Inventory Management Overview


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Post Wednesday, 27th May 2015, 18:20

Re: Inventory Management Overview

pickled_heretic wrote:who actually played oblivion, skyrim, fallout etc. and was like "fuck yeah inventory management!!!"

Hmm, inventory management can be fun in tactical games like XCOM and SWAT, even CoD-style weapon slots can be great sometimes, but those are not RPGs, and inventory is VERY small.

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Post Wednesday, 27th May 2015, 18:24

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Siegurt wrote:I encounter limitations on what I can carry vs what I want to carry in every single game I play, I am forced to make some kind of sacrifice.


While this is true, you do have to make sacrifices - it doesn't mean the sacrifices you make have a large tactical impact. Many of the things I carry in my packed 52-item inventory are useful sometimes, but in practice I need them only rarely. Increasing the inventory size would just add more items that would be used rarely, for a small tactical impact.


Increasing my inventory limit in any fashion decisively and significantly increases my available power level for every fight after the point I would be full.

I deny it. Post your most recent dump with 52 items and tell me 8 more items you would like to add, that would decisively and significantly increase your power level. You might do things like add more elemental evocables - which can be useful, except that you probably already have lots of other evocables you could use instead. The increase in power level would be small.

Any infinite inventory system is plagued with interface nightmares, decreasing my enjoyment of the game (even if the solution has no tactical impact) I don't want to spend tons of real life time moving things to and from a cart. (Have you ever played nethack? After a point you spend tons of time just moving things in and out of your bag of holding, it is awful)

The real interface nightmare is having a constantly packed inventory and having to drop things frequently.

I have played nethack a little, not enough to encounter the problem you describe. I can't be sure if the same would happen with crawl. I doubt it since the main inventory is already 52 items, and you only would need to move the item when you need to use it. It would take playtesting to verify or disprove your objection.

Anyway, that objection only applies to the "cart" proposal I mentioned, not the "separate namespaces" solution.
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Post Wednesday, 27th May 2015, 18:31

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Pollen_Golem wrote:
pickled_heretic wrote:who actually played oblivion, skyrim, fallout etc. and was like "fuck yeah inventory management!!!"

Hmm, inventory management can be fun in tactical games like XCOM and SWAT, even CoD-style weapon slots can be great sometimes, but those are not RPGs, and inventory is VERY small.

yeah that's a whole different deal. honestly having fewer slots, fewer choices etc. makes the whole thing less overwhelming. it's like halo, well yes there's an inventory, you can have two things and you have a dozen or so choices. where every time you open your crawl inventory after you get the dreaded "pack is full" message you take a big sigh as you begin to sort through the comestibles and try to determine whether, when and why you need etc. on each line item.

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Post Wednesday, 27th May 2015, 18:33

Re: Inventory Management Overview

I find it pretty hard to believe that people are making real trade-offs in the inventory management game. I've never seen this as a real issue in any of my own games or in spectating others (outside of my first fifty games or so). I think berder and minmay are totally right about the negligible impact these decisions make with correct play.

It also seems to me that a-zA-Z / numbers if you use manual inscriptions that few people seem to bother with selection system is a poor reason to stick with the current inventory limits. Indeed, it would be preferable to eliminate a-zA-Z-based selection in favor of a numbered system (w/ inscription or = based reassignment) + free form string matching with tab completion for selecting items at prompts.
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Post Wednesday, 27th May 2015, 18:33

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Siegurt wrote: (Have you ever played nethack? After a point you spend tons of time just moving things in and out of your bag of holding, it is awful)

... but the main reasons for that are item destruction and encumbrance, neither of which are in crawl anymore. (except for the occasional item cursing)
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Post Wednesday, 27th May 2015, 19:09

Re: Inventory Management Overview

I really like a lot of the ideas tossed around in this discussion. It has been very interesting.

I think the best solution is infinite inventory with consumables not counting towards inventory.

My play style is to have a small stash where I put items I want to be able to access as a group. I put spell books in one pile so I can see all the spells I have available at one time. I store extra rings and amulets together so I can easily see what my options are and swap them all at the same time. In general, I carry around all the useful scrolls and potions until my inventory becomes full and then I have to start dropping things, generally by taking them back to my stash. Usually the only things I have to drop are ?Enchant, !CureMut, etc.

To me, and for my play style, here are the pain points with inventory:
1) I hate having to run back to a stash to get utility scrolls/potions. It interrupts the flow of the game, and takes up time - especially if I am interrupted by encounters.
2) Why can I carry 500 copies of one scroll but not 500 different scrolls? It makes no sense.
3) I like the search feature, but it takes a while to look through all the results to see what (for example) ring options I have available. And then I have to break continuity in my adventure to travel all over collecting the things I feel I should have been able to collect in the first place.

I do not think it is bad to require someone to use CTRL-F to locate a shield when they have finally decided to go one-handed, but wandering all over the dungeon for those 6 enchant scrolls for my new dragon armour is tedious.

I like the idea of having a magic stash that I can access anywhere, but I agree with others that moving things back and forth between stashes (like in Nethack) would be painful. So I think changing consumables (scrolls and potions at least, possibly food and spellbooks, etc) so they behave like runes or memorized spells is the best way. Consumables would no longer clutter up the inventory screen. They are always accessed via the 'q' or 'r' menu. If desired, they can still be displayed at the end of the inventory screen so players can scan what they have without having to press 'q' and risk accidentally using up some item.

It may be that removing the consumables from inventory also makes the 52 item limit sufficient for everything else and an "infinite" inventory at that point is not needed. Particularly if spellbooks and food are included. In that case we can still have the niceness of a-zA-Z assigned letters for our items.
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Post Wednesday, 27th May 2015, 19:41

Re: Inventory Management Overview

I have to say that "magic stash" would make my speedruns much less annoying. Speedrunning is not a design consideration, but anyway, it would help, while not affecting regular games much. Also, it would reduce Nemelex headaches with decks.

I don't think increasing inventory would really increase power by too much. On the other hand, I don't see ctrl-F status quo being a big deal either, as I said earlier.

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Post Wednesday, 27th May 2015, 20:28

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Berder wrote:
Siegurt wrote:I encounter limitations on what I can carry vs what I want to carry in every single game I play, I am forced to make some kind of sacrifice.


While this is true, you do have to make sacrifices - it doesn't mean the sacrifices you make have a large tactical impact. Many of the things I carry in my packed 52-item inventory are useful sometimes, but in practice I need them only rarely. Increasing the inventory size would just add more items that would be used rarely, for a small tactical impact.


Increasing my inventory limit in any fashion decisively and significantly increases my available power level for every fight after the point I would be full.

I deny it. Post your most recent dump with 52 items and tell me 8 more items you would like to add, that would decisively and significantly increase your power level. You might do things like add more elemental evocables - which can be useful, except that you probably already have lots of other evocables you could use instead. The increase in power level would be small.

Ask and ye shall recieve, Here's the inventory of one of my in-progress games (I'm at vault:4)
  Code:
Inventory:

Hand weapons
 a - a +8 great mace of electrocution
 b - a +8 blowgun
 l - a +0 demon whip of freezing
 v - the +2 great mace of the Hawk (weapon) {vamp, Stlth+}
   (You found it in an ice cave)   
   
   It inflicts no extra harm, but heals its wielder somewhat when it strikes a
   living foe.
   
   It makes you more stealthy.
Missiles
 d - 4 throwing nets
 e - 61 poisoned needles
 g - 6 needles of confusion
 i - 5 tomahawks of returning (quivered)
 r - 49 tomahawks
 s - 9 needles of sleeping
 w - 8 javelins of penetration
 O - 7 curare-tipped needles
Armour
 q - a +2 pair of boots of flying (worn)
 L - the +2 pair of fencer's gloves (worn) {EV+3 Dex+6 Slay+2}
   (You acquired it on level 4 of the Snake Pit)   
   
   It affects your evasion (+3).
   It affects your dexterity (+6).
   It affects your accuracy and damage with ranged weapons and melee attacks
   (+2).
 M - a +2 plate armour of magic resistance (worn)
 N - a +2 cloak of poison resistance (worn)
Jewellery
 f - an amulet of faith (around neck)
 t - the ring of Robustness (right hand) {AC+8}
   (You bought it in a shop on level 4 of the Dungeon)   
   
   [ring of protection]
   
   It affects your AC (+8).
 I - a +4 ring of slaying (left hand)
 K - an uncursed ring of protection from cold
Magical devices
 m - a wand of digging (18)
 n - a wand of invisibility (4)
 B - a wand of draining (5)
 C - a wand of slowing {zapped: 1}
 H - a wand of draining (5)
 Q - a wand of cold (4)
 W - a wand of disintegration (14)
Scrolls
 c - 4 scrolls of immolation
 k - a scroll of magic mapping
 p - 12 scrolls of teleportation
 u - a scroll of blinking
 y - 4 scrolls of recharging
 E - 11 scrolls of identify
 F - 2 scrolls of silence
 G - 12 scrolls of remove curse
 J - 5 scrolls of summoning
 U - 7 scrolls of fear
 Y - 6 scrolls of fog
Potions
 o - 9 potions of curing
 z - 3 potions of lignification
 A - 5 potions of brilliance
 D - 12 potions of restore abilities
 R - 2 potions of ambrosia
 T - 2 potions of agility
Miscellaneous
 h - a fan of gales
 j - a lamp of fire (inert)
 P - a lantern of shadows
 Z - a phantom mirror
Comestibles
 x - 6 beef jerkies
 S - 14 bread rations
 V - 9 royal jellies
 X - 5 meat rations

Slots I think I could cut with no tactical power loss in this game:
1. the demon whip (I honestly just picked it up to see what it's brand was, am pondering whether to drop it or maybe search for a decent shield)
2,3. Some food (I habitually have 3-4 slots for food, and probably only need 2 most of the time)
4. Potion of brilliance (I'm not casting spells right now, although I'm working up to being able to cast haste in plate eventually)
5. /Invis (I don't use this much, this is a Qaz platemail user, so invis is really only useful in a very small handful of situations)
6. /Slow (It's past the point at which I can reliably hit anything with this)
7. ?Remove Curse (I could probably just travel back to the stash for it, I am carrying them so I can wear-id things in V:5)

So I have 7 slots that I'm not really "using" effectively.

Slots I would often have filled that I don't with this character include:
!magic (not casting spells yet)
hat (This character has horns)
sometimes a shield (using a two hander at the moment)
!healing (For some reason I've only generated 2 potions of healing this entire game, and I've used them both, very annoying)
!might (I used my second and last of those recently as well)

Some things that have been generated in this game which I'm not carrying but would like to which would be tactically significant (the category you're actually asking about):
?torment (I have 50% torment immunity, so this is better than usual)
Stone of tremors (I don't know why I didn't pick that up)
6 decks of cards
1 Wand of lightning
1 Wand of draining (Although I have one, a second would let me blow through more charges)
1 Wand of cold

(that's 11 slots)

Some things that haven't generated but would be tactically significant:
Any additional number of branded javelins and/or tomahawks (yes I didn't skip any tomahawks or javelins that have generated in this game)
(that's up to an additional 10 slots for all the available brand types, if I didn't miss any in my mental count)
As mentioned earlier, !HW, !Might, Phial of floods, more wands I'm also missing several needle types.
Also all the big wands (teleport, healing and haste)

So that's 7 slots I'm using suboptimally (form a tactical standpoint), 11 slots I could take up with existing items, and another 20ish (17 plus an arbitrary number of wands/decks) of items that for one reason or another I haven't seen yet.

That's roughly another 25 slots above the inital 52 I could easily use in a *tactically significant* way (And this character is slightly atypical, in that he's not casting spells, and is missing an armour slot, and has only seen 19 wands total generate right before starting V:5, so he has more slots than some)

Berder wrote:
Any infinite inventory system is plagued with interface nightmares, decreasing my enjoyment of the game (even if the solution has no tactical impact) I don't want to spend tons of real life time moving things to and from a cart. (Have you ever played nethack? After a point you spend tons of time just moving things in and out of your bag of holding, it is awful)

The real interface nightmare is having a constantly packed inventory and having to drop things frequently.

I have played nethack a little, not enough to encounter the problem you describe. I can't be sure if the same would happen with crawl. I doubt it since the main inventory is already 52 items, and you only would need to move the item when you need to use it. It would take playtesting to verify or disprove your objection.

Anyway, that objection only applies to the "cart" proposal I mentioned, not the "separate namespaces" solution.

Yes was specifically replying to the 'cart' proposal with the bag of holding comment, as nethack's bag of holding is nearly identical from an interface perspective, to your cart proposal.

Separate namespaces would be better, but still an interface hassle as you have to jump through category selections to get to the item you want, Anything where there's a long list of things to choose from is bad (particularly when keyboard is your primary interface), presenting a long list of things to choose from once you've chosen which list to choose from is doubly bad, and having the list of things available to choose from grow unboundedly is triply bad. Find an unbounded inventory system that doesn't present me with an unbounded list and I'll consider it as a possibly not-bad interface. (The balance issue is something that would have to be addressed separately)
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Post Wednesday, 27th May 2015, 21:26

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Thanks for humoring me :) . I hope you don't mind that I'll be going over it with a fine toothed comb.

Siegurt wrote:Some things that have been generated in this game which I'm not carrying but would like to which would be tactically significant (the category you're actually asking about):
?torment (I have 50% torment immunity, so this is better than usual)

Even with 50% resistance this would be pretty marginal. Half of everybody else's HP - for 25% off of your own. If that's a favorable trade, it follows that without torment you'd be trading 1% of your hp for less than 2% of their hp. That means the whole fight is going to cost you at least 50% of your hp whether you use torment or not. If it's a fight like that, you should probably be escaping, not cutting your own HP.

Stone of tremors (I don't know why I didn't pick that up)

Because stone of tremors is the worst of the one-shot elemental evocables. You already have a fan of gales, a lamp of fire, and wands. This would improve your power only in the event that you ran out of all your wands and other evocables in a single fight.

6 decks of cards

Unless they're legendary and you identified the top card and it's good, this is questionable. Decks are pretty weak and dangerous without Nemelex.

1 Wand of lightning
1 Wand of draining (Although I have one, a second would let me blow through more charges)
1 Wand of cold

You actually are already carrying two wands of draining. Wand of lightning is weak unless you are in shoals and need it to break mesmerize. Swapping one of your wands of draining for the wand of cold would be a good idea.


To summarize what you said you could add, what you could get is mostly a little more staying power in a fight where you are using evocables (wands, stone of tremors, etc). It's quite unusual in my experience to run out of evocables unless my character is relying extremely heavily on them, such as if they are my primary damage. So I think these additions to your inventory, altogether would not have a large effect on your combat effectiveness.


Now from the items that you wish you could have:

Any additional number of branded javelins and/or tomahawks (yes I didn't skip any tomahawks or javelins that have generated in this game)
(that's up to an additional 10 slots for all the available brand types, if I didn't miss any in my mental count)

Branded ammo would be nice, but is really a fairly small percentage increase in your throwing damage, which is an even smaller percentage of your total damage. You mostly just need 1 kind of branded ammo, which will work on most enemies. 2 kinds will work on almost every enemy. If you get enough javelins that's really all you need.

As mentioned earlier, !HW, !Might, Phial of floods, more wands I'm also missing several needle types.
Also all the big wands (teleport, healing and haste)

Those could all significantly improve your character but you do have enough room to carry them as-is once you drop some of the items you said you could drop. It's more a question of finding them than carrying them.


Bottom line, I think you could get a little stronger if you had more inventory slots, but not a lot stronger.
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Post Wednesday, 27th May 2015, 22:50

Re: Inventory Management Overview

I suspect you have a different notion of how powerful currently-limited things can be than I do.

If I had unlimited access to wands I would use them *all* literally, as is the only reason I don't spam attack wands liberally in every fight is the inventory limitation. Also some recent changes to decks have made them significantly more useful without nemelex, try them in a current game, they aren't as good as elemental evocables, but better than they used to be.

Wand of lightning is actually better damage than cold/fire when you bounce it against low ev critters, which I admit makes it less flexible and therefore less of a priority than the other two, but I would definitely carry all the bolt wands that exist if there was no sacrifice to doing, and it would constitute a power buff for me.

I think it comes down to a different interpretation of whether the implied power increase is "significant" or not, which is highly subjective to say the least. Is 10% more power significant? 3%? 300%?

Also as an aside, whether having the most appropriate brand for each kind of target is a power increase, whether it is significant is another matter (in a practical sense, typically I also find that my total number of shots is often limited by ammo slots, as I find myself lacking enough of any one type to use just one slot for all my throwing needs)

There is also the issue of for whom it represents a power increase, for an experienced player who fights things one on one and is noise aware, having extra wand shots isn't as useful as it is for a newer player who may engage larger bands without as much care about positioning.
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Post Wednesday, 27th May 2015, 23:46

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Siegurt wrote:I think it comes down to a different interpretation of whether the implied power increase is "significant" or not, which is highly subjective to say the least. Is 10% more power significant? 3%? 300%?

Rather than talk about what's "significant," I think the important question in this case is how much of a power increase would it take before it upsets the game balance in a problematic way. 300% would certainly be a problem. 10% would not be a problem (remember meleebug), and in the particular case you gave I think the number is more like 5%.

What is a "power increase" anyway? With the exception of branded ammo, carrying more items is not a power increase at all for 90% of the fights, because in 90% of fights you don't need to use consumables. In the fights where you do need to use consumables, you can carry the most powerful ones already with a limited 52-item inventory, and you can rely on only those powerful consumables for at least several turns.

In my experience, running out of consumables or wishing I hadn't dropped a particular consumable is something that happens very infrequently. There are only two deaths of mine that I recall, that I can definitely attribute to not carrying a consumable that existed elsewhere in the dungeon. In one of them (before I had my first win) I didn't carry scrolls of vulnerability, and died to TRJ when I could have used vuln and hexed him. However, in that case silly decision making was a larger factor - I had plenty of time to tele away. In the other, I didn't pack scrolls of silence and died to an ancient lich in the abyss. Recklessness was also somewhat of a factor there.
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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 02:22

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Excuse me for butchering your quote:
Quazifuji wrote:The more I think about it, the more I think strategic item reform is the real solution here

turn all strategic scrolls and potions into some new category of item (say "glyphs" or something)
Strategic items occupy a separate, infinite inventory and don't count towards your 52 item slots
all potions and scrolls could remain as regular inventory items while the new strategic type would go in its own special bag

Basically, a huge portion of my stashing woes (not all inventory management, but at least backtracking) would be solved


The "glyph" idea is AWESOME. It doesn't step on the tactical import of limited inventory. It just partially mitigates stash management. It's not that likely to be vetoed against. Strategic items include:
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?amnesia
?enchant armor
?enchant weapon
?brand weapon
?recharging (small battle potential)
?identify (small battle potential)
?remove curse
?curse foo
?acquirement (perhaps)
!gain beneficial mutation
!gain mutation
!cure mutation
food, kinda, maybe, eventually? just the jokey ones like pizza?


Downside: The ID minigame is somewhat trivialized.
Compensation: Easy - if necessary, add a few dangerous scrolls/potions which would not be glyphs. Off the top of my head: ?recallHostileMonsters, ?banishment, !gainBadMutation, !loseExperience, !draining, !contamination.

Quazifuji wrote:Books could simply disappear and have their contents permanently added to your M menu.

Downside:
#1. Books could no longer be destroyed to forget spells
#2. if books are consumed on pickup instead of use, could no longer be burned by Trog worshipers
#3. M menu could get cluttered with spells you don't care about.

As for #3, not if they're displayed better: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=16303. I'd say, take it one step at a time, maybe? Either reform books first or scrolls/potions first. You don't have to actually change book mechanics to get what you want, so as to avoid #1 and #2. The "I" menu could be used as a second inventory (like a library) for the dozen or so strategic consumables, and the books too. Troggers could use yet another divine ability anyway, like "a d", specifically for throwing books (a Trog-guided pitch). For dropping a book to the ground from the "I" menu, there should be a command "D" you can select after viewing the book (in fact it should be the case now, from the "i" menu!). Seriously, nobody but a Trogger would ever want to F-throw a book. This is a slight buff to Troggers actually, because they'll have a bigger inventory of spellbooks to throw (but this is easily nerfed back, if you give less or negative piety for burning books).

Later, if glyphs are implemented and positively received, you could push for books to be turned into packs of spell-glyphs. You could suggest that Trog book burning be turned to spell-glyph throwing, where a spell-glyph turns into an explosion related to the spell school of the spell-glyph. That might be cool, though I don't think I would push it.
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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 03:01

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Thinking about this some more, my theory is that inventory management has an O(N^2) cognitive cost for me. That is: games with small inventory seem to also have much much "easier" inventory management. Not easier in that there are fewer choices to make, but easier in that I spend a lot less time messing with it.

So, I got to wondering: Would it be possible to make "gold-ify" (or, more modernly, "rune-ify") enough item classes to let Crawl have a 26-slot inventory, without breaking things too badly?

You could do gear (weapon, shield, boots, gloves, hat, body, cloak, amulet, 2 rings) for 9 slots.
You could do food for 1-3 slots (chunks, rations, maybe fruit).
You could bundle launchers with ammo somehow, for a variable number (let's say 4?) slots; this would depend on the character.

So, most characters would wind up with a total of probably 9-10 fewer slots than before. A huge deal? Maybe. Makes for harder choices. But I bet even with the harder choices, inventory management would take less time.

Most of the change would be post-Lair, as you don't have inventory pressure in the early game. This might be a way to subtly make the mid-late game harder without affecting early-game balance.

One last (positive?) change is that this would eliminate the slightly odd inventory differences depending on race (Can't wear armour? Enjoy the extra inventory!) and character development (conjurations mean you get ranged damage with less inventory pressure than crossbow chars).
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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 08:22

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Also books can, I think, be safely "rune-ified." (In case this is unclear to people, runes used to be items that you had to physically pick up and carry in your inventory, whereas now you pick them up and they are permanently carried with you, without taking up inventory space.)

I just did a count on two mid- to late game characters with close to full inventories, and rune-ifying currently equipped gear, missile weapons, books, and food would free up about 16 or 17 slots for me. So, net loss of 10, which would be manageable. Nemelex might become more annoying with this change, but perhaps that can be mitigated some other way, idk.

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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 12:36

Re: Inventory Management Overview

The problem is that Crawl has too many items and a too small inventory size, which makes people who are playing well carry around a packed inventory and have to stop to drop something very frequently. Reducing inventory size is a step in the exact wrong direction. A smaller inventory size may work in other games you have played, and if it does that's because those other games don't have as many items worth carrying as crawl does.

Rune-ifying armour, food and ammo makes no difference from an interface perspective - so what if they don't count towards the limit, they're still items you are carrying so they have to be managed with the rest of your inventory, and thereby induce the same cognitive load.
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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 13:39

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Without weighing in on the balance considerations, I can safely say I spend way too much time in each of my games agonizing over which wand, ring, or elemental evokable to drop to make room for some consumable I might possibly need, even though I probably won't (Like a potion of magic, brilliance, etc). So anything that reduces that would be very welcome.

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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 14:07

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Berder wrote:Rune-ifying armour, food and ammo makes no difference from an interface perspective - so what if they don't count towards the limit, they're still items you are carrying so they have to be managed with the rest of your inventory, and thereby induce the same cognitive load.

Well, I'm not a great player, so take this with a grain of salt, but:

I disagree. My set of "items good enough to carry" past the mid-game is quite stable. My gear, some good wands, some good potions, some good scrolls, some evokables, jewelry. It's very rare that I actually need to make hard choices about what those top-tier items are, so I look at a new item and either it goes in, or I bump something for it. It's also rare that something that was previously unimportant suddenly becomes important (books, =wiz, !magic are about it). For me, actually going through the 52-item inventory list is, I think, an expensive process, even when 15 items are "I am wearing this or will eat it soon." Organizing the list so those things were at the bottom might help.

Some kind of change to wands to make carrying around two of the same wand type not a thing might be worthwhile, too.

@and into: yeah, books, I thought about those and I agree. But they aren't currently things you carry much (if at all) as-is, so I didn't include them in this.
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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 14:26

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Berder wrote:A smaller inventory size may work in other games you have played, and if it does that's because those other games don't have as many items worth carrying as crawl does.


The suggested change would partially fix "late game is too easy/boring" and "all inventories look the same" problems. Currently it is optimal to carry 5+ rods, 3-4 evokers, several wands even with Evocation 0 and I don't think it is a good thing.

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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 15:18

Re: Inventory Management Overview

"All inventories look the same" is some kind of weird aesthetic standard that I just don't care about. It's not true, anyway, since there are Nemelex worshipers and mummies and octopodes and ranged fighters etc who carry different kinds of items. Also mages carry magical staves. You get the idea. The real problem is having a packed inventory and having to keep dropping things.

Currently it is optimal to carry 5+ rods, 3-4 evokers, several wands even with Evocation 0

Very rare are the games where I'm carrying 5+ rods. In most games 5+ rods don't even drop. In fact, in most games I carry zero rods, either because no good rods dropped or because I didn't train evocations. Rare also are the games where I'm carrying 3-4 evokers. 1-2 evokers is more typical, either because the other kinds of evokers didn't drop or because I need the inventory space for other things
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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 15:31

Re: Inventory Management Overview

In DoomRL the currently worn/wielded items are rune-ified, and it's godawful. They would better be crawlified instead. So, don't go that way.

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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 15:36

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Well, you should either make inventory space restriction meaningful or make all items that a player ever "touched" usable at any moment, making inventory size effectively infinite.

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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 15:44

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Pollen_Golem wrote:In DoomRL the currently worn/wielded items are rune-ified, and it's godawful. They would better be crawlified instead. So, don't go that way.

I haven't played DoomRL. Why is this system bad?
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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 16:01

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Suppose your inventory is full and you're not wearing a cloak. If you find an embroidered cloak, you have to drop something (like a ration) before picking the cloak up. Wear the cloak, pick the ration back up, carry on. Imagine the interface nightmare if you keep gear (hat, cloak) for occasional swapping, especially if your bag is stuffed to the brim with 26 essentials.

In DoomRL, it's also optimal to keep a full inventory. It's even worse there because there is a swap-slot for a secondary weapon (or ammo chain) that is also excluded from the 22-item limit, so the player is encouraged to put whatever they can in there. Furthermore, there are strategic consumables in that game, and most things don't stack (2 medkits take 2 spaces).

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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 16:31

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Pollen_Golem wrote:In DoomRL, it's also optimal to keep a full inventory.


I have stupid/crazy idea. Can we encourage having empty inventory slots? Something like give a 0.1% chance to spend 0.9 turn for movement with 51 items and 15% chance with 0 items? Of course it can result in stashing again so probably it is a bad idea with consistent items.
Last edited by Sandman25 on Thursday, 28th May 2015, 16:33, edited 1 time in total.

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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 16:33

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Sandman: Yes, but like some other ideas, it's not worthwhile building Crawl around this concept. (If you'd implement the idea without any further changes, players would drop all their food when entering a new level. Etc. Of course, it items disappeared when dropped, then ... :))

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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 16:34

Re: Inventory Management Overview

dpeg,
Thank you, I realized it soon after posting it. I even was fast enough to edit it before your message :)
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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 16:37

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Sounds like you miss the old inventory system where items had weights and you could only carry a limited amount of weight.
edit: but with penalties accruing from aum 1.

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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 16:37

Re: Inventory Management Overview

It was said upthread and is worth emphasizing: Part of the problem is too many types of items. This is the part that could be most profitably addressed.

There are too many types of wands, too many types of scrolls, too many types of potions, etc. Why is there a need for so many different types of hex wands? Why do we needs wands of both fire and flame (when both effects could easily come from the same wand at different levels of evocations)? Why do we need scrolls of identification and scrolls of remove curse, things that have at best a slight impact on the game especially past early dungeon? Why do we have food and why do we have seven kinds of it? Why do we need potions of curing and potions of cancellation? Why does the player usually make a choice between carrying a box of beasts and a bag of spiders and why is the right choice always the same? Why does stone of tremors exist?

nvjack suggests that inventory management has O(n^2) complexity, where n is inventory size. I agree that it's superlinear, but superlinear in the number of types of items available to be carried. The way to address cognitive load is by consolidating and removing items.
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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 16:38

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Pollen_Golem wrote:Sounds like you miss the old inventory system where items had weights and you could only carry a limited amount of weight.


No, no, that was awful.
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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 16:38

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Pollen_Golem wrote:If you find an embroidered cloak, you have to drop something (like a ration) before picking the cloak up.

That does sound terrible. You'd want to be able to interact with (wear, use scrolls on) items on the ground in your square.
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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 16:42

Re: Inventory Management Overview

mps wrote:It was said upthread and is worth emphasizing: Part of the problem is too many types of items. This is the part that could be most profitably addressed.

There are too many types of wands, too many types of scrolls, too many types of potions, etc. Why is there a need for so many different types of hex wands? Why do we needs wands of both fire and flame (when both effects could easily come from the same wand at different levels of evocations)? Why do we need scrolls of identification and scrolls of remove curse, things that have at best a slight impact on the game especially past early dungeon? Why do we have food and why do we have seven kinds of it? Why do we need potions of curing and potions of cancellation? Why does the player usually make a choice between carrying a box of beasts and a bag of spiders and why is the right choice always the same? Why does stone of tremors exist?

nvjack suggests that inventory management has O(n^2) complexity, where n is inventory size. I agree that it's superlinear, but superlinear in the number of types of items available to be carried. The way to address cognitive load is by consolidating and removing items.


Are you suggesting that players should be able to carry everything? IMHO we should have a smaller inventory and more items with equal (but different!) power, not less. I think it could be great if players would have hard time choosing between lamp of fire and fan of gales, for example.

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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 16:45

Re: Inventory Management Overview

njvack wrote:
Pollen_Golem wrote:If you find an embroidered cloak, you have to drop something (like a ration) before picking the cloak up.

That does sound terrible. You'd want to be able to interact with (wear, use scrolls on) items on the ground in your square.

fire arrows from the ground, read scrolls off the ground, recharge wands on the ground, evoke evokables from the ground...

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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 16:48

Re: Inventory Management Overview

I am suggesting that the problem being discussed here comes more from the number of items available than the number of slots to house them in inventory (or equivalently the way the items are counted in inventory). Your question carries a hidden assumption that spending time thinking about what to carry is interesting and strategically important or could be without massive changes to crawl. I reject that premise.
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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 16:48

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Sandman25 wrote: hard time choosing between lamp of fire and fan of gales

If lamp and fan (and stone and phial) went inert simultaneously when you used one of them, players would choose between them. It would also be more consistent with the new inertness mechanics.

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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 16:51

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Pollen_Golem wrote:
Sandman25 wrote: hard time choosing between lamp of fire and fan of gales

If lamp and fan (and stone and phial) went inert simultaneously when you used one of them, players would choose between them. It would also be more consistent with the new inertness mechanics.

No they wouldn't, it would still be optimal to carry them both (or all) so you have the choice about what effect to use (Since they're all useful for different situations, yes, even the stone of tremors)
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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 16:54

Re: Inventory Management Overview

mps wrote:Your question carries a hidden assumption that spending time thinking about what to carry is interesting and strategically important or could be without massive changes to crawl. I reject that premise.


I see, we have different opinions here indeed.

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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 17:03

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Pollen_Golem wrote:
njvack wrote:
Pollen_Golem wrote:If you find an embroidered cloak, you have to drop something (like a ration) before picking the cloak up.

That does sound terrible. You'd want to be able to interact with (wear, use scrolls on) items on the ground in your square.

fire arrows from the ground, read scrolls off the ground, recharge wands on the ground, evoke evokables from the ground...

Actually, you're touching on what might be a very good change.

Make it so that you can interact with consumables on the ground beneath you without having to pick them up.

You could:

- Read ID scrolls from the ground
- Quaff ID potions from the ground
- Use identification scrolls on scrolls and potions underneath you (maybe.. probably harder to code)
- Identify wands by standing on the same tile

This change would remove a lot of the tediousness assciated with the consumable identification minigame. If you have a full inventory, you wouldn't have to drop your bread rations, pick up the consumable you want to ID, and then pick your bread rations back up.
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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 17:06

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Siegurt wrote:
Pollen_Golem wrote:
Sandman25 wrote: hard time choosing between lamp of fire and fan of gales

If lamp and fan (and stone and phial) went inert simultaneously when you used one of them, players would choose between them. It would also be more consistent with the new inertness mechanics.

No they wouldn't, it would still be optimal to carry them both (or all) so you have the choice about what effect to use (Since they're all useful for different situations, yes, even the stone of tremors)

But the margin of optimality would be reduced so much that the benefit of an extra inventory slot will usually be greater than the benefit of having access to both fan and lamp.

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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 17:08

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Lamp and fan were just an example of very powerful items with unique effect. You can substitute the example with scroll of immolation and wand of teleportation, if you want.
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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 17:22

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Razawaza wrote:- Read ID scrolls from the ground
- Quaff ID potions from the ground
- Use identification scrolls on scrolls and potions underneath you (maybe.. probably harder to code)
- Identify wands by standing on the same tile

Actually I think that might be a very pain-in-the-ass change, except maybe #4. The only time #3 is useful is well into the midgame when you have lots of ID and just want to ID artefacts on the ground, especially on Slime:6. I'd suggest assigning 1, 2, 3 and so on to eligible targets on the ground in the "what would you like to identify" prompt. Don't bother with #2. #1 is mostly for when you're dedicated to enchanting your gear to the max, or ran out of amnesia scrolls and need to forget a spell, and these situations pop up maybe a dozen times in a long game.

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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 17:29

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Alternative solution is to create a new inscription and slightly change "D" command. When you are picking an item from the ground and you already have full inventory, the inscribed item is automatically dropped. If you use "D" command to drop "last picked up" item and there is an item with that new inscription on the same tile, it is automatically picked up.
So in typical case you will get to an artifact on the ground, will pick it up, will id it, will see that it is bad and will drop it back without any additional commands and without losing any items from inventory.
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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 17:33

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Sandman25 wrote:The suggested change would partially fix "late game is too easy/boring" and "all inventories look the same" problems.


njvack wrote:One last (positive?) change is that this would eliminate the slightly odd inventory differences depending on race (Can't wear armour? Enjoy the extra inventory!) and character development (conjurations mean you get ranged damage with less inventory pressure than crossbow chars).


Funny how some people want to level interracial/interbuild inventory differences while others want to accentuate them. :|
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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 17:39

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Pollen_Golem wrote:fire arrows from the ground, read scrolls off the ground, recharge wands on the ground, evoke evokables from the ground...

I think recharging wands on the ground sounds fine. The others, no; the turn it takes to pick items up means something.
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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 17:44

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Sandman25 wrote:...So in typical case you will get to an artifact on the ground, will pick it up, will id it, will see that it is bad and will drop it back without any additional commands and without losing any items from inventory.

Currently, I'd rather keep my inventory only 96% full so I could do exactly that without the aforementioned stuff. Few people, I think, want a brand new mechanic just to solve such a marginal issue. Plus, your suggested solution will take up as much in-game time as manually doing it.

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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 18:01

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Yes, interacting with items on the ground saves you like 1 inventory slot. Better to just add 50 more inventory slots and solve the problem once and for all.
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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 18:24

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Pollen_Golem wrote:Suppose your inventory is full and you're not wearing a cloak. If you find an embroidered cloak, you have to drop something (like a ration) before picking the cloak up. Wear the cloak, pick the ration back up, carry on. Imagine the interface nightmare if you keep gear (hat, cloak) for occasional swapping, especially if your bag is stuffed to the brim with 26 essentials.

Easy solution is to allow more than 26 items but prevent the player from moving if there are more than 26 items. An annoying problem is that the inventory would have to support extra letters aside from a-z, but it's worth it. Crawl already does.
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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 18:27

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Erm, sure, or just support the letters 1-9 for that purpose, so if they're filled up, you can't move anymore. It's a bad solution though.

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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 18:37

Re: Inventory Management Overview

I personally like the 'glyphs' idea for strategic consumables. And I don't think it has to be incredibly confusing for new players either: put them on the (a)bility screen, in their own section. That screen can show you how many 'charges' you have left for each type. There should be few enough strategic consumables for this to work without horribly cluttering the screen:
* enchant weapon
* brand weapon
* enchant armor
* recharging
* cure mutation
* beneficial mutation
* mutation
* identify
* remove curse
and probably acquirement and experience (though waiting on the last two is usually a bad idea, they're definitely not tactical items).

That's up to 11 items, on a usually 20-or-so line screen. Not great, but you usually won't have all of them, and the worst case scenario is that players need to scroll through the screen - I'd say that's strictly better than adding an entirely new category for them. One option would be to make this ability list have three views: show glyphs with charges (default), show all glyphs, show no glyphs. You could cycle through these views with *, similar to how one can show all skills or non-zero skills on the skills screen.

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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 18:38

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Pollen_Golem wrote:Erm, sure, or just support the letters 1-9 for that purpose, so if they're filled up, you can't move anymore. It's a bad solution though.
How is it bad if it removes the interface problem that you complained about? 1-9 doesn't work in crawl because they're used for dropping multiple items but maybe it works in DoomRL, never played it.

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Post Thursday, 28th May 2015, 18:41

Re: Inventory Management Overview

Probably dropping multiple items should be removed, it makes no sense in 0.16 (except when entering trove).

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