[Feature] Real-Time UI and weapon slots

[tunbridgep]

Describe the feature you'd like to see added

I have just finished my first playthrough of the game (hooray!) and while many of the current tweaks make the game feel very good to play even in 2024, one of the things that annoyed me a lot was the constant need to go into the inventory screen to switch between different weapons, use grenades, etc. It really broke up the gameplay and made the experience just a little more frustrating.

I feel like selectable weapon slots are one of the big features that the future games in the series added that could be of benefit here, especially since D-pad style weapon selection buttons are a staple of game design.

This feature would go really well with a real-time UI as well, to add some extra depth. Since some people might want weapon slots for convenience unrelated to real-time UI, I have split this into two separate suggestions.

1. Weapon Slots. When this is enabled, the D-Pad is no longer used for movement (we all play with Sticks now anyway). Instead, pressing any of the 4 d-pad buttons while hovering over an item while in the inventory screen will add an icon to that item, and pressing that d-pad button outside of the inventory screen will equip or use that item instantly. Initially only the Up and Down slots are available, but an "expanded belt" can be purchased from the merchant for 50,000. On Keyboard these would use the buttons 1-4
2. Real-time Inventory. All inventory actions are performed in real-time, and you can be hurt or killed while interacting with the UI.

The purpose of this is to add some depth while also providing some convenience/QoL features. People who are only interested in the quality of life aspect can turn on the first feature without the second feature, making switching frequently used items much less painful than having to go into the inventory screen constantly, and people wanting more depth or difficulty to the gameplay can enable both features. I understand this wouldn't have animations, so switching would essentially be infinite, but it could add some interesting depth and planning to fights. Do I want three slots taken up with healing items? What about multiple weapons? etc. Going into your backpack would be dangerous so you'd want to keep everything you need on-hand.

I get that re4tweaks isn't really designed as a gameplay mod. I will totally understand if this is considered out of scope. I apologise if my general ignorance of this game (after having only completed it once, very recently) makes this suggestion stupid/unviable.

[emoose]

We do have weapon hotkeys in the trainer section, I'm a little fuzzy about the details of it now but IIRC you can enable it from the re4_tweaks UI, then you can go into inventory > hover a weapon > press 1/2/3/4/5 on keyboard to assign it, then pressing those in-game should switch to them, can't recall if we added support for controllers to that yet though.

(if the hotkeys are enabled without weapon being assigned it'll cycle through different types per key, eg. 1 cycles pistols, 2 cycles shotguns, etc: https://github.com/nipkownix/re4_tweaks/blob/7cfcf5c4272f7d68d177661ffe84e9d1e0d2f383/settings/trainer_settings.ini#L123-L128)

Real-time inventory is a neat idea, wonder what it would take for that to work, not sure if the main game code still runs at all while on subscreens like that though.

[tunbridgep]

That's quite interesting. I hadn't looked in the Trainers section.

With some polish, and some Controller bindings, this could make for a nice little QoL tweak, rather than needing to be a trainer. I don't see why it should be a trainer given that you can literally pause the game and take as long as you need to select a weapon, meaning quick-select buttons provide no advantage whatsoever. For most people, the big advantage would be less annoyance.

This can probably be used right now on a controller, actually. Using Steam Input it's possible to bind the D-Pad to the number keys, which could potentially make this work quite well. Still, having official controller support is probably better.

Probably the one big addition I would make to the feature as it currently stands would be to add support for other items, not just guns, with them automatically adding a new item of the same type to the same slot. So if I have a healing spray on a key, and 2 in my inventory, using one will put the other on the same key.

Real-time inventory is a neat idea, wonder what it would take for that to work, not sure if the main game code still runs at all while on subscreens like that though.

I guess an alternate way to accomplish the same goal would be a message like "You can't access your case right now!" during combat type setting. But that's going too far into the absurdly hardcore for no reason, rather than being immersive and intuitive, so proper realtime inventory is preferred.

That, plus proper polished weapon slots, could make for a really nice real-time gameplay experience with some added depth.