Colour code inventory items . . .

[TattooedMac]

Just wondering others thoughts on color coding the Inventory items.

If I have something in my Backpack, I'm pretty quick in finding it, and knowing where it is and what it is.

I find, when when I go into my inventory, and the list is quite extensive (need to scroll to see items) trying to recall what the Peaches where called, and then trying to find them on the list, is taking valuable time away from me, all the while I'm deteriorating quite rapidly.

Is there any way or would it be beneficial to us to colour code the items by type ie: [glow=#E31E13]red = medical supplies[/glow] [glow=#99E35F]green = food[/glow] [glow=blue]blue = tools[/glow] [glow=brown]brown = fuel Wood/Paper/tinder[/glow] [glow=#FF803F]orange = clothing[/glow]

Doing this, would make selecting a item a lot quicker and should elevate the need for some of the things in the other thread about time in the menu while still taking time and energy away from ourselves ?? Thoughts . . . .

[Bill Tarling]

There are sorting tabs which really help -- although perhaps the color coding based on condition of items within the category might help [rather than reading each item to see which has the higher good condition value to use]... Like red almost worn out [really bad risky condition] to green fairly good condition.

Again though, that's probably hand holding... the new sorting order has helped a lot, so I can live with that.

However -- a graphical icon tab selector would help -- rather than click, scroll to category, click... it would just skip 2 steps [like UX navigation in websites -- fewer unnecessary clicks to accomplish goals].

[Raphael van Lierop]

I would expect the entire UI to get a pretty significant overhaul in the next 4-6 weeks. So I'm inclined to not invest a lot more time tweaking elements of it at the moment, unless there are *major* usability issues (many of which I think we've already fixed). The current UI is placeholder, and not something I'd expect to survive throughout the Alpha phase of the project.

[Bill Tarling]

Sounds good to me... current one is quite usable for Alpha and even Beta if necessary...

Really enjoying all the changes and updates

[TattooedMac]

Ahh thumbs up here too. Cant imagine what you have in store for us, but I'm impressed with the UI ATM, so anything else will just trample what we have now . . . . . Thats 'Gold' 8-)

But just adding to what Bill said above about Icons, people represent Visual Signs, Icon, Logos nearly 80% quicker to a particular thing they they can, if it was written for them. The studies I saw amazed me, but for visual representation, wouldn't be "hand holding" as other have called it in other threads, but more for 'knowing' what it is quicker. As I said above visually if I look through my backpack, I know what package is what, but if they were all white bags, and a single word written on them, then it would take me forever to pull everything out, then go through and read the label to know what it is . . .

Just food for thought is all

[Raphael van Lierop]

Brent -- that's a really good way of thinking about it. Definitely I'd like to get more of that "looking through your pack" feeling in the whole inventory interaction.

[TattooedMac]

Brent -- that's a really good way of thinking about it. Definitely I'd like to get more of that "looking through your pack" feeling in the whole inventory interaction.

Thats good to hear. The way I see it, is the whole game is a visual paradise to me, so why can't the inventory be

[Raphael van Lierop]

Well, for what it's worth, the actual UI paradigm for the game is meant to have almost everything contextualized in the world itself vs. using menus. The menus were first added for dev and then we dressed them up a bit because we got sick of looking at placeholder ones. So we're a bit of a victim of them not looking worse, because we've gotten used to them.

And while we may leave some things as pure UI/menu elements, I still want to bring a lot of this stuff back into the world, and that'll be a focus moving forward. Just need to ensure we find the right way to do that, both from a gameplay/usability standpoint, and a production realities standpoint.