Inventory

Inventory

Inventory in Ferrus: Commissar operates on a three layer system (going from bottom to top):  Matter Programmer Carried Inventory Quick Select  Semantically, however, this simply means that the user has a single inventory with two additional ways of working with it. The lowest layer, the Matter Programmer, is functionally similar to the backpack in Rebellion's Rogue Trooper: the player collects scrap/materials from the world, and can use these to fill up their fabriactor's storage compartment with usable goods like medicine, ammunition, shield batteries and so on. The goal here is to provide the player with a small increase in interactivity with the world, and the ability to create a natural economy in the game itself, as hostiles can drop items which are scrappable (or deconstructable). The second layer is the carried inventory; this is a grid-based drag-and-drop UI where the player's main, non-fabricated items are held. To decrease UI fragmentation, it also keeps track of fabricator statistics, and serves as the overall item interaction portal for the player. Conceptually, it's a 16 x 16 grid, with each item in it taing up n squares of space. The third and final layer is quick select. It is what the name implies: a set of item bindings which allows the player quick access via keyboard keys. It is the only inventory UI element visible in the Main HUD Widget. See Inventory Architecture for more technical details.