File:Inv-d2-early.jpg

Original shot caption:

Act ???. Well, here is the first screenshot that's totally unidentifiable as to the act it's from. We know it's an amazon, from the Exploding Arrow icon, but who can say which act? Hell, this could be the first Act III screenshot. ;) I filed it as Act I just because that's the place we saw trading being done in the recent Gamestar Movie. Interesting things galore here. Look how rendered and 3D the equipment looks in her inventory. That helmet is just shining, and chain mail looks very rounded. This is the same armor the Sorceress was wearing in the other recent screenshot of the inventory window. Odd coincidence there. Obviously this is a new sight, a Throwing Knife. Not much damage from them, but I guess that's the price you pay for the convenience of a distance attack. It had been speculated (mostly by me) that Throwing Knives, or daggers, would be only for use by the Paladin. And throwing axes or hatchets would be only for the Barbarian. That looks to not be true from this shot. Probably some characters will have better innate ability in throwing certain objects?

Other interesting things in this shot are the 2 different sizes of quivers. It is known that there will be both arrows and bolts, and it looks pretty likely from this shot that the larger quivers are for arrows, and the shorter ones are for bolts. Look at that top item there, next to the quiver on the left. Could that be a throwing club? It is a new style of club, at any rate. The item below the Throwing Knives is almost certainly throwing javelins though. They look very short and small, much smaller than a normal spear, and their proximity to the Throwing Knives has me wondering. Lastly, this is the first really good look at the trading window, and the five buttons at the bottom of it. Unknown what exactly their function is, but feel free to hazard some guesses. Maybe there are multiple pages of items for sale? Perhaps there is another shopping window for armor, and this one for weapons? The right button looks like cancel or exit, so what are the big arrows pointing diagonally? Unknown. Pic courtesy of Gamestar -- 3dfx enhanced shot, 2/99"

Aren't we amusing in our early ignorance? And we got so excited by any little thing too. This shot is very interesting to compare to today, with the total difference in just about everything. The boots slot was moved over to the right, and the whole inventory moved up later in development. This far pre-release, the graphics for items in the inventory were just straight renders from the 3d models Bliz created, which is why they look so shiny and fake. Polishing up all the Inventory graphics was done much closer to the final release, once all the artwork was finalized. -- December 15, 2001.