taken from Thread :- KR UI Discussion of how can we make a list-based inventory liveable > UO Kingdom Reborn

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It's been said that we'll have at least 5 hotbars... what hasn't been said is how much flexibility we will have with orienting them on our screen. I think that the primary issue with not being able to easily find a runebook in the list-based inventory is that there is the possibility that you'd only be able to display 2 hotbars at a time, which would mean that you only have 24 accessible hotbar items.

If we could display 4 hotbars along the bottom and a 5th one along the left or right side, I think that alone could greatly aleviate any concerns I have with the list-based inventory system because players would be able to have 60 things out on hotbars at a time. For the sake of readability I will refer to players as "he" instead of "he/she".

Ok... just for discussion. Let's assume we have our UI set up to have 4 hotbars along the bottom of the screen (2 rows... 2 bars per row) and another oriented along the left side of the screen just below the character status bar.

Before we go further, I think we'd need to have the following UI elements implemented before a list-based inventory is even really useable.


Filterable Inveotry
Above the list-portion of the inventory screen there should be a series of icons, each representing a filter that can be enabled/disabled on the inventory list. If a filter is enabled, the icon looks "shaded". If a filter is disabled the icon looks normal. Each icon would clearly identify the type of item it is filtering out of the inventory list both by the image displayed and by a tooltip over the icon.

Here are some things that I think make sense to add as filter options
1. Reagents
2. Spellbooks
3. Arrows/Bolts
4. Bandages
5. Runebooks/Runes
6. Potions/Bottles
7. Weapons
8. Armor

The filter icon for potions would look like a potion bottle, runebooks would look like a rune or a runebook, etc. Other things could be added later as needed. These are just 8 I came up with off the top of my head.

Custom Filters
Players could create a special kind of macro called a "Custom Filter" that toggles a user-defined filter against your inventory. When a player selects to create a custom filter, he is prompted to uniquely name the filter. Once the filter is named, the player then opens the filter and hits a button labeled "add/remove items from filter" and is given a persistant targetting cursor like we have with the BOD system and insurance system. The player then proceeds to click item types that he wants to filter out and those item types are added to the list in the custom filter. If a player wants to remove items from the filter, he just clicks that line item on the filter list to remove it. I would like to see the custom filters have a lot more granularity than the overall filters. For example, a player could specify filters that filter out specific weapon types or armor types.

Equip Hot item Macro
The equip hotitem macro would be a special macro used to equip items that are currently placed on hotbars. For example, if a mage has 2 slayer spellbooks and wants to toggle between equipping them while having a spellbook filter applied, he would hit his "equip hot item" macro and then either hit a key that is bound to a specific hot item or target the hot item from its hotbar. Also, I'd like to see players able to equip items by drag/dropping them off a hotbar and using items on a hotbar by double clicking that hot item. Dragging an item off a hotbar to equip it on your character would still leave that item on the hotbar, so if you drag/equip a spellbook from your hotbar, you would still see that spellbook on the hotbar. The general idea here is to allow players to still freely change what spellbook they have equipped while having spellbooks filtered out as something that displays in their inventory. The less stuff we need to have displayed on our inventory list, the more useable it becomes.

Item in hand bar
On the current KR screenshots we see 2 hotbars with the special moves visible for the equipped weapon visible between the 2 hotbars. I would like to see 2 slots above those 2 boxes for the main hand and off hand, so a player could see his equipped weapons from there. I think players should be able to equip items by drag/droping them onto those locations (or using standard equip weapon macros). I would also like to see "use item in hand" macros and "equip hot item" macros come into play here.

Filterable Available Resource Display
Many who use UOA are accustomed to the reagent and potion counters. I would like to see a resource display in UO that allows players to create custom filters (as described above) of what items to display counts of and how to represent them on the UI. I would like to be able to see my relevant reagent counts on my characters that use reagents when i"m not wearing an LRC suit... I would basically just set the filters to display reagents when I need to see them and have those counts hidden when I don't need them. The same would go for potions, bandages, arrows, bolts, etc. I think a filterable resource display would GREATLY enhance the useability of the client. Especially if players can show/hide it via a hotkey. Assuming potion counts show on potions that are on a hotbar, you wouldn't really need potion counts on this system, but I included it anyway just in case. Also, having a filterable option like described above makes the system flexible to where it will work well with additions of future content without the devs needing to change anything in the client code. Players could simply add the new items to a custom count list and be set.

Hotkey display
Each hotbox on each hotbar should display what hotkey is bound to it. The player should be able to use a context menu to bind a new hotkey to a specific hotbox or perhaps there could be some sort keybindings configured in the macro system. Either way, it would be very useful for players to be able to see what keys they have bound to each hotbox. Also, I think players who don't want to see their hotkey bindings should be able to disable this feature.

Now... let's examine how much flexibility we have with this UI layout.

A player could set up all his runebooks along the left edge of his screen so they are easily accessible when traveling. If a player needs to hit a specific rune in the runebook, he would either hit a macro to use that book's hotbox and then select the rune he wants to use.

Potions could be in one of the bars along the bottom of the screen with a potion count displayed on each respective potion type.

Various spells and abilities could be on the other bars along the bottom of the screen.

I kinda wrote this all on the fly, so I may have a few design holes. let's talk about it. I think the UI as I describe it here is well on its way to being livable with a list-based inventory system.

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very good idea.. HELLO DEVS LET HIM MAKE ALL UR STUFF lol j/k... neways as u were refering to the hotbars having display what key they are bound too... there is a simple way to do that.. in the top left hand box of each one put the key they are bound to. For example say each hot bar has 12 boxes which u can put what u want in it... im playing my peacer mage spellweaver and use hot keys F1-F12 for the boxes... say i want F1 set to area peace F2 set to cast spell energy vortex and F3 set to cast spell ethereal voyage.... a simple way to know precisely without question them keys i have em set to is in the top left hand corner of the area peace box have F1 in there in the top left hand corner of the cast spell energy vortex have displayed F2 so on so on... with as complex as these ideas, and whats being put into this next publish, that should be simple to do

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[i]WOW!!! I just came up with a super idea branching off of this.... need more hotbars right? how bout this a player can set up to 10 bars up and use a seperate macro key to scroll through them and/or have as many as 10 bars up... 10 bars X 12 boxes per and the simple availabilty to just have one bar up and still setting up all them hotboxes and then you can scroll through each bar keeping all 10 to the same 12 buttons cause it goes off bar instead of actual item/spell/skill!!! UBER!!!
Heres a example to make it a little more understandable... lets say a Tamer wants to have 20 spells set, 12 pet balls set, 4 rune books set, 3 slayer spell books set, all his/her pet commands set and a few skill uses set BUT dont want to have to use up all that room for all them bars instead wants just one bar... basicaly he opens the first bar sets 12 items/spells/skills in that then can scroll that same visual bar into the second bar and set 12 other things in that one and yet again scroll it into another bar and set more items in that one. this frees up space for someone like me... who has tons of icons on screen for spells and abilities and books and also uses 22 macros just on tamer alone. instead that one Visual Bar is up for whatever im doing and if i need to quickly change to another i can hit a different button i have set to scroll to another bar... for instance + and - keys and have my 12 items on the bar set for my number pad. VERY VERY SIMPLE AND EASY TO DO. 1-0 and / and * my 1-12 boxes and + and - to scroll up and down through the 10 available bars and i can also have each bar hotkeyd to another key incase i want to go from bar 1 to bar 5 and want to do it within the next second i can use F2-F11 which is what im used to using for most spells.
Yet again, just a idea that popped in my head. Hope all this stuff does get considered to make all of our lives simpler.
Thanx [i]

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JIB UO Engineer



Honestly, Sarphus, I'll be happy if we have a choice between list inventory and a version of the current sock-drawer approach...


Thats the plan... Use lists, sock-drawers, grids, etc as you see fit.



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I fully understand players wanting to put their input in on what they want/think/feel would be good for the game, but WAIT UNTIL BETA!!!!

Then give feedback, this person, I'll assume Sarphus, is not designing the game, is not included in some special circle where the ideas brought up now are going to even come close to being looked at while coding is still being created/tweaked. They've started UO:KR quite a while ago, with an idea of how they want things to go, let them get their initial thought process put in game, THEN give some input, not before, not on this subject.

I agree, Dip - It's quite hard (and not really quite fair) for people to attempt to give feedback on things that 1) they've only seen in pictures, and 2) they haven't actually used.

That said, I think the dev's have appeased us quite well by saying we'll be able to toggle between the current approach that we're used to (the "sock drawer" approach) and this new list feature.

What else is there to complain about?! People always find something...

I agree as well, lets see what comes out first. Who knows, there is a chance that we may like it the way it's designed. :cheesy:

Exactly!!! It's pretty much impossible to say without actually trying it out.

no no no its all wrong and even though I haven't played it yet, I am quite sure the whole KR thing is going to destroy uo forever. I mean really, I am now putting all my accounts up for sell because I'm a self center [censored] who likes to stroke my ego by killing people who attempt to come to fel, make fun of them and then go to the forums to cry because no one comes to fel anymore.

It pains me to have to get out of bed in the morning and find a spot that my tamer and uber pet or my artie pally or super bushy can horde all the gold my lil heart can farm in a days time so I can rush to Luna or brit and buy some cool item thats apart of another shards history but has been crossed sharded to here so the player can make another 10 mil. After spamming for hours and talking like a three year old because im to lazy to type full sentences and words I will crash a forum and throw a fit because of something else that i havent seen or played in KR isnt cool to me because I have everything just the way I want it and damnit it sucks that I might have to adjust a lil bit, but then again if I hadnt whined and cried for all these years perhaps uo wouldnt be the item based game that it is now and there would actually be people in fel because everyone would be able to pvp, not just the gold hording item blingers....

but thats just me [/sarcasm]

I am with you all the way Dip.I've said before ,wait for the Beta.

Most MMORPGs out nowadays use multiple hotbars and either the client or a downloadable UI mod will usually allow you to drag these bars to different areas on your screen, rotate them 90 degrees, change transparency, etc. You can usually have something like F1 thru F12 or 1 thru = on your keyboard correspnoding with a hotbar. Then shift and the key activate the correspong box on the secondary hotbar, alt and the key on the third, etc.

I like a "flopping hot bar" idea where you have 2 active hotbars at a given time and with a key press can switch up another set of 2 hot bars.

Im sure that the pics from the Town Halls have been causing quite a ruckus over there and this thread was started in an effort to bring about constructive talk instead of alot of "I hate it!" before theyve even tried it.

Personally, I think that they would have to try harder to worsen the UI then better it so I am very optimistic about any forthcoming changes.

Yeah, totally... all people who oppose KR at any stage of development are of low intellect and their opinions are completely invalid and inferior to those whose opinions are in favor of KR.

1/10

Sad thing is, I saw somewhere there are 3 options for backpacks.

1. being the same as it is now minus "backpack" art (looks like list format, but items can be placed randomly, overlapping, etc. like the way it works now)

2. being list form

3. being "slot" form


And I know, it's still in Alpha stage, they could enable all 3 and develop them further, or scrap 2 and only stick with one. Either which way, whatever gets in-game, I'll learn and use instead of coming up with my own fool-proof plan that everyone will like.

Mu understanding is you'll see all 3. There is a small button in the upper left side that allows you to toggle thru. Well at least currently.