In most RPGs and action RPGs I've seen character inventory is usually handled by a grid of some type consisting of cubby holes. Usually, each cubby hole can hold one and only type of item but on the other hand can stack multiple same items in the same hole. Therefore, if my RPG character inventory has 3 cubby holes, I might be in a situation where it would be okay for me to carry 10 Healing Potions, 10 Speed Potions, and 10 Indigestion Potions, but I'd be screwed if I wanted to carry 1 Healing Potion, 1 Speed Potion, 1 Indigestion Potion, and 1 Really Bad Gas potion. The game doesn't usually implement bulk and volume but instead relies on a sort of abstract stacking logic by which characters somehow carry around improbable quantities of stuff but only in large stacks of the same thing. Examples of this would be the Deus Ex inventory system, the System Shock 2 inventory system, and on and on. The inventory space always behaves strangely and is always very abstract and very different than how a person would go about loading himself out in the real world.

However, I think I've seen some of the 1.13 people mitigate this by implementing various real-world LBE, including such things as Blackhawk vests, Hong Kong police vests, Tactical Tailor 3 Day Packs, ARUC packs, and so forth. I'm always admiring the various things that are implemented to improve Jagged Alliance 2 by the 1.13 mod crew, and one of the thing which is currently being implemented is actual load bearing equipment instead of the generic backpack which characters can use to carry around their items. Even though the fundamental logic the inventory system uses is the same (like items still stack, and unlike items cannot stack) they have managed to make carried inventory more flexible and realistic through the following points:

1.) Available inventory slots depends on what LBE the character is carrying. A character without any LBE has a shirt pocket and 2 pants pockets only, IIRC. Putting on buttpacks, a backpack, or a tactical vest, or any sort of riggings actually creates slots to which items may be added. Furthermore, using certain LBEs excludes using others. If a person has a grenade panel on his right leg he cannot also put a SMG holster there, for example. If a person is wearing a backpack he cannot also sling his rifle across his back.

2.) Each pouch or pocket has a specific size which means it can accomidate items only of a set side. The mod won't let you jam a first aid kit into a rifle mag pouch, for example. Also, more smaller items or fewer larger items may be accomidated. For example, if my rifle mag pouch can only accomidate 1 30 round mag of 5.56 ammo, the mod would alternately let it hold 2 15 round mags of 9x19 P. The technical limitation of the stacking logic, however, wouldn't at this point let the player put 1 mag of 9x19 p and 1 mag of .45 ACP in the same mag pouch.

3.) Certain pockets are easier or harder to get things out of. For example, the is no extra cost in action points to pull a rifle mag from your mag pouch on your vest when you go to reload your rifle. However, if you're using a backpack, there's a big action point penalty associated with taking the magazine out of that in the middle of combat.

4.) Backpacks carry a lot more bulky items and a lot more quantity than vests or combat packs but give characters wearing them in combat big statistical penalties for bulk and awkwardness.

Link to the inventory thread: http://www.ja-galaxy-forum.com/board/ubbth...&page=1&fpart=1

I think that this work with LBE is very exciting and that it could be used in RPGs and action RPGs to improve the generic "cubby hole" style of inventory where characters just automatically get a certain number of boxes. Instead, you could have a greyed-out paper doll of your character and decide to equip your character with certain LBE. The LBEs then define your character's inventory capacity and the sorts of items he can carry.

For example, let's say the game let you choose between a vest with mag pouches or a vest with grenade pockets. You'd look at the paper doll of your character with the greyed out chest area. You'd pick one vest or the other, and then the greyed out area would become colored and show you the specific inventory slots you had available to you based on your choice (slots for magazines or grenades in this case).

I think this would be a lot better for immersion and roleplaying than the classic inexplicable packrat of cubbyholes where everything is just crammed somewhere under your character's overcoat or something.

I feel that a feature such as this would have made System Shock 2 even more fun. Few things annoyed me more in that game, with inventory space being at the premium it is, than things like 4 10mm cartridges taking up the exact same amount of space in my inventory as 30 shotgun shells. Especially in a sci-fi setting with rifles and such it would have been less frustrating and more immersive to have a couple of magazines for my pistol I kept refilling and switching as I scrounged ammo but never having that end up taking a disproportionate amount of precious space due to stacking logic.

Certainly, in a modern-day RPG, I think that adding real-world LBE and loading out like a real professional plausibly might could add just as much atmopshphere and sense of realism as adding real-world guns or referencing real-world events and controversies.

Heh, Ultima 7 did that already.
You had yout backpack, and all your objects were inside. If you didn't want to spend too long looking for something (for example a healing potion in combat), you had to arrange your posessions inside your pack or to use smaller bags for some of them. Of course, you couldn't have a big item inside a small bag.
It was the total weight that limited what your character could carry, depending on your strength.

But the question is: does it really add something to the game? In some cases, it does: for example taking into account the time it takes to get something out of your bag, or pocket can be interesting in some situations. But other than that, I'm not sure it's that useful: when I'm playing a CRPG, I don't want to spend hours trying to fit everything in my bag. It's already boring when I do it in real-life, thank you.

Realism isn't always the way to go for immersion and atmosphere. I don't want to spend 2 hours opening all the crates in a warehouse looking for the crate which holds what I'm looking for. That's why it's better if the game only allows me to open a few crates, so that I just run around the warehouse, looking for a crate that can be opened. It's unrealistic, but it's, IMHO, a better solution.

Besides, there's another reason why games will probably prefer simpler ways to handle things: people today don't want games to be too complex. In Ultima 7 each and every character in your party had to eat and sleep regularly. It was realistic, it added to the atmosphere of the game (you had to pack food and sleeping bags before a long journey, or to hunt on the way, you had to go to the inn in cities or to set up camps in the wild) but I'm not sure that players today want to keep tracks of such things.

And finally, I think there are a lot of improvements that'd be a lot better for CRPG (and video games in general) than such realism nitpickings.

This makes me think of the healing system in the Call of Cthulhu game. Basically all damage is area specific with different effects, and each area can receive different sorts of wounds (broken bones, scratches and so on). When you stop to heal, you actually select to apply the appropriate treatment to the appropriate area. Alternatively, you can just press the 'h' button and it does all that automatically. I loved applying the appropriate medical stuff, even though it took longer, but I remember one reviewer saying how stupid it was because you can skip it and just press 'h'.

I think the same mindset can be applied here. The system uses everything like WR described, but automatically will put everything in the smallest pocket it can fit in. Anything that is attached to a hot button is in a quickly-manipulated pocket, so assigning quick buttons does that automatically. If no buttons are assigned, the computer assigns them automatically, giving preference to ammunition, potions, then based on size.

If WR wants to play how he wants to play, he can tweak his character's load to his heart's delight. If Blade wants to play without worrying about that, he can just pick up stuff until eventually the computer says his character is out of space and needs to drop an item of size X to pick up this new item, then automatically resorts everything so it all fits.