Inventory Interface, Management, and Additional View Options

[Coldbrand]

PS3 limitations.

[UBERHAXED]

"When it comes to UI, the bitmap images are used for both icons and text that are loaded by memory, but the number of elements to display a single item are far less when using an icon than using a string of text. "

Is each letter in a text its own bitmap image or something?

If you are really interested in the explanation: Bitmaps (or other such images) can be stored as a pixel array or as a vector of vectors (same thing when compiled). Because of this, there is a fixed size and number of bits used for each pixel in the bitmap. Each pixel can be expressed in a compressed version and uncompressed at compile time. Strings have a variable number of character, which each take the space of 8 bits. Because they are also not fixed size, they must be expressed in a dynamic structure (an object) before they can be used. The overhead for the classes and any polymorphism is very large. As was said before, a programmer would have easily understood why this statement was said. But not everyone here (even though they think they are) are programmers.

[EriEtou]

yeeeesssss auto sort please.

[Na6]

Thanks for the explanation. I think I understand a bit of what you're saying. I can remember some bits from a video I watched on compression now.

[ZhangoSqu]

If you are really interested in the explanation: Bitmaps (or other such images) can be stored as a pixel array or as a vector of vectors (same thing when compiled). Because of this, there is a fixed size and number of bits used for each pixel in the bitmap. Each pixel can be expressed in a compressed version and uncompressed at compile time. Strings have a variable number of character, which each take the space of 8 bits. Because they are also not fixed size, they must be expressed in a dynamic structure (an object) before they can be used. The overhead for the classes and any polymorphism is very large. As was said before, a programmer would have easily understood why this statement was said. But not everyone here (even though they think they are) are programmers.

As a programmer, I'm still a bit (haha!) incredulous that a 120 byte string, or 240 bytes in UTF-8 (based on the longest item name being 60 characters) is going to take up more memory than any bitmap in the game, even compressed. Though I haven't looked at the size of their image resources. Most modern programming languages treat strings objects as immutable once they've been created, and those strings can be interned so that they use less memory on a system where each string is effectively a copy of one already in memory. There are certain trade-offs, obviously and this isn't the thread to get into it. However, even if it isn't shown, I have my suspicions that the name and other textual data is being prefetched any way for handling the hover text. So again, while the memory usage is higher, it is misleading to imply that the difference is significant enough to make a difference.

Regardless of that tangent, there were plenty of other points that were made that do make sense.

I for one am happy that a list view of some sort is on their radar.

[Amaretto08]

The image is already stored locally. What ends up in game is a panel holding a reference to the image. So yeah, a string ends up using more memory in this case.

[Enfarious]

We need list view. I can't tell you how many times I've hovered over the mess of my retainer's inventory looking for the difference between dodo eggs, chicken eggs, and iron ore.

You know, it's funny (sad) that in 1.xx everyone just had to have the bag view like from WoW, and those of us that said, "No the list view is better and more funcitonal for sorting purposes." were summarily dismissed. Now it's all flip flopped.

[ArzakUltros]

I think the auto sort in this game is absolutely terrible. I can never find what type of item I need to turn in for my levequests so I just started putting specific items in its own tab. Fishing in general has a lot of fish that look exactly the same so I squint at the screen to make sure I "hand over" the right fish. It's rather annoying.

[Altonfenri]

i mean i really don't mind the pictures or the grid much... but its the sorting and tabs that make it so frustrating just moving things.. I mean an hour just to organize a full inv? crazy talk/

[Sevis]

The only problem I have with the inventory is the sorting. This applies to both the armoury chest and standard inventory. Implementing a sort by quality or level function would help to cut down on the chaos of what it currently is.