Minecraft Inventory Redesign

Introduction

Minecraft is the #1 best-selling game with over 200 million sales worldwide. From the beginning of its development until now, there has been multiple quality of life changes added to the game such as the recipe book and the ability to equip items in both hands. These changes brought ease of use to many users of all games and increased the gameplay experience. However, many users continue to install mods to the base Minecraft game. Could there still be some features that users would like to add to base (or vanilla) Minecraft? I believe design should always be changing and evolving. Just as new features are added to the game, new experience and interface design should accompany it to give players the best possible game experience.

Identifying the Problem

Pain Points

• Minecraft's inventory system does not scale well with the increasing number of items that have been added.
• Minecraft players spend a large amount of time searching for the item they need from their inventory and chests.

User-centric Problem Statement:

Minecraft players will continue to enjoy the Minecraft inventory experience as the number of items expands over the next 3 years.

Design Research

Inspired by existing mods, I wanted to try redesigning Minecraft's inventory system myself. Although I was not a hardcore Minecraft player, I have played a good amount (100 hours or more) and noted some things that I would have wanted included in the base game.

I also looked at other Minecraft mods created by people in the community. While surveying 6 students at my college what Minecraft mods they used the most, many have mentioned Inventory Tweaks. The major features of this mod are automatic tool replacement as they break and inventory sorting with a single click. These features are incredibly smart and I feel like they should belong in the base Minecraft experience.

Lastly, I looked to other games that were similar to Minecraft such as Terraria. One of the features I liked was the ability to stack items from your inventory to items that are in nearby chests. This feature saves a lot of time and helps players stay organized.

Using the information I learned from my research, I started to create a first draft of my Minecraft inventory redesign!

Initial Minecraft Inventory Redesign

1. Moved the secondary equipped item to be at the same location as the other gear. Players mostly use the slot for a shield so I thought it would be fitting to keep it in a similar location.
2. Inventory sorting button. This was a feature that I liked from the inventory tweaks mod and wanted to include it to my redesign.
3. "Empty items to nearby tagged chests" button. (Explained in next section)
4. Reduced the recipe book icon size. and relocated it next to the other buttons added.
5. Tooltips show the item ID for players who use the console (yay! no need to google it anymore!).
6. Search bar. (Explained in the next section).

Proposed Features

Inventory Sorting Button

Players can reorganize their inventory whenever they want by clicking the inventory sorting button. All empty spaces will be filled. Items will be reorganized alphabetically and categorically by tools, blocks, and items.

Empty Items to Nearby Tagged Chests

This is a new feature that I'm proposing based on the "empty items to nearby chests" feature in Terraria. However, instead of stacking the items from the players' inventory into the chest items, it would instead empty any items that match a user-set tagged category into the respected chest. This feature would be great for players who are sharing resources and want to stay organized as only items that match the tagged category would be allowed in the chest.

The player would be able to craft a chest, choose to tag it to only accept a certain type of item (like only accepting food), press the empty items to chests button, and the items would automatically stack to the tagged chest that is nearby to the player.

Tooltips

When hovering over a block, the tooltips also displays the item ID for easy referencing if the player uses the console. This would eliminate the need to minimize the game to search for the specific code needed. There is also additional space for flavor text.

Search Bar

Players can search for a specific item within their inventory by typing in the search bar. The item would be highlighted. Additionally, items in folders (see next section) will also be highlighted and expanded automatically.

Stackable Items Folder

With this feature enabled, items with similar properties will automatically stack into a block. The player can drag items to rearrange their order in the folder. The first item will be the active item when attached to the bottom hotbar. When the slot is not currently hovered, there is an icon identifying the block as a folder instead of a single item.

Recipe Book Changes

Icon Removal

The previous Minecraft inventory system was organized by item icon tabs. This took up a lot of space on the recipe book and is ambiguous on what each tab actually refers to. Instead, I chose to replace it with a single tab with words so there is no confusion on what each section refers to.

Item Viewing Checkboxes

Instead of only viewing each tab one by one, the player can check multiple categories to be able to search through. For example, if the player does not want to look at redstone crafting recipes.

Slimmer Recipe Book

The slimmer recipe book tab does not take up as much space and looks sleeker.

Feedback Testing Results

Feedback

After playtesting my inventory system with 3 users, all users liked the changes I made but noted a few problems:

1. The search bar is in an awkward spot. The folders are able to cover the search bar when highlighted over.
2. Players may not want to empty certain items from their inventory to their tagged chests.
3. The icon for the "hide currently uncraftable buttons" in the recipe book looks like a "discard" button instead.

My Iteration

Based on the feedback I received, I made the following changes to my inventory system:

1. The search bar is moved to the lefthand side of the inventory system so the folders do not cover the search bar.
2. The recipe book has been moved to the righthand side of the inventory system because the recipe book tab will appear on the righthand side of the screen.
3. The hide uncraftable items button has been changed back to reflect the previous button design to make it clear to players what the button does.
4. Players can now favorite their items. These items will never leave the players inventory when the "stack to nearby tagged chests" button is pressed.
5. Cosmetic toggle. The player can choose between three cosmetic styles (full armor, no helmet, and no armor). The player will take the appearance of their cosmetic toggle settings with no effect on their defense stat.

Design Pivot: Loadouts

Future Proof Design

Let's say you spent countless hours on a design and meticulously placed every button carefully. Everything seems perfect until... the director approaches you and tells you that you need to add an additional feature. In an environment where the final design is never certain until the end of a project, it's important to design with the mindset that things can change and leave additional space for such possibilities.

Loadout Pivot

For my project, hypothetically, I was tasked to adjust my inventory system to accommodate for adding a "loadout" feature where players have different sets of equipment and items, grouped together, on the ready to switch to.

Player Centric Needs

• What can be done to make it easier for players to switch between different equipment?
• Do players in Minecraft need more than just different armor for their loadout?
• Tool/Weapon
• Possible small items they want to take? Food? TNT?

Three Loadouts

Minecraft’s core gameplay is built from three ways to play.

• Mining
• Combat
• Building (Using Resources)

Players will encounter enemies while mining or while building. They should at least be able to switch to a combat-focused loadout at ease.

How does it work?

On the HUD, there is a window that will display the current “smart select” item (as well as the previous and next item in the list).

• The player can choose not to use “smart select” and use a loadout instead.
• The current loadout will cycle between items that relate to the loadout from the player’s inventory.
• Button + 1 = Smart Select (Default)
• Button + 2 = Mining Loadout
• Button + 3 = Combat Loadout
• Button + 4 = Building Loadout
• The player can scroll between the different items within a loadout with the mouse scroll wheel.

Example Loadouts

• Mining Loadout: Pickaxe, Torch, TNT
• Combat Loadout: Sword, Bow, Crossbow, Food
• Building Loadout: Axe, Wood block, Flower, Oak Trapdoor

Loadouts will cycle items from your inventory based on if they fit the loadout category. Loadouts replace Smart Select.