UI Discussion: Player Inventory Screen

[Jat]

Hey guys,
As we're working our way towards release it's about time we start discussing the UI with everyone. It's a pretty broad topic and there is a lot of different areas we can have a look at, so I'd like to keep it simple and start with the Player Inventory Screen.

• What do you like about the current inventory screen?
  
• What are the current problems with the UI and what would you want it to do instead?
  
• Do you have an example of the sort of inventory screen that you would like to see on ARK?

Any feedback you can provide would be great! It doesn't have to be limited to these points above, but keep in mind this discussion is directly about the Player's inventory screen ;). Though obviously, there's a bit of work we have to do across the board and we realise that - so let's get started!

[🦊 Hermit]

Custom stack split size would be nice.

Instead of dragging half stacks back and forth, then using the 'swap 5' and 'swap 1' modifiers to get the exact amount of items I want, It'd be nice to just click on the stack then click a button marked 'Split'. This brings up a new box with two text input fields: 'Number of Stacks' and 'Number per Stack'.

*) Number of stacks would split the items equally between the number of stacks the player inputs (extras rounded up).

*) Number per stack would split the items into as many stacks as it takes to get the input number in each stack (extras rounded down).

*) If both options are used together, then the game outputs as many stacks as the player requests with the defined number of items in each, and any remainder are consolidated into one extra 'remainder' stack.

So if a player wants to split meat into single item stacks for spoiling, they just select their meat and input 1 in the 'Number per Stack' box. The game devides all the meat into stacks of 1.

If players are splitting stacks of arrows equally between three of them, they can take the arrow stack and input 3 into the 'Number of Stacks' box. The game splits the arrows into three stacks, with as close to equal number in each as possible.

If I want to craft a blueprint twice that takes 12 metal ingots and I have a stack of 50, I can put 2 in the 'Number of Stacks' box, and 12 in the 'Number per Stack' box. The game would separate out 2 stacks of twelve ingots, and all the remainder would be shuffled into a separate stack below them.

[Cataclisto]

Not just the player inventories, I would add in a small checkbox in ALL inventories to arrange by what we have selected for sorting perminatly
Example:
Every time I add something to a inventory it would add it alphibetically and in order with that selected, This way its not a temporary ordering thing that gets reset when a item moves. And would allow us to easier manage things like berries

For the other "player" inventory stuff i would add/change:
1. A button, or something creative in our inventory screen where we can dye our dropped lootbags, like maybe a 3d preview of our bag, allowing us to custumize it, and dye it. I'd personally paint mine orange and possibly make it a little larger then it is now.
2. Show the selected tool damage (it would automatically calculate the players melee into it), or selected gun/crossbow damage + topar it can deal each hit, this could be above the quick item slots on the left side.
3. Make the 4 buttons in the right corner (profile, tribe manager, order groups, close) be neatly placed in a straight line - - - - across the top instead of all bunched in the corner, the screen looks like its lowered to show them buttons together right now.
4. A auto stack toggle, some items it gets annoying when you have multiple stacks of something that you need to manually stack yourself.
5. Use X, make X options.

This is starting to feel like a rant :P, anyway I cant really say i like or dislike the current screen, I'm used to it after 3k hours playing this game, the only thing that bugs me the most is the light on the players wrist when he opens inventory, wouldnt mind changing its color or turning it off, guess you could allow us to pick the inventory background color too instead of the default blue...

[☦]

Allow us to split and combine stacks in inventories besides our own.

[Lv1 Magikarp]

I think it's great how it is but we need an option to hide certain engrams for example we are forced to learn wood foundation etc but I for one never use those and are just unwanted in my crafting menu, causing me to search through more engrams.

Non ui related, where are the behemoth walls at?

[John_J_FROST]

just make it like this..

http://ipic.su/img/img7/fs/ARK_UI.1480494763.jpg

[KI113R L3M0NZ]

So far the user interface is pretty good, there are a few flaws that could be looked into. Some of these include: FPS drop in engrams screen, quality of icons aswell as a few organizational issues.

A few people have confirmed that when you are in the engrams menu that it causes frame rate issues, this could be caused by effects, however I am not 100% sure. This is not that big of an issue, but it is something that needs to be looked at.

The quality of the icon images could be touched up or changed a little as well as your thirst and hunger indicators. Again this is not something that causes the game to break or anything. I personally find the spoiled meat image looks more like a lump of grass than meat (IMO). Another possiblity to add to the UI is a 3D item inspector, just something that might add to the inventory.
Lastly the organization could be better.

[Bar]

probably already said but a auto sort and groupings would be nice so its easier to find things instead of now where it all just goes in in whatever order it happened to go in. also when i say auto sort im meanting like 2 1/2 stacks auto combine into 1 full and a 2nd leftover stack instead of its current like 10 stacks of which none are full

[SourceUnknown]

The only thing I would like to see added is more hotbars that can be mouse activated, much like some of the newer MMORPGs. Hold a designated key down and the mouse arrow pops up to click hotbars, etc. Would like to see the ability to set how many you want on screen at once and the ability to move and lock in place. Otherwise Im already used to the UI but having more hotbars would be nice.

[Nethiuz]

When i ALT TAB out of ARK in inventory then come back, mouse cursor is gone and esc doesn't exit it.
Please fix this and i'm happy.

[hullu hullu]

Holding right mouse button on a item stack in inv should bring up a little popup with a bar with 0 left from it, stack size right, when you move your mouse up or down or left or right, the bar changes the numbers, releasing the right mouse button then splits the hovered stack to the displayed amount.
the value should snap each 10, so its easier to use.

[Xium82]

First of all I would like to say I like many of the already mentioned ideas and I truly hope you are concidering them.

Here is what I would like to see:

- Possibility to change the color of the entire UI since I have to admit I am not specifically fond of this “dull green-ish” interface especially since it makes it hard to see it clearly sometimes (e.g. checking stamina of bird while flying towards the bright blue sky)

- I would, as already mentioned, also prefer to have the ability to exclude gathering (per trigger of individual inventory – also dino’s) certain items. Hate to clean out all of the berries when I go harvesting material with my Anky

- In addition it would be nice to have the option to assign certain materials to a specific container so we can basically just transfer them with “transfer all” instead of clicking all of them individually.

- Even though this primarily concerns dino’s but why can we not just assign certain items as not removable from inventory so we could set the amount of berries we have in a Dino and can just “transfer all” of the gathered resources into our inventory.

- I also support the suggestion to give us more options with stacks. Why do we have to carry several stacks of the same material in our inventory which just clutters everything and especially given the fact our personal inventory is limited by weight. So why not stack one resource indefinitely as long it is in our inventory and the dino’s (I admit this might lead to confusion when it comes to store them in containers)

- Why you have to write the commands for “half-stack” and sorts why not just implement them as additional buttons with a tool-tip of the assigned button once you hoover it?

- An option to split a stack in x-amount would be nice as well but here I would go further than the already mentioned 1-stack. Couldn’t we have the option to set an amount we want a stack to split up to (text field so we can stack from 1 to whatever we want) and execute the command via button in UI or Keyboard

- The mentioned issue with the icons is bugging me too sometimes. Not only is this evident with kibble but also with the feces. I have to admit I am a big fan of the dung-beetles so I always have to trigger “Q” to see the text of the item because other than “Massive” and “Human” feces there is no difference.

- The folder topic is one I would like to see changed as well. As in a previous answer here I enabled it to make my crafting scree less cluttered but ending up searching for everything anyway since it is no clear structure. There is definitely room for improvement because I would like to use the Folders

- Additionally I would like to see the crafting-recipes (the ones I can trigger from my inventory) to be merged with the ones of the crafting station I am currently using so I do not have to search 2 Inventories for the recipe I want to craft if I am not remembering where it was. This would also eliminate the fact of me having to move material from the workstation into my inventory to craft it there should I have been mistaken and transfer them back to the workstation again.

Ok since this turned out to be a longer post then I had intended I will stop for now. Should you implement all of this you will be too busy for more anyways 

[76561197995972689]

•What do you like about the current inventory screen?

- the optical transparency
- the hotkeys
- it's a all-in-one overview (stats, effects, inventory, hotbar, armour)

•What are the current problems with the UI and what would you want it to do instead?

- you're unable to interact while it's open, i'd wish something more like the Guild Wars 2 interface (seperate ingame windows that you can adjust to your needs and leave open while playing, seperated into different sections (armour, stats, inventory,...)
- is a full screen UI really needed?
- "Remove all" is kinda unneccessary (or misplaced)
- The window should be adjustable in it's size and can be moved across the screen and stay open while playing.
- Similar to "T" for Transfer, you should be able to hover over the item and press "1" for Hotkey 1 ect.

•Do you have an example of the sort of inventory screen that you would like to see on ARK?

My suggestion (beware, imba paint skillz incoming) would be something like this:

{LINK REMOVED}https://postimg.org/image/a6xe9klf3/

(Only one window can be open at a time but you can switch with hotkeys)

While ["i"] let's you jump to the "inventory" section, ["c"] maybe "crafting" and ["h"] for stats or whatever.

And honestly all the features like folders, stack sizes ect.... that's just luxury, keep it simple but practical - we don't need gadges that only 5% use. A "simplified" passive interface with adjusable position and size (with given min. and max. size) would already be close to perfect. If you can get rid of Drag & Drop and instead use hotkey, this would be the dot on the i.

[Keelty]

i'd say that most of the player inventory ui is pretty nice as is, a few small options would be nice, like split stack to 1 or a way to split a 20 stack of something to say 5 without splitting it 2 times, a option to consume stack (that goes for player and dino really) and also the option for both player and dino to opt out of picking up certain items, say you're out farming berries with your preferred dino and you only want narcoberries and mejo, you can remove the pick up of everything else

[76561197995972689]

Originally posted by Toooni:

If you really release the game in december with the actual state (You aren't able to fix all the problems in one month, thats absolutely impossible!), then you will destroy the gamerbase completely.

I've been told that release has been set back to february 2017. However, couldn't find a legitimate source for it and even february 2017 sounds VERY optimistic.

[hullu hullu]

Originally posted by hullu hullu:

Holding right mouse button on a item stack in inv should bring up a little popup with a bar with 0 left from it, stack size right, when you move your mouse up or down or left or right, the bar changes the numbers, releasing the right mouse button then splits the hovered stack to the displayed amount.
the value should snap each 10, so its easier to use.

oh and if you hold shift while doing that and having the screen with 2 inventories, it should transfer the selected amount to the other inv