Grid Inventory: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

An alternative to the [[Hyperspace Arsenal]]. Instead of having an infinite amount of generic space to store things, you have a grid to store them in. The size and shape of objects varies; a key may fit into a single grid section, while a box of ammunition takes up a larger square of sections, and a rifle needs a long rectangle. Usually an object must always take up at least one section, no matter how small the object, so one's inventory can quickly become filled up with small things like keys and scrolls.

Prepare to [[Inventory Management Puzzle|spend a lot of time playing Inventory Tetris to fit everything]]. A few games have a button that automatically tidies up the inventory, but that's far from universal.

 

* ''[[System Shock]] 2'', with the variation that the size of the grid varies with your character's strength.

** The first ''[[Deus Ex (Video Game)|Deus Ex]]'' game (although ammo was mysteriously stored elsewhere), the second switched to a list inventory. A bug in the first game allows one to exploit a glitch and stack inventory items on top of each other.

** Most mods, particularly mods developed by one of the ''game designers'' fix this by allowing identical items to be stacked. Additional mods (of even the same ones) can allow items to be stacked infinitely, making the game ''much'' less annoying for inventory management.

* The game ''[[Darkstone (Video Game)|Darkstone]]'' is annoying in this, as you have a comparatively small inventory grid and are required, among other things, to collect seven magical [[MacGuffin|MacGuffins]] with which to defeat the [[Big Bad]]. It becomes forgivable, however, once you learn that you can place an object ''anywhere'' in the game and it will stay there until you come back for it; thus, all those conveniently abandoned houses back in the starting village become handy places to store the crystal shards, weapons you're not strong enough to use, books of spells you can't master yet, and other things you want to keep but don't want to be lugging around.

* The ''Dark Sun'' games had an inventory system similar to ''[[Baldurs Gate]]'' (which owes ''Dark Sun'' a lot in terms of UI), where each item took one slot and there was also a weight limit. However ''Dark Sun'' had a lot of chests and bags which you could use to multiply inventory size several times.

* Basically every single game made by Level-5:

* The furniture in the ''[[Animal Crossing]]'' series turns into leaves for easy transportation when picked up, so every item from a tissue box to a UFO will fit equally in your inventory. Furniture can also fall out of shaken trees as leaves and fall down slowly just as a leaf would no matter what it is.

** Possibly justified by the fact that the furniture is from a tanuki, a Japanese mythological creature that can create illusions with leaves and, in some variations, magically transform the leaves into real objects. In other words, [[A Wizard Did It|a tanuki did it]].

* [[Titan Quest]] also sport a grid inventory, plus extra grids in the form three magic bags. The expansion add a sort button and has a much smarter inventory auto-management.

* ''[[Silent Storm]]'' has a grid inventory, but due to the shapes of some items it is very prone to [[Inventory Management Puzzle]] syndrome despite its auto-sort feature. And to survive properly you pretty much have to loot every battle map before leaving for home, making things even more difficult. And yeah, weight is meaningless.

* ''[[Fate]]'', a [[Diablo]][[Roguelike|like]], featured this in all its irritating glory. There was nothing more fun than warping home with an inventory "full" of six double-bladed axes, and about 33% of your grid actually empty.

* [[Eve Online]] has a grid system. A display option is for inventory items to show icons in a grid pattern of the same size. However, Each item has an m^3 associated with it. So your ship can only hold so much.