgun in this box, but it does work quite well with the game

With these five steps, every game should have a reasonably easy to use inventory system that minimizes the burden on the player and keeps the focus on the game, not on organizing your catalog of items.

Developer Focus: Single Player or Multi Player

After playing through the single player campaign of Starcraft II, one of the best RTS campaigns I've ever played, I had to think about whether it's worth it for developers to invest so much energy into the single player components of their games. All of the cut scenes, movies, voice actors, different maps, special units, and other material that's needed can eat up a huge portion of development time and money for a project. In a developer that isn't Blizzard, this may lead to an issue where there isn't sufficient time spent on the multi player and single player portions of the game to make them both enjoyable for players.

The problem is usually most obvious in the multi player portion of the game, as the single player is the most played part of a game, with only a small portion of the community continuing to play online. There may be gigantic balance issues in the game where one faction or strategy is basically impossible to beat. Support to fix these problems is also frequently lacking. Many developers take months to put out a balance patch, and even when it comes it may not be tested properly, causing more problems than it solves. This leads to an irate community and a hemorrhage of players until the problems are fixed, assuming they are at some point.

The problem is certainly not limited to RTS games, FPS titles and any other game that includes a online component as well. Many feature a superficial online system that minimal effort was put into, including a couple popular modes like team deathmatch and free for all, and that's about it. The real development effort was put into the game's single player mode. Sadly, in many cases the single player mode is also forgettable. I haven't finished a single player campaign for a FPS in an extremely long time and I have never played them more than once.

This begs the question, should developers continue to funnel ever larger amounts of money into creating a single player experience that most players will only complete maybe once or should it instead be invested into the multi player component, which may build a community that lasts for years, building a loyal community to the title?

The biggest barrier to the creation of games that focus exclusively on the multi player content is that most people who buy games do so for the single player. Many players simply don't feel comfortable with playing online because of many factors. They don't like to lose, the rudeness of other members of the community, latency issues, poor interface design of the online features, etc. Most players are unwilling to get their ass kicked by better players for the required number of games to develop enough talent to win.

Fortunately, many of these barriers are not insurmountable. Starcraft II introduced a lot of features that could potentially make new online players feel comfortable playing. There is the option to play a number of unranked games before diving into ranked play using special maps. These maps feature rock barriers at the ramps to the base, allowing a player to have some protection from attack so that they can develop some comfort with how the game works and how to build their army. Additionally, the first 5 games are played in a placement mode, placing the player in a league appropriate to their skill level. The interface is well designed to make it easy to figure out how to start games and get into the action. The map editor is great, giving mapmakers a lot of options for creating unique scenarios, such as tower defenses, adding custom maps to the community. In Warcraft III these custom maps became a large part of the online population, especially Defense of the Ancients, a custom map that developed its own tournaments! Lastly, the addition of achievements to the game allows players, even bad players, to feel that they are accomplishing something when they get new portraits they can use in multi player.

Although it is still unfeasible to expect developers to be able to focus exclusively on multi player content, if steps are taken to make the online experience more friendly to new players, it may be possible in the future. It will be interesting to see the data on the online player base for Starcraft II to see if these steps encouraged more people to play online or not. If they did, it seems like every developer who wants an online component should take similar initiative to get more people playing the multi player part of the game.

Web Site Comments

More and more websites allow users to post comments on their content. Everything from Youtube to Texts from Last Night to Yahoo News offers the ability for people to offer their wisdom. Personally, I don't believe that this is a positive trend. If you skim them you risk losing your faith in humanity. If you read them in detail you risk losing your sanity.

Let's look at an example from Yahoo news. Of course, this may be unfair because it mentions Barack Obama, the current bane of western society, but I think it will illustrate the point anyway: Obama says Government remains Committed to Gulf Coast Relief

The actual text of the article was four brief paragraphs mentioning that the well was capped and the Obama administration will still be providing some support to the gulf region in the aftermath of the oil spill disaster.

First 5 comments:
"go back to violent Chicago and be with your brothers and sisters, being president is not for you." by Monkey Shines

"Be certain to do it with BP finances.
Despite your persistent previcating." by Watchman 1

"focused like a laser. Deport this monkey to zimbabwe to be with his idol, robert mugabe." by Filthy Sodomite

"That's right, Mr. President. Spend more of our tax dollars bailing another corporation out of a jam. The American working man can work even more hours to get you more tax dollars to blow!" by I eat your h8

"nuke obama" by Weston Jakes

I could maybe see some skepticism as being reasonable, instead we get racism and ignorance from people with ridiculous names. Considering the anonymous nature of the internet, expecting a comments section to yield anything worth reading requires a dangerous level of optimism.

At least on internet forums, the audience tends to have similar interests and ideas so a community can develop, allowing people to know each other and thus be more likely to lead to productive discourse. Additionally, these sites require registration and they can ban your account if you are too abrasive and irritating in your posting. The work required in registering and re-registering if your account is banned tends to keep people who just want to vent some rage from joining the website to do it.

On a news website or youtube, no such community exists and so all you have is the anger of hundreds of people sent into a void. You could argue that they are similar to letters to the editor of a newspaper, but one key difference is that those letters are reviewed by the staff of the newspaper and only appropriate ones are selected. In contrast, comments can be posted to a website with no vetting by staff. The only reason these sections exist is to let people attach their ire to the productive work of someone else, which is quite sad. There's a reason that novels don't come with five blank pages on the end for people to review the book.

And yes, I am a hypocrite for allowing comments on my blog, but on the other hand no one reads my blog except some guy from Denmark so it doesn't matter.

Methods of Learning

I was explaining electrocardiograms to someone a few days ago and I was struck by how my method of understanding them was completely different from hers. I can read a couple paragraphs on how to read them and then look at an EKG and apply the text description to do a reasonably competent job. Other people need someone to personally escort them through a few EKGs to understand the concept. There's nothing wrong with this, some people pick things up best by reading about them, others through performing the action, others through illustrations/diagrams. I just find it interesting.

For me personally the method of learning that works best depends on the situation. Any type of skill that involves physically doing things, such as removing peripheral IVs, inserting a urinary catheter, or injecting medications, I need to physically do the act to learn them properly. Reading a description won't do much for me, unless the description is accompanied by a large number of illustrations. For instance, when I needed to learn how to disassemble my semiautomatic pistol, I was able to follow the directions in the manual to take it apart. However, I had to go to youtube to see how to reassemble it because the directions didn't show how far back I had to rack the slide and I couldn't figure it out. Presumably this is because I need some muscle memory developed to achieve success with performing a physical task.

On the other hand, I have a really good ability to remember random facts from what I read. I am usually able to give the correct answer to any question about the information in a text, even if it was only in a footnote. When some of the nurses asked me about the precautions associated with certain procedures and medications where I was working this summer, I recalled all of them, even though I hadn't done anything with that information for months prior.

Then there is the information that I can only work with if I associate it with other things. For instance, to remember which side is the dorsal side I always have to think about dolphins or sharks and that the dorsal fin is located on the top of them. I don't use this method for all that many things, but I guess a lot of other people must because most textbooks, instructors, and Dr. House will try and use simple analogies to help people grasp complex ideas.

Perhaps this is a big reason behind why teaching something shows that you really get an idea. Most of the time you will not be teaching someone who uses the exact same methods of learning as you, so you may have to try a different learning method than you normally use in order for the student to understand the concept. I know I frequently end up drawing diagrams, something I NEVER do for myself to help people out.

How do you learn?

Competitive Game Balance-unlockables

My background as a gamer primarily comes from RTS games. One of the first games I played was Warcraft II. I've played Warcraft III, Company of Heroes, Dawn of War II, and Starcraft II on the ranked ladder system, as an above average player of all of those games, though certainly nowhere near the top. However, from a RTS player's perspective, whenever I play a recent first person shooter I have to say that there's one element that turns me off from them as a competitive game-unlockable content.

In a RTS game, you always have access to all of the units of whichever side you command from the start of any multiplayer game. It wouldn't be fair if, say, you had to play 500 games before you were allowed to build siege tanks in Starcraft. This is crucial because building units that counter your opponent is a critical part of any RTS title, it wouldn't make any sense for those units not to be available. Players who played more games than others would have a huge advantage because they had access to more options in gameplay.

I've already talked about this to some extent in my post about FPS weapon choices, but I'm coming at it from a slightly different angle here. These unlockables aren't just annoying to gain access to and frequently duplicates of other weapons, they are clearly detrimental to game balance. In any public server you will have a range of players, from people who are just starting to rank up to players at the top rank. The players at the bottom rank are obviously at a competitive disadvantage because they do not have access to the same tools as those at the top.

In Modern Warfare II, a level 1 player is stuck with one of three default classes available, all of which have somewhat suboptimal equipment. They do not have access to any of the game changing killstreaks, such as calling in assault helicopters. This makes it so public servers are a joke in terms of offering fair competition, the players are obviously not on the same level playing field. There is some compensation for this fact in that the lethality of everything is so high in MWII-so even bad weapons will end up killing enemies in a few hits-but it still is a widespread problem of the game.

There is one RTS game that had a similar phenomenon, Age of Empires III. In that game, your faction had a default set of units, but you also could purchase cards that allowed you to call in special units, upgrades, and buildings from your home city. In order to access these cards, you had to play the game and gain experience to unlock the cards. You could then assemble your deck of cards for a game based on the ones you had earned. The problem is that unless both players had the same home city level, the player with a higher home city had an advantage in that he has access to more powerful cards. For instance, there are cards that allow a player to build a factory that constantly produces resources or heavy artillery units and another to build a powerful defensive fort that can also produce units. If you do not have access to either of those cards, you are at a huge disadvantage against a player whose deck does contain those cards.

I can see why these unlockables are so popular in new games though, simply because of the achievement systems that are running rampant through every game now. The little emotional boosts granted by getting new weapons and equipment help keep players happy and feel like they are progressing in the game, even if they are getting constantly creamed by better players online.

Another important difference between the genres is that FPS games do not typically have a ladder whereas RTS games have one that ranks players worldwide against each other. Therefore, you could treat non-tournament play in a FPS as completely irrelevant and thus there is no need for it to be balanced. After all, in FPS tournaments there are frequently restrictions on what you can use, so the massive number of unlockables are reduced to a few choices that can be considered fair to all teams.

Still, for a game to be taken seriously online every player needs to have access to the same tools and options, meaning they need to have access to everything that is available in the game that affects the outcome. If you want an achievement system in your game, you can still do that without limiting access to weaponry. Starcraft II is an example of a game that does achievements well. The campaign has a ton of achievements for achieving challenging feats and there are a lot of achievements for winning certain numbers of games. If you accomplish these you gain access to new portraits that can be used for your avatar in the loading screen of the game. This still gives that same feeling of accomplishment to players granted by unlockables, but the balance of the game is not affected at all. For FPS games you could add different costumes, emblems, and other such cosmetic changes to players and it would give that distinction between players without requiring the fairness of the game to be changed.