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rickyriot

Inventory management

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Ah... inventory management.

Ok, so I had a pistol, a knife, a shotgun and a rifle amongst other items and I had a mountain backpack in order to store all this loveliness. I had hotkeyed all the items.

My problem is that when swapping between two items, say for example the knife and the shotgun (both contained in the backpack) the game seems to choose the first possible location for the item to be stored rather than either the best or the last slots it occupied. This can lead to "weapon locking" as the game places your knife into a set of slots that stops the long barrelled item being stored despite there being another set of slots that the knife could take up which wouldn't block the shotgun being stored in the backpack.

I'm not sure if I've described this that well, but people who have encountered the issue (and I would expect just about everyone has) will know what I'm meaning.

There is a side issue here in regard to having two long barrelled weapons. Let's say for example the rifle is on my back, the shotgun in my backpack. When I take the rifle into my hands, then swap to say a knife, then to the rifle, there is no guarantee that the shotgun will remain in my backpack in fact on many occasions it will shift to my back. Now functionally that's not an issue, but we all know that visually it's a big difference. If you wanted to hide your rifle, for example, you can't guarantee it won't appear on your back rather than your backpack.

On another side note, I personally think you should be able to store long barrelled weapons in the backpack but you shouldn't be able to take it to your hands as easily as the one on your back. If we are going for realism my suggestion would be to take the backpack into your hands first (or lay it on the ground). For me, running along and taking a long weapon from a bag on your back without breaking stride lacks realism and breaks immersion.

 

 

One final thing, could I just say well done on the improvement of the UI. Finally we can tell the difference between ammo without squinting at it. A revamp of the UI has been needed for ages and it's a very welcome change.

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I thought they had that fixed for about a patch... maybe I imagined you it or just got lucky for awhile. 

In particular this is an issue with the combat knife in the assault boots when you’re carrying weapons internally... you’ll draw the knife from your boot, switch to a pistol or long gun and of course the game puts it back in a slot previously taken up by the new weapon. Go to switch that weapon and you either can’t because the knife is in the way or you wear it externally... if it’s an option. 

Then you need to fiddle fuck with the DayZ Tetris to get everything squared away again. 

This isn’t what I had in mind when I bought into the whole “gritty” survival experience. 

If DayZ was a real life survival experience I’d be morbidly obese from all the food, immaculately dressed from all the suits as well as completely paranoid since even things on my back are never quite the way I left them. 

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Thing is, I believe it would be a fairly easy fix and I can think of two obvious methods.

The first would be the simplest. Just remember the slots the item came from and when swapping it from your hands it knows where it's going. Obviously if you pick up stuff, filling those slots, then you'll be blocked like before, but then I'm not looking for a silver bullet rather a level of certainty that I can then plan around.

Another solution would be to allow you right click an item in the inventory and select "store here" (or similar) which would then force the item back to that location (perhaps even shuffling other items to fit) when you empty your hands. You could even represent the location in your inventory via a dotted red line around the area the item would be returned to. I'd extend this so that when you picked items up they would actively avoid the slots you had already identified as "store here".

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If you put away the item in your hand first, then select your new weapon with the hotkeys, it prevents this from happening, but if you have one weapon in your hand and you hit the hotkey to switch to another, that weapon in your hand may be placed in a position that blocks the newly selected weapon was in.

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11 minutes ago, BetterDeadThanZed said:

If you put away the item in your hand first, then select your new weapon with the hotkeys, it prevents this from happening, but if you have one weapon in your hand and you hit the hotkey to switch to another, that weapon in your hand may be placed in a position that blocks the newly selected weapon was in.

Except that doesn't solve the whole problem, it only mitigates it to an extent. The reason it doesn't solve it is that when you put away (rather than swap) an item you are not guaranteed the item will go into the slot it came from. We need that sort of certainty. What's more in terms of immersion you would actively choose where in a backpack (or clothing) you would place the item if storing it in real life.

I might give the "remove then select" rather than "just swap" option a try until this gets resolved, but it definitely needs looking into.

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* bump *

Has the way you manage what is in your hands changed? I've not played the game for a few weeks but now it seems I cannot swap between weapons with a single key. Let me explain:

Previously if I had a melee weapon in slot one and a pistol in slot 2, if there is enough room in my inventory I can simply swap between these items by pressing the relevant slot key. So if I am holding the melee, pressing [2] would remove the melee and replace it with the pistol.

Now, it seems that you need to manually remove the item from your hand, then select a new one. So instead of just hitting [2], I now need to check what weapon is selected, what slot key is assigned to it, then hit that key, then hit the [2]. This, for me at least, is just adding an extra step that is not needed. I appreciate the nod towards realism, but the vast majority of times when you need to swap to a weapon you are likely to be holding a weapon already - not sure about you but I never wander around without some form of weapon in my hand. Realism, if this is the reason for this mechanic's introduction, is not improved by making it awkward to swap weapons. I'm all for making other things far more complex but not weapon swapping, that is the key element of keeping you alive.

 

 

 

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