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Customizable creative inventory

The creative inventory is a huge organizational mess, and should be reorganized in a more useful way. But there are so many ways this can be done, and not one of them is "right". So, it would be better to leave reorganizing it to the player, and let them drag items around so they can choose where everything needs to go. All the new dragging and textfield interface functions could be set to disabled by default, which would hide the textfields, the "New Tab" tab button, and disable all dragging events. With a "Customize Creative Inventory" toggle button in the user's (control or other) options menu, they can be enabled on demand. When disabled, any saved customizations will not be further customizable and the creative inventory would just display as customized.

The dragging function would be similar to the known web concept of "Drag & Drop", not to be confused with the existing mechanic of dragging item stacks over multiple inventory slots. If you would start to drag an item from the creative inventory, or a tab of it, it would change how the cursor looks to signal exactly what interface operation you're going to perform, and it would visually keep track of what you're dragging and where it would land as you move the cursor. Only upon releasing the drag, the dragged item would be actually moved from the one place to the other and saved to the customization file.

(further details in following comments, sorry I have to provide over the char limit, to make this idea really useful)

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  • 3
    Registered User commented
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    (continued)
    How I imagine this mechanic:

    - (insert item to new position) Dragging an item to the space between two horizontally adjacent item slots, would show an "insertion" caret between the target slots, and when releasing the drag, the dragged item would take up the position of the second target and move all following slots one slot along on that tab, including the target

    - (insert item to beginning of row) Dragging an item to the space left of the first item slot of a row, would show an "insertion" caret left of that slot, and when releasing the drag, the dragged item would take up the position of the first slot of the row and move all following slots along on that tab, including the target

    - (swapping item position) Dragging an item on top of an existing item slot (as opposed to between slots), and releasing, would swap the two item slots without changing any other slot's positions

    - Dragging an item on top of a tab button before releasing, would temporarily change that tab's icon to signal which tab is going to be affected

    - (customize tab icon) Dragging an item on top of the current tab button and releasing, would customize the tab's icon to that of the dragged item

    - (move item to different tab) Dragging an item on top of the tab button of another tab and releasing, would move the item to the end of that tab, without switching to that tab (so multiple items can be moved to it)

  • 2
    Registered User commented
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    (continued) 
    - (create new tab with starter item) Dragging an item to the space between existing tab buttons, before releasing, would temporarilly show an "insertion" icon between those tabs to signal where a new tab would be created. Upon releasing the drag, a new tab would be created there with its icon set to the dragged item, and tooltip to "New Tab" for instance, and the following tabs shifted around to make room for it.

    - (create new empty tab) Alternatively a new tab could also be created by clicking a "New Tab" tab button or dragging an item onto one, but the new tab would need to be moved separately that way as the button to make an empty tab can only be in a fixed position at this point. the new tab also can't have a starter icon this way

    - (reorder tabs) Dragging a tab button before releasing, would temporarily show a "move" caret between the target tabs, similar to dragging items between other item slots, to signal where the dragged tab should go, and upon releasing the drag, the tab would be inserted to its new position

    - (rename tab) Each tab would also have a small editable textfield between the tab button and slots area, which contains the tooltip of that tab, for customizing the tab's tooltip

    - (reset layout) When customizations have already been saved, a "reset" button would appear, to allow for reverting all customizations of the whole creative inventory, after a warning message

  • 2
    Registered User commented
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    (continued)
    How to save the data:

    The best way to save the custom "creative layout" data would be in a JSON file (or similar) in the player's current game folder, next to the "hotbar.nbt" file. This would enable players to automatically keep the same layout between different worlds. And if the data is saved to its own file, it would allow custom creative layouts to also (manually) be moved or copied to other game folders (and thus profiles), similar to data and resource packs. But the file should not be saved directly in a world folder, as it could be invasive to the user to have to copy their favourite (possibly effort intensive) creative layout between every world they want to play in.

    By default when there are no customizations made yet, the file automatically gets generated with the current game-default layout when needed. Not sure exactly "when", due to limited technical insight, but if not performance incurring, preferrably when the first customization is made.

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    My Idea is that the Wither and Ender Dragon Spawn Eggs are only in the Creative Inventory if you are a Operator.