Art: First look at the containers UI

Here’s a first look at the Inventory and containers UI. It’s early, but you can see the interactions we’re trying. I’ll explain a little about how it works (because that the most interesting part).

Containers hold stuff (duh :information_desk_person:). In Oort Online these can be your player inventory, token inventory, chests, crafting, Beacons (permissions), Portals (for linking) and even things like trading UI and your equipped wearables.

When you interact with a container in Oort Online it’s an A+B pairing. You interact between two containers, placing and/or swapping items. We have a few A’s, and lots of B’s:

A’s:

  • Player Inventory (includes toolbar)
  • Tokens Inventory (for storing player tokens)

B’s:

  • Chest
  • Crafting
  • Furnace
  • Beacon
  • Trading
  • Portal
  • Equipment

:one: For example: you want to store some items in a chest. You click on the chest and you’re presented with the chest container (B) in the foreground, and your inventory (A) in the background. You can drag items between the two, they automatically flip as you move between them, or you can instantly send one item from one to the other by pressing a button configuration (shift-LMB for example). We call this moving and snap moving.

We going to make this switching interaction really slick – we’ve put a lot of thought into how and when it will switch. You’ll be able to easily flip between inventories manually too.

:two: Another example: you want to add someone (Doug) to your Beacon. You click on the Beacon and you’re presented with the Beacon container (B) and your tokens inventory (A) in the background. We show you tokens in this instance, because it’s a Beacon, we know you’ll be putting player tokens in it. Clicking on any one of the empty Beacons permissions slots will switch the state to your tokens inventory, the next item you click on will be automatically put in the slot you clicked on, and the state will switch back to the Beacon so you can see the change. We call this picking.

Here’s a first look at what the containers could look like, with an inventory and a chest. We’re aiming to keep things simple and readable for the first release :thumbsup:

Player inventory currently has 5 slots reserved for different Oort Cube types. They don’t impact on your default inventory space. Here’s the same UI, with the AB state flipped:

Another feature worth mentioning is vacuum. A modifier for picking specific amounts. When you’re picking up an item, clicking on it once will simply pick up the whole stack. If you want granularity (which should be rare), clicking and holding will slowly pickup 1, then 2, 3, 4… and speed up the pickup rate the longer you hold the button down until the stack is depleted. This also works for snap move, so you can hold down a button and it’ll send 1, then 2, 3, 4… to the other container until the stack it depleted. This will also work with picking! So you can hold down a button and it’ll send 1, then 2, 3, 4… to the other container until the stack it depleted, and then switch to the other inventory. You get the point.

As always, questions and thoughts below!

25 Likes

I really like the style of the UI, so much better than what we have now.

Question: Will all containers have picking AND moving/snap? To go with the beacon example. Could you also drag and drop the tokens into the slots you want?

Remark: Sometimes I find it useful to have the containers (example: chest and player inventory) next to each other rather than behind each other. So I see what is where with one look.

Yep! There will be consistency / feature parity across all containers. Pick, manual move, snap move for all.

Yep. The button you press to switch state will present them side by side when held down, and then swap them when the keypress is released. We’re trying to be considerate of screen space (different sizes, aspect ratios etc), and always allow the game to be presented and readable while you’re in your inventory (you can’t pause after all, it’s an MMO).

4 Likes

Glad to hear both of this^^ This already sounds like the perfect system to me.
So I have nothing more to say than good job guys!

I completely agree! Thank you so much for releasing this and for coming out with more concepts and information recently! It is VERY appreciated!

What is the concept behind tokens? How are they generated?

Players can craft a token that represents them (eg: in my case, Ben Tokens). You can then give them to other players to add them into Beacon permissions, or track them locally though a map.

Owning a player token is basically the equivalent of following/friends in Oort Online :thumbsup:

1 Like

Neat, I like this idea, it could also be the equivalent of a trading card, which would mean that certain people, if they become renowned enough, and gain enough notoriety, but only hand out a slim amount of their tokens, it would be like celebrity trading cards which could be used as another pseudo-currency. ;V

While holding the key to keep the inventories side by side, will we be able to interact with both such as dragging items across?

1 Like

I love everything about this :smiley:
Q: Will the UI have some texture to them later? Like other mmo’s.

Possibly. We’ll probably prototype it. It may not be required though. I just played with the prototype and didn’t feel like it would be massively useful. We’ll post more next week.

1 Like

Right now for simplicity, and to get it out there sooner rather than later we’re focusing on simplicity. Here’s a bit of style exploration I did:

We’re going with a blur / plain style for now, it’s easier to get it out and see what players think of the functionality. I know you’re all going to say you like the detailed one, but try not to be be drawn in by ‘more is more’! To us it feels a bit heavy and overcomplicated. The monotextured variant has some nice textural characteristics to it without trying to be stone. Still working this stuff out.

5 Likes

Thanks for the answer, i’m happy regardless of what i’ll look like :wink:

I really like these concepts! they kinda remind me of the borderlands inventory :slight_smile:
btw what’s that in the 6th slot? Is it a chisel?

If the blur style is squares that blur out the background game going on, I love it.

This UI would look fantastic with Oculus Rift…

2 Likes

That would be soooo cool * _ *

It’s all looking very cool. Tentatively excited about the container switching… will have to see how it feels in action, but it sounds loverly.

Actually, here’s a question: Will these container windows take up the entire screen, or float on one side, or maybe even ‘intelligently’ adjust depending on resolution, etc. ?

… it’s by design.

Oculus what?

:wink: