[crossfire] 'Identified' tab in the inventory display

[Mark Wedel]

On 04/20/10 06:20 PM, Brendan Lally wrote:
> On Sat, 17 Apr 2010 13:00:24 +0300
> "Otto J. Makela"<om at iki.fi>  wrote:
>>
>> What I would like to also see is having a class "identified" (similar
>> in function to "cursed" and "magic") in the inventory, so that you
>> could more easily manipulate items which you have identified.
>
> NB: In order to do this, a new flag would need to be defined for the
> item2 command, there is space for it, and clients should handle new
> flags gracefully, but I'd still want a bit of testing to take place.
>
>
> I can see how this might be useful, and I think there are four
> possible ways to approach it:
>
> 1) with another 'style' in the inventory display in the way that
> cursed and magic items are currently highlighted in red and
> blue respectively (possibly including (2) as well).

  Note this can be overridden with theme also, so a special font or font color 
could be defined.

>
> 2) with a change to the item name in the inventory (maybe adding
> a ? after the name of unIDed items?)

  Maybe a ? before so it is more visible - otherwise, for long names, it is just 
lost.

<snip>

  For the players inventory, I had thought of the idea of adding an inventory 
management window, just like there is now a skills window, spell window, etc.

  My thought here is that when I'm out adventuring/killing things, I don't care 
much about an item the instant I pick it up.  I may care if I reach my weight 
limit, and I probably care when I get back to town to sell the stuff I 
accumulated.  But while adventuring, what I care about in my inventory is some 
set of important items - scrolls, potions, maybe even weapons or a few other 
items to switch back and forth.

  Since the times I care about all the junk I pick up is in town or other calm 
time periods (figuring out what to drop for weight/alchemy), I don't really need 
an expedited interface such that I can click on it right away - bringing up a 
window to manage it is fine.

  The advantage of a window is several - it allows more space to view the items, 
allows much better options for filtering (one could add filters for just weapons 
in addition to the currently cursed/magic/etc), it allows for some operations 
like 'sell all items', which in this context would sell all items currently 
displayed based on current filter.

  It also allows for customization for the different tabs.  Right now, other 
than the locked item tab, there really isn't much of a way to control what item 
is in what tab during normal gameplay.  But with a window, you could now set up 
item sets and/or choose which tab those items display in - thus, as a player I 
could have a cold item tab and a hot item tab (so I go to whichever one based on 
creature), or could have something like a healing tab (shows all healing related 
items) and an offensive tab.  Point being that it would be possible to let the 
player choose this information.

  Item sets would basically be sets of items for fast apply, eg, one could 
define what item is in each set, and something like an 'apply set1' applies 
everything in first set, etc (more likely, player would set up keybindings for 
different sets)

  For that matter, such an interface could also easily allow players to set up 
keybindings to apply different items, so once again, easy to set up the 'apply 
scroll of remove confusion' keybinding.

  In such a window, I could see a layout something like:

Image   Name   Weight   Cursed   Magical   ID    Equiped Value   Keybinding
...     sword    5        N         N       Y       N     55
...     chainmail 60      N         Y       N       Y     210      F3
...
at bottom, may have options like:
[Drop All]  [Identify All] [Drop Selected] [Identify Selected] ...

  As said, off topic, but I think long term, this is probably a better way to go 
as it adds a lot more options.

  I'd also like to utilize basically that same layout as a way to buy items from 
shops - it would show all the items in teh shop, with values, and have an option 
like 'buy selected' or the like.  In this way, the shop menus are not needed 
anymore, and a player doesn't have to wander the shop trying to find the items 
they want