Mattias

Quote: Jeff have replied that Avernum 5 will not change now but for the next game engine redesign will be probable. So this is now purely an design exercise. I do hope that this will lead to discussions and improvements in future games though. Auto unencumber would be nice but theres alot of problems with that. It would change around equipment without your knowledge and how should it prioritize? Tough nut to crack and probably not worth the effort in terms of time investment.

Haha! Alright that was lots of really good points. I was thinking totally inside the Avernum 6 box still with known limitations. But as you said "the gloves are off" in a way Ok, comments: - Slots will still be needed whether you go with all items same size or different size. Somewhere in the GUI you need to show what you have in an organized way. Slots may not be seen as a graphic boundary but they will still be there. For the auto arrange there are several schools of thought, with sub filters. But it can be really useful if game have tons of lot - Dynamically labeling is good but limits looting to one area/ground/container/body. Even better would be a search all area or something like. - Showing items equipped is a given, all would like that. But the resources needed to create that for Spiderweb softwares games...hmm. Would be great though. - Equipment stat display is a must. The minimum is names and most prioritized stat. But you could probably make up different stat display rules for different categories of items. - Auto placement is great concept - Aggregate party items/equip could be done quickly by dividing the pack/quick item area and the Equipped area and then have some arrow next/previous to be able to shift around between party members. Was toying with the idea. Having one party item inventory would be unwieldy me thinks. As it is now you organize stuff on characters. Would need to do some testing to decide on the merit of that. But seeing all characters Equipped at the same time would be a godsend when you min/max item deployment. - Multi select is a god point. - Predefined Outfits is great when you have games with lots of parameters to fiddle. In the Avernum series you mainly switch around rings, amulets and shields for resistance bonuses. Fiddly but not that critical. - Swanky graphics and bonuses...well that's more a matter of personal taste. It would be fantastic to do a next generation Avernum but what future Spiderweb games will contain is not in my crystal ball...and then its reeeally hard to do design. Great comments though. What do you think of the design in terms of what we have to live with then?

Hi again. This is a new version of the inventory redesign suggestions i started here . Jeff have replied that Avernum 5 will not change now but for the next game engine redesign will be probable. So this is now purely an design exercise. I do hope that this will lead to discussions and improvements in future games though. Avernum 6 inventory redesign 2 with equipment stats off Avernum 6 inventory redesign 2 with equipment stats on Major Changes 1 Added equipment stats toggle that switch on and off the display of numbers for all equipped items armor and weight (Top priority info for items in most cases) 2 Added permanent display of names for equipped items. 3 Added info about Armor, Resistances and To hit. Absolute must when testing equipment variations for easy of use. 4 Loot got an own area. Its not inventory, nuff said. 5 New layout of areas, more air, less cramped feeling 6 Redesigned and optimized the hover info box. The old one was cluttered. The info must be presented right. Nice changes 7 Empty item slots now look like slots in stone. 8 Item graphics got a slight bevel. 9 The coin icon got silver and bronze coins also. 10 Buttons got embossed, looks more part of the stone background 11 Added back the usage info about items. In my personal opinion unnecessary but could help noobs. Motivated likes and dislikes and criticism is welcome as before! Regards / Mattias

Dual wielding makes a strong case for having the offhand slot (shield/dual weapon)closest to the hand on the character image instead of underarm/hand slot(gloves/bracers). Regarding the target icon my thought was that there is no official abbreviation ( Ive seen TH eg. To hit. If there is one enlighten me please) and the target image is generally considered standard for communicating visually that there is some value connected with hit chance . But then we should be consistent and remove the armor icon also. What's the official abbreviation for Armor? /M

Took a look again at the equipped area and came up with a new layout. Armor to the right, weapons close to hand, shield on right but not closest to hand since its optional( this can be disputed of course) cleaned up a bit so its pixel perfect distances. feels more natural now. Its also more heavy on the right side design-wise but it gives a really good overview. look here: Equipped area v2 Thanks by the way for the critique all! A professional effort regarding gui design takes more than half a day so its not finished, more of a very nice sketch. But i'm pleased with the response. /M PS as noted, the target icon is To hit chance modifier DS PPS disregard the armor total value, it bogus DDS

Whether the loot is to the right or left is not really that significant for old players, that I agree upon. However its non standard for new players therefore raising the acceptance bar ever so slightly. I will see if there's an alternative since I have just spent a few hours on this so im sure there's even better designs waiting. The "we've gotten used to it" doesn't hold that much water for me. The current inventory isn't that old and its not exactly brainsurgery to learn an inventory. Usability rules. The important part is the lower area with the new equipment list and to a lesser degree the rearranged equipped slots(which make some sense now and give you a quick overview.) so that seems to hit the right spot anyway. I want that improvement so much!

I'm afraid you've misunderstood. Im completely aware of how every spiderweb games inventory worked. "My" new list is for the eqipped items only, in a fixed order. This makes it very easy to min/max equipment armour, weight and hit penalty's.

Hi. Old fan of spiderweb and lurker at heart. Slow day so I took a long look at the inventory for Avernum 6. There are lots of usability issues that i wanted to address and some cleaning up. As players of spiderweb games we spend a lot of time in the inventory. Take a look at Avernum 6 Inventory redesign Original here original official avernum 6 inventory Major Changes: A completely new equipped stat list. For every min/maxer out there...Armor, weight and hit chanse modification...the amount of time hovering and rightclicking ive spent is these games are ridiculous ...anything to cut that down is godsent. Just a simple table populated from the db...no biggie right, Jeff? Minor changes: Completely re layouted the page for enhanced work flow. We western people read from left to right, up then down. When scanning what loot we want it should be the first thing we see. The old placement is awkward and goes against all basic usability design. Organized the equipped item boxes in a logical way(well atleast one of the many logical ways compared to the old version), armor on the right, knick knacks to the lefttop and weapon/shield bottom left. Nice changes: Color synced backgrounds, former was hmm Button now CLOSE not OK. Ok is to confirm something. we just want to close the page. Removed nasty yellow orange color also. No more : after each label/title. They had nothing there to do. Renamed On ground to Loot, since sometimes the loot isn't at all on the ground Coins is boring and no feel..added nice stack of coin icon Added subtle dropshadows. Toned down the black lines to 25%, they dominated the space, should be subtle. Think that was it. Hate or love? Critics are welcome. I opted for no drastic changes since Spiderweb always been about content...but usability and design is very nice to have also. My wishlist for Avernum 6. (probably waaaay to late in development to address i suspect, but hey, a man can dream) If by some miracle the Man want to implement this or need an idle graphic/design hand id be glad to help pro bono.