Product review
So I purchased this a few weeks ago because I sat down and thought to myself, I could spend the next couple weeks building an inventory system or I could take a risk and purchase one and hope it does what I want. First I took a day to try a tutorial out. It was a very loooong one and while a good effort, not very efficient. So I searched around and ended up buying this one. I’ve spent a lot of time on learning it. More than I initially wanted to for an inventory system but after seeing the features, I kept wanted to make additions to my own game to make it better so learning this was essential to do that and I’m very glad I did. So far in total I’d say I’ve spent a solid 1-2 days of actual work time integrating it into my game. After seeing how complex the system is under the hood, I’m happy I bought it rather than go the distance on my own. There are things included I never thought of that are necessary. But aside from that, the structure of the system makes a very good attempt being as automated as possible.
To save a lot of reading time: I’ll make it more point form of what I think people would be looking for:
- Drag and drop personal inventory menu
- Drag out of menu to drop on the ground in the level
- The pickup function already works
- Easy to understand the item class. Very easy to start making your own pickup-able items
- Straight forward item attributes to customize and apply stats, looks and variations to items
- UI menu on the items themselves, so USE, DROP functions are available. you can make each item or class do the logic you want by simply adding the use item function to it. You can make your own functions in UMG.
- Quick slots are already integrated and easily expandable
- Containers. Not even part of personal inventory, but containers are built in so you can use them as Loot chests, dead bodies, boxes, fridges, drawers, whatever… set it up as a container populate it with items randomly or purposefully and thers a loot box just like that.
- Backpacks. Pick up a back pack and you now have a separate inventory window to store more stuff. The backpack takes up space in the personal inventory but gives more by default, etc…easy to setup once you know the system a bit and easy to customize
Thats whats included and works with the included FPS character out of the box, integrating all of this into your own character works…almost out of the box. There’s “rough-ins” for other things like
- attaching static meshes to sockets upon equip (very basic sample code is included for this)
- inventory weight systems
- powerups and attributes application affected by inventory items etc…
- Crafting (mixing multiple items together). This is pretty much included from what I can tell already, I haven’t played with it yet but it seems pretty straight forward to use. comes with a sample that works for adding a silencer to a gun. Might not be the best example since the addition looked permanent, but can see how it would work for crafting items and bombs etc.
The truths:
- if you’re just starting your game and want an inventory system… get this NOW not later. Building around what you get is easy. Integrating this into a large existing project. Not as easy.
- No inventory system that you buy will plug into your game in 5 mins or less. Especially one that has as much as this does. So expect to spend a few days learning how it functions, so you can start integrating or rewriting your functions to work with it. It’s got expansion and automation in mind, so you can add items and attributes whenever and they just fit in without having to modify the system.
- It won’t attach the meshes when you equip an item in the inventory slot. It’s not supposed to. When you switch out the item in the slot, you can have that trigger an event that you can make do whatever you want, like adding a mesh, removing a mesh. You will need to know how to do this yourself (and you should already)
- It’s not an ammo, gun or weapon system as some seem to expect. It houses, switches, modifies and uses inventory very well, thats what it does
- The videos that exist are great and short and easy to follow. Some are slightly outdated, but the creator is responsive in the forums and friendly and helpful. There isn’t much in the way of documentation though and this is a big fault for me since the videos show certain things in a specific way sometimes. I wanted a deeper understanding of the system so I could customize it. A lot of my time with it has been trial and error to learn how it works. Which was beneficial, but could have been eased with more written docs in my opinion. This is being worked on according to the creator though, so we’ll see if more docs appear. Though I may not really need them much anymore. lol
- Lastly, a minor but pet peeve of mine is the branding. It’s JC’s product and thats cool, but every function and variable under the hood of the system is branded “JCThis” “JCThat”. While it doesn’t make much difference in the end, I like keeping my code organized and labelled in my own way. I’d have preferred something more generic like “INVThis” “INVThat”. So at least it doesn’t look like product placement everywhere. Again it’s minor.
Conclusion:
I haven’t tried the other available systems, but I’ve checked out the features. This one seems to have the **most **features that fit the context of the system. Not just but a bit but by far. An integrated chat system in my opinion doesn’t fit for example. But crafting, backpacks, looting containers, attributes, using items out of the window…on top of storing inventory. Thats a complete system. I wouldn’t expect any system that is done in a clever manner to take 5 mins to install. The system isn’t difficult to integrate into your system, but it just takes patience and understanding. Put the time in to integrating this into your game and you won’t be sorry. For the price, the value is beyond a good deal. I can’t stress enough the amount of features this has included in it just waiting to be used and customized your own way. For sure the best system out there for inventory management, for any type of game. The ease of expansion alone makes it phenomenal.
I integrated this into a TPS in a matter of days and expanded on quite a bit without any major issues. The possibilities for expansion are pretty much endless on it.
Jack has been around to help out when needed as well.