Minecraft Inventory System ( not finished lol )
Minecraft grants its players 27 regular inventory slots, a 9 slot hotbar, 1 off hand slot, as well as 4 armour slots. As Minecraft was made for a mouse and keyboard layout, this multiple-of-nine inventory design suits the 1-9 numbers of a keyboard, a convention dating as far back as Half Life (although Half-Life does not use all 9).
The act of managing inventory is made easy because of many shortcuts and tricks that allow for the easy yet skillful moving of items. Every button on the mouse serves a purpose, with left click expectedly being the main driver of movement, and right click giving finer control: placing individual items, and splitting stacks. Further, holding down either of the mouse buttons allows the placement of multiple items in a row. The left-right precision design continues into this altered way of moving items as left click divides whole stacks, and right click places singular items in rows. Although this feature is neichely applicable when moving items, it serves minecraft’s titular crafting system well as it allows the speedy splitting of items when recipes ask for multiple items of the same type lined up.
Most items stack up to 64, with some arbitrarily limited to 16. The use of powers of two may initially seem random, or simply a programmer being overly familiar with this type of numbering, but this allows even splitting of items all the way down to 1.
Terraria, a game which allows items to stack up to 250, highlights the need for small item stacks. Personally, I feel that allowing items to stack to numbers too high devalues the individual item, and makes the number of items too hard to quantify. Human minds work logarithmically, so the difference between 95, and 100 is considered much more insignificant than the difference between 0 and 5, despite the difference being the same in both. This works fine in some situations, but the number of items remain the same, no matter how many items come before it. To me, 64 seems like a lot of items, so does 250 despite the 186 item difference.
If preserving humanity's logarithmic tendencies is not important, as is the case for Terraria, one asks if there is a need to item stack limits at all. The game Crashlands features an infinite inventory, assumedly as a response to Minecraft’s inventory management limits as it is used as a selling point in some of its trailers. In real life, space is limited, so this contradiction feels the need to be justified by some technological invention like Crashlands’ space setting or the Minecraft mod Applied Energistics future technology theme, which adds near infinite storage to Minecraft.
Any item that can be interacted with in game, as well as items that hold their own data like tools holding durability, do not stack.
Crafting
Minecraft’s crafting system cannot be discussed without mentioning the way it has changed as Minecraft itself has grown and evolved, specifically with the introduction of the Recipe Book in the 2017 1.12 update, which gradually gives players recipes as they naturally progress throughout the game. In versions before this update, there was no way to determine how to craft something in game, with players relying on fan wikis and word of mouth instead. This is undoubtedly a design flaw as it can create a confusing new player experience, while also forcing returning players to rote memorise hundreds of recipes. However, this system, or rather lack of system, was not without its benefits.
Why do people play Counter Strike?
If you've ever been in the same room, or even the same discord call, as someone playing csgo, you've probably noticed they don't seem like they're having much fun. You'd probably hear the "i'm never playing this fucking game again." as well as