Okay, so I'm a little late to the party, just learned about JH after getting that "I gotta go play some DoomRL" itch in my system. First off, really looking forward to some more info on the game, and I'm always glad when a dev takes time to not only inform the fan, but get feedback from us as well! Anyway, here's my thoughts....
1. Equipment and Inventory
Equipment/Inventory will function similarly to DoomRL, but with a different presentation (think the Diablo equipment screen), and with a couple more slots. The left/right hand, armor and boots slots stay, but additionally we'll have a head slot and two device slots (think hacking and electronics). Moreover, some equipment pieces will introduce their own slots -- weapons may have 1+ different mod slots (possibly an ammo slot if we go for different ammo), powered armor may have power and extension slots, etc. The big difference I plan however is that anything that is worn, still takes space in inventory. Why? Because similarly to Diablo, not all equipment will take the same amount of space, and this way we'll cut down on any equipment shuffling needed to swap items, and get rid of metagaming moves like carrying a huge item in your hand to save on inventory space. To balance this out, the inventory will be made bigger. Does this make sense? Will this introduce any problems? Any ideas on this front?
After reading 4 pages of back and forth on this, I've come up with a compromise. I really love the list based system of DoomRL, and while I've played a LOT of both Diablo and ResE4, I think I like the list system better. Especially if you want to make a fast paced game with little inventory management. The list system has the "Do I keep it or not?" question where as the slot system has the "Can I fit it in my pack?" question on top of if you want to keep it or not. I do like the slot system, but it does force players to spend a lot of time on that screen doing management. The graphical slot system also lends to conundrums such as "I have 10 slots available, but this 4x2 item can't fit anywhere because I don't have the right shape available." So what's my compromise? A listed slot base system. Not as confusing as it sounds. It'll act basically like a weight system in most regards. The items are listed in your inventory, along with how many slots they take up. Example: You have 40 slots available. The pistol takes up 4 slots, an ammo box takes of 2 slots, armor takes 6, helmet takes 4, boots take 4. You've used 20 slots used, so you have 20 left. This will also remove the confusion of having items still take up slots while they are equipped, as they can just be highlighted on the list and not look like it's 2 of the same item. It also allows items to use odd numbers of slots, like a rocket launcher taking up 5 slots and not just be a 1x5 box. As far as weapons/armor having mod/ammo slots, those can be implemented when equipped on the 3D doll. Equip a pistol that has 2 mod slots, then 2 mod slots appear next to the doll.
If you're dead set on using the grid system, go with your first instinct after seeing the ResE4 screenshot. The Mod slots can be inside the mod-able item, just like gems are in Diablo II & III. I also think mods should not take up space after being attached to a weapon. It's part of that weapon now, not just floating in the bag.
The suggestions different tabs for ammo/weapons/armor sounds pretty nice too if you're going to stick with a grid system.
Also, just as a side point, players are going to hoard as much as possible no matter what. Even more so with the "destruction on drop" mechanic I'll talk about later. Inventory management is always going to crop up one way or another. For something quick, simple and fast, tetris grids are not the way to go.
2. Ammo
This is a biggie. My initial need of reconstructing the inventory came from my happiness with the AliensRL system. And following it, I wanted to introduce set ammo counters like in AliensRL and Doom. However, this takes away a significant strategic challenge of balancing your ammo types, and balancing your ammo vs. consumables/spare weapons. However, with the DoomRL solution this becomes a constant game of micromanagement also, and swapping items a lot. So I need a solution that did include the strategy of ammo management, but took away the need of fiddling with a lot of items.
The solution I'm thinking about is having all ammo in something that is similar to current ammo boxes. You have a running total of your ammo, that is limited by the amount of ammo boxes you have. So if you have 3 boxes of shells, you can hold at most 3*50 shells. Any shells you find are automatically fit into the boxes, but you get a no-room message as soon as you run out of boxes. You can additionally find new boxes of course, but whether you add them to your inventory or not, this is your decision. Boxes also have different sizes, so e.g. a single box of rockets already takes up 2x3 of space.
Comments? Alternative solutions?
Personally, I really like this idea. Though I don't see the issue of "fiddling with a lot of item" in DoomRL. At most in it was "I have 400 9mm rounds. I can drop 100 to carry this medkit." While it did mean I had to go into my inventory, evaluate my ammo situation, and decide if I was going to drop anything, I never found it an issue. With this idea it goes from being a non-issue to non-existent. This also adds more of a survival aspect to the game. "I only have enough room for 30 shotgun shells. Do I really want to waste them on these humans, or use some of my 9mm rounds which I have over 100 rounds of?"
To prevent weapons from being useless by not having an ammo box of the correct type, all weapons should act as a ammo box themselves. It would be really bad to have to say "I could pick up this shotgun, but I don't have any shell boxes, so I can't pick up ammo until I find one." You could also have the weapons themselves count as only half a box. Example: Just having a shotgun in your inventory gives you a max of ammo count of 15 shells. When you pick up a shell box the max jumps to 45 shells. (Assuming shell boxes have a size of 30 shells.)
3. Ammo types
There have been requests for different ammo types for both AliensRL and DoomRL, but I always rejected them due to the added UI complexity. With graphics though, we have a couple more options, also the slot system outlined above would fit with different ammo types nicely. The only issue here is that with this system, you should have separate ammo boxes for separate ammo types, which obviously doesn't make much sense.
Having separate boxes for separate ammo types makes perfect sense. If shotguns can have buckshot, slugs, and explosive rounds, you would need 3 boxes to carry the different types of ammo. It would be the cost of having options. Though if you really only wanted one box to store all three ammo types, that's extremely easy to do as well. You're already going to have max ammo counts with the boxes, so just split ammo to the max count. Example: Assuming you have a shotgun and an ammo box for a max of 45 shells. If you have 20 buckshot shell and nothing else, then the display would read 20/45 Shells and underneath it would read 20 B | 0 S | 0 E (B, S, and E obviously being replaced by graphics for Buckshot, Slugs, and Explosives respectively.) Pick up 10 slugs and it would read 30/45 Shells | 20 B | 10 S | 0 E. After picking up 5 explosive rounds it would read 35/45 Shells | 20 B | 10 S | 5 E. Simple to read, no extra ammo boxes, no messy UI, even when it comes to dropping certain ammo types. Click the box, click drop ammo, select the ammo type, done.
4. Items on floor
Here's a biggie -- I think about removing items on floor altogether. Items can be found on (highlighted) corpses, lockers, boxes, etc. Dropped items get destroyed. This would prevent doing tedious stash micromanagement, and increase the pace of the game. Also, it'd work well with the boxes idea -- players wont be tempted to do tedious backtracking to get ammo they left behind and couldn't pick up. This is probably the most controversial decision, but it would (IMHO) benefit the game much.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. I understand wanting to decrease micromanaging as much as possible to have a fast paced game but I'm not sure this is the way to go about it. As other have said, it goes from being a deliberate design choice to
feeling incomplete and poorly executed. Also, how are containers going to work if a player doesn't take any or all items from that container? Will it be a "take it or loose it" type of interaction? That option also feels incomplete and poorly designed. I would absolutely hate to open one container and loose the 2 rocket boxes because I don't have a rocket launcher, only immediately find a rocket launcher afterwards. However, allowing a player to backtrack to a container nullifies your reason for having items being destroyed when dropped in the first place.
You did mentions that players would be able to return to areas that have been previously explored, and I completely understand wanting to remove the "Hey, I left that rocket ammo 3 floors back, let me go grab that now," scenario. I also understand the difficulty of adding a new UI for items being on the floor, along with new art for items being on the floor, etc. I do believe, however, that you should allow players to store items in a container
until they leave the area. You can still have the dropped items get destroyed. This way you could avoid the "on the floor" UI, prevent
tedious backtracking for left behind items, and explain it in the lore (someone already suggested minor demons looting the containers).
This also allows for a bit of strategy in a single area. Example: I'm in the barracks and there's a huge demon in here with me. I find a rocket launcher on a corpse, but I don't have the space to carry it. So I stash my pistol and ammo boxes on the corpse, take the rocket launcher, and use all the rockets on the big guy. I then go back to the corpse, stow the rocket launcher, grab my pistol and ammo back and move on to the next area, the med-bay. While I'm in the med-bay some scavenger demon comes and loots the rocket launcher I left behind, so I never see that rocket launcher again. Now I have no reason to backtrack to the barracks again unless it's for some story reason. (I also purposely didn't use the word "floor" because who says the game has to be vertical? Yeah, it works for DoomRL and most other Rouge-Likes, but area transitions can always just been a special door!)
I realize this example has all the "fiddling with items" that you wanted to avoid, but really, that's part of strategic game play. It's going to happen. Even in fast paced, full on "run-and-gun" action games like COD, you're going to drop your Uzi for a rocket launcher when a tank shows up. After the tank is gone, you're going to grab your Uzi again. The best you can do it make it painless as possible to switch between the items.
Also, as a side now, you said you that you specifically want to avoid players micromanaging, but the grid slot system for the inventory inherently forces a player to micromanage their items.
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Okay, I'm done now. Wow that's a long post. Well, I look forward to what everyone has to say about all my ideas and such. I spent a few hours just writing this. I was reworking and rewriting ideas as I was typing them. You can really see it in that last bit where I said I didn't know how I felt about it, then proceeded to make up my mind. Lol. My only regret is not knowing about this sooner. Damn you life for getting in my way and taking up all my free time!