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Why Is The Only Inventory System Tutorial SO TERRIBLE???

Development Discussion Blueprint Visual Scripting
#1

Literally, we have one complete inventory system tutorial, but not very well done. The guy doesn’t explain a single thing concept-wise, he just reads his instructions and does it. Then we find out in the fourth tutorial that half of what he did in the third is almost completely wrong. Then he tells us, “well, this probably won’t make sense to you, but it does to me”. Great, man, thanks. Then we find out in the 7th tutorial that the 6th one was also wrong. I appreciate the guy making these, but they are very hard to follow, albeit very informative still… I really am pouring on hard here, and I apologize. I’ve spent hours upon hours trying to figure this out, and it’s wearing on me.

Can someone please make a tutorial that isn’t all over the place for this? You would be a god.

#2

how many you pay for that tutorial?

you must give the “thank you” to the author, not write something like this. he lost a lot of time doing that tutorial for others and for free. And if you thing you can do something better do it.

constructive criticism = yes, but this ins’t that

#3

This is my constructive criticism. He needs to explain concepts, not just drone and do things. I said I appreciate him trying, but it seems like everyone’s complacent with his tutorial even though almost every comment says they can’t get it working. We need a base for the community to build on, and his set of tutorials is certainly not it.

#4

Are you looking for a multiplayer inventory system or a single player inventory system?

Edit: Here are a couple additional links that may or may not help you out. I created a basic inventory system that was adapted by many people into others including the video series you watched.

https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?4011-Basic-Item-System-with-stacking-functionality-Please-Critique! - this was my original system. I’m just about to finish up creating a fully functional inventory system through using UMG (with drag and drop) and plan to release a tutorial on it shortly. Sadly my mic sucks so it will be a really long forum post rather than a video but I’m sure it will help out tons of people.

https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?4463-Hakabane-s-Inventory-System-guide&highlight=inventory - this was created after Bonny reached out to me asking to create a better tutorial since I am a total noob when it comes to writing tutorials. There is some useful stuff here as well.

I wont link Savai’s as you have already watched the videos but once I finish my equipment screen and hotbars for spells, I plan to learn to create it all again but in multiplayer and will update for that as well.

If you need a break down of an inventory system in a conceptual sense I have no problem trying to write a decent guide out for you.

-Haka

#5

When you have a little bit of c++ experience, this tutorial will probably help you to understand the basics of an inventory system: https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Basic_Inventory_/_Item_system :wink: Unfortunately the video that you mentioned is the only one about an inventory system -> but when you search for “unreal engine 4 inventory” you will find many useful hints how to create one :slight_smile:

#6

That’s a cool link fighter, thanks for posting it.

#7

Hello,
i’d like to add tom looman’s inventory system : https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?9665-Tutorial-UsableActor-system-in-Blueprint-with-multiplayer-support/page2&highlight=tom+looman

#8

Funny to find other people are doing his tutorial.
I can agree he does explain thoroughly, however if you pause sometimes through his tutorials,read the blueprint, you may start to catch the concept of what he is doing, it is a very logic intensive design, seems alot of time was put into conceptualising the logical building of the menu’s.
My first attempt ended with nothing appearing, then starting from scratch I got atleast one texture to show and that was it. Now I am at the point where 3/4 of the hotbar area is smeared with the texture sample(I do suspect my texture samples I used from UE4 samples is causing the issue).

I noticed in the end of the third video, he does not indicate the values to be used in ScaleRatio (InputX/InputY) for the remaining three functions.
Hoping that those value’s are displayed in 4th video.

#9

@Hakabane: Thanks so much – I also found your tutorial right after posting this and found it very pleasing. I’ve rewatched Sevai’s for the fifth time and now that I’m able to kind of parse out the BS parts (aka, I know where he makes a mistake, so I just skip ahead, etc), it’s helping me much better as well. I really look forward to your new tutorial. I’m great at recording tutorials on other subjects, just not UE yet, so I’ll be contributing as well, just as soon as I figure everything out.

@Fighter: I’m a programmer by trade, so this is much more up my alley. It pains me to create a Gate instead of an “if” or a Branch instead of an “if/else” in Blueprint. Code is so much easier for me.

@Archie: Yeah, it’s strange: Sevai has a pretty good tutorial presence, but seems disorganized. You can get past this disorganization by watching the whole series a few times I found, but it’s definitely not an easy tutorial to follow by any means. What I eventually did is watch his 4th through 7th videos – that’s where the real magic is when it comes to the inventory and not the hotbars, etc.

Thanks so much everyone!

#10

Haka, what would be the difference conceptually between multiplayer and singleplayer? I would prefer singleplayer, btw. Again, thanks for the great reply here.

Also, in your tutorial, I notice you put all the items in an Inventory array. Is the best way to save this data for persistence to use UE’s built in SaveToSlot functionality, or would something else work better for multiplayer use.

Thanks!

#11

Hey guys I also followed Savai`s and found that it was a good starting point but the videos stop and the inventory was not complete, so i spent the last two days or so, fixing/improving the inventory and how it works. I currently have and fully working inventory that works with multilayer the features I have added are:

Dragging and dropping and item off the inventory spawns the item it to the world.
I have fixed the highlight boxes on the inventory screen rendering over items when you move the around
Items can Now be put on the hot bar and display when the player is out side the inventory

I am currently working on the stacking as I type and once I have that working, implementing the weight will be a peace of pie :slight_smile:

once i have these to things working I an planning to release a full tutorial for everyone to get a good working inventory to build from

I will do my best to have this done as soon as possible :o

#12

I really look forward to it! You could be a maverick for the community here! :slight_smile:

#13

Probably because the people who could write them look at the forums and see the work others have done be spit upon.

I could do an inventory tutorial. If you had made a request for an alternate tutorial, and you said you had trouble following the original tutorial, I’d consider putting time into an alternate tutorial to help you and others.

But instead the first thing I see is your inflammatory title. Why would I want to spend time writing and producing a tutorial for people if this is the kind of response that would earn me? If I wrote a tutorial and had only a dozen views and people didn’t post, that’d be fine. If I wrote a tutorial with 69,000 views and the only responses I got were people calling it terrible, I’d stop. You don’t make money from these things (Maybe if you do video tutorials you might make a dollar on ad revenue) and it takes a lot of time to do it. Why produce content for such an angry and juvenile audience?

#14

Hey, thanks for the contribution. I admitted in my original post that I was peeved and it wasn’t anyone’s fault but mine. Point is, the tutorial is lacking in a lot of areas and I thought it was pretty nuts that every single post or thread about inventories pointed toward that one. Maybe I shouldn’t have called it “terrible”. “Not nearly as helpful as it could be” might be a better way of describing it. I’ve made at least 50 tutorials in my life, but I rarely hear that they are bad because I put a lot of thought into them before I even begin. Again, I’m grateful for the guy for recording the tutorials, but they really should not be the go-to resource for this topic.

#15

The difference between a multiplayer system and single player is that with multiplayer you have to have certain events happen on the server where in single player it can all happen on the client. Without doing multiplayer I don’t have to do all the “has authority” stuff and talking back and forth.

My current single player inventory system accomplishments:

  • Item pickup via mouse click
  • Stacking - checking for partials, adding to partials, creating a new stack if there is none or if any were found and full
  • Check for verifying inventory has space

Inventory Customization:

  • Number of inventory slots - this is your max inventory space.
  • Number of columns
  • Slot Width - Pixel size on screen (X axis)
  • Slot Height - Pixel size on screen (Y axis)
  • Number of rows - this just determines how many rows are shown before you need to scroll to see the rest
  • Slot tint/opacity
  • Item count color - the actual number showing how many you have
  • empty inventory slot image
  • inventory background texture
  • inventory background tint/opacity
  • present screen locations - Up left, Up middle, Up right, mid left, center, mid right, bottom left, bottom mid, bottom right, and custom*

*these take into consideration how big your inventory is and correctly aligns to be fully centered

There are also other features I have working that auto calculate the inventory window size so you don’t have to try to figure it out on your own. It’s really pretty complex at this point but I’m hoping someone likes it or can make use of it once I can release it.

#16

Just a little off topic, the implememtation was using the Draw 2d to screen.
Would the UMG feature be impractical for this implementation?

#17

UMG definitely has a learning curve with so little documentation but I wouldn’t say it’s that bad over all once you get used to it. It’s taken me about 2 weeks of working everyday to convert from canvas to UMG. UMG also has some features built in that I’m enjoying greatly.

#18

If you want an inventory, I assume you want to make some kind of RPG;
If you need a tutorial for a inventory system, you should not try to build a RPG.

#19

+1.

if someone have problems with any free tutorial must say first “thanks for the work” and ask with a “please” for clarify any issue or asking for deep explain, not cry saying its a sh*t.

#20

Your assumption is wrong. I’m simply trying to learn the approaches to the basic components that make up most games. I’ve been a developer for 12 years and the one thing I’ve learned is you’ll never understand something until you try to do it in context. Read all tutorials you want, but until you create it in the context that it will be used, you will always struggle.

Thanks, Haka, for the explanation!

@Knack: I’ve asked him several times for clarification, along with others in comments on the videos. No response. Again, I came on harsh, but if you can’t take a little criticism, you’ll never get anywhere in life. His tutorials were helpful in some ways to me, as I have admitted. Just very disorganized.