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The game I am currently working on has a complex equipment/inventory system, with 9 types of equipment slots.  In developing the inventory management interface I have come across a couple of interesting design decisions that I would be interested in getting a wider range of opinions on.

1) Variable controlled vs. Item controlled

  The two major approaches for inventory management is using the Item system or using variables for tracking and management (as detailed in Gryphon's article: Creating an Equipping System).  I was contemplating combining the two, where the player would use a variable based system to automatically push the corresponding Items into Inventory.  I would also be showing which item is equipped in which slot in a custom page footer. 

I see the cons of this combined system being: More visual clutter on the page; potential user confusion since simply equipping the item applies the effect, so there is no need to 'use' the item; and more lines/complexity of code required to handle the $ITEMSTATE shifts. 

The pros would be: more visual impact for the items as there will be item graphics instead of just text, more world-building as the item descriptions gives space to add more in-world detail of each item, and just general uniqueness compared to many of the other games I have seen (although the game itself is fairly unique in mechanic and primary play loop).

Here is a screen shot of what I'm thinking of, although without the custom item graphic. What do you think about combining these systems, or using one or the other?

2) Item visibility

As you can see in the screenshot above, there are multiple options for each equipment slot, although in most playthroughs the player will not see any particular item.  For instance the category with the most potential options are the Hands slots which handle weapons.  Counting duplicates there are 28 weapon options.  In a given playthrough you are unlikely to see and own more that four or five different weapons.  I'm currently using link restrictions to only show the items that you actually possess to keep the number of shown links minimized on each page.  Because there is such a variety, would it be better to use the option to still show all the possibilities, even though most won't actually come up in a given run?

Anybody else doing anything interesting with inventory systems?

Obviously it depends a lot on context, but generally I'd recommend only including clickable items in the game's inventory that the player will be able to use during gameplay. You're right about the visual clutter, and people will automatically assume they need to use the items, so it will distract them from gameplay. Most of the cons you mention can be addressed by a detailed enough inventory page: it's possible to add dynamic images using on-page variable tricks (though it probably would be a real pain), and adding item descriptions is easy enough.

If your intent is for players to be able to quickly reference what they have equipped, it's possible to code that into the item's on-click description using on-page variable tricks. That might be a good middle ground.

I think you're right to only show items the player possesses, unless you want to strongly incentivize players to seek out new items. Definitely don't include all the links if there's going to be anywhere near 28 of them lol.

It would actually be far more than 28 as each item also has a sell option, and for a little more than half of the items there is an option to dual-wield them.  The more I think about the more I am moving away from using actual items.  I would have to rework all the item descriptions and embedded graphics to work better on the smaller scale since when I wrote them I did not take into account the way the item descriptions pop on the screen when shown. 

Best RPG inventory system on the site is in Delve!

It is, unfortunately, impossible for mere humans to replicate.

I have only half-heartedly taken a stab at Delve.  I'll give it a more thorough playthrough to see how inventory is handled there.

It really can't be done with the standard editor, it's mostly HTML I'm pretty sure.

I think I have fairly replicated the heart of it via the massive linking system i have put together.  I don't have to worry about class matching or equipping NPCs, so my system isa little simpler than what Berka was doing there.

If I want to make a new version of this game with more changes and the like, is there a relatively easy way to "copy" an existing game?  I'm pretty sure the answer is no, but can't hurt to ask, right?

No way to do that unfortunately. Cloning a game is something that's been requested on and off going way back and I'd have really liked to see it, always thought it would encourage more of the RPG style stuff.

Yeah, I didn't think there was.  Thanks for confirming.  I agree, that capability would allow for more RPG or connected works.

My biggest complaint about the default inventory system is the numerous clicks for the results of "This item cannot be used here." There's ways around that, but it's still clunky. Nice for 1980, though.

With the drawing you have, I'm slightly confused. You have options that appear in the list, but no item (how can I equip a burner phone when there's no phone in my inventory?) I appear to have the option to equip an item that is already equipped (Secure cell phone). What happens when I click on the secure cell phone in the inventory? Can I equip from there? I also cannot tell which items in inventory or on the list equip to which slots.

There are a couple points of consideration about that screenshot: 

1) For testing, that screenshot is working with having every peice of equipment already in "inventory", which is why there is an Equip option for both types of phones.  Normally, a player would only see one or the other, if they had found either.

2) This page implements part of the thoughts that BerkaZerka lists in their article about Inventory, where the Item that matches the found equipment isn't necessarily visible until it is equipped.  Then the item just shows up already in your inventory.  I only have the Communication page setup to use the items, but if you would like to see it in action, you can check out that out.  The game is Minion Hunter.  If you go through the Test Page link you can give yourself all the equipment.  Then you can equip or unequip from the appropriate Management page under Inventory management.  I would think that it would make sense to have the "Use" link jump the player to Inventory Management.

I guess I could hide the Equip link for the currently equipped item.  It doesn't do anything to equip it multiple times.