Community Focus – Destiny Item Manager

Feb 10, 2016 - Cozmo

A key to any victory is making sure you have the right equipment for the job. The right tools for an assault on Oryx in the Dreadnaught can differ greatly from the tools needed for a flawless run to the Lighthouse. If you have a handy gear management app at the ready, you can quickly grab it out of your Vault before one of your teammates picks up the ammo. But Bungie is not the only one to provide these features. There are several other community-made applications that offer their own flavor of how to organize your gear. We met up with the team who created Destiny Item Manager and asked them about their synergistic Vault solutions.

Who are you and what is your favorite subclass?

Goose: My name is Rick Casey, and I’m veteran programmer that looks for ways to use my skills to cultivate and entertain communities. After I’ve read the last bedtime story to my kids, said goodnight to my wife, I join my Clanmates and become a Sunsinger Warlock who evaporates my opponents in a Crucible of radiant fire... sometimes.

eutral: I'm Kyle Shay, a programmer both professionally and as a hobbyist who lives in upstate New York with my wife, Jenna. In game, I’m a fan of all things purple. A Raiding Bubbler, a Stillpiercer/Shade-stepping Nightstalker, or my all-time favorite for Trials - the Voidlock.

How do you enterprising coders empower the Guardians?

Goose: We work on Destiny Item Manager, a community-developed, open-source app that manages your in-game items. DIM helps players play more Destiny because we save them so much time. In early Year One Destiny, it would take 10 minutes to go to the tower and swap your items between characters. DIM can do it in under 30 seconds with drag-and-drop item transfers and our Loadouts feature.

DIM is a free Chrome Extension, and can be downloaded from the Chrome Web Store. You’ll find us discussing new features and getting feedback on the /r/DestinyItemManager subreddit and @ThisIsDIM on Twitter. If you’re a developer/designer and want to help the hundreds of thousands of Guardians that use DIM, join us on GitHub.

Can you give us a brief history behind your app?

eutral: DIM was the first third-party item manager. Within a week of Bungie.net allowing items to be moved between characters, I created DIM with full loadouts support, and launched it as an open source app in March 2015. Goose joined soon after and we’ve been working together, listening to feedback and shepherding new features into DIM. We've had over 30 developers, designers, and project managers contribute their time and effort to help Destiny players all over the world have more fun with their game time.

What are some of the best features that will make Guardians want to use Destiny Item Manager?

Goose: There are three aspects I want to highlight. DIM lays out all three of your characters and the Vault side-by-side so you can easily take measure of all that you’ve earned. Secondly, it’s very easy to drag-and-drop an equipped item from one character to another. DIM will only take a moment to unequip an item, move it through the Vault to your target character, and equip it for you. Finally, loadouts are a great way to define an ideal Guardian for an activity. Just sit back, relax, and apply a loadout to make it rain in-game.

eutral: One great feature unique to DIM is the built-in Infusion calculator. You open it with any upgradeable item and it automatically calculates the most efficient way to get the highest Light possible.

Do you have any new features under development that will be added soon?

eutral: We do! One of our contributors, Ben Hollis, has recently been doing some amazing performance and feature-enhancing work. Soon you’ll be able to move all the items needed for an Infusion workflow in one click. A multi-select feature will make it much easier to quickly move items. Because of the positive feedback on our Crimson Days theme, we’re looking to add more themes to DIM that let users have a more personal experience.

That Crimson Days theme does look nice. Will DIM be available on smartphones in the near future?

Goose: Yes! We’re working hard to bring the great experience users have on the desktop into their favorite mobile devices. We’ve re-written DIM v4 to take all the lessons learned from our first year and to go further. Designers have iterated on the UI to find patterns that help users find and equip items quickly. Stay tuned because we’re starting our alpha tests very soon!

eutral: We have a great new feature that will sync your preferences and loadouts between authorized devices. You can change your loadouts on desktop and they will immediately show up on your phone.

Is there anything you would like to change or add in Destiny?

eutral: One thing I would love to see is the possibility for third party tools to modify the selected unlocked perks on an item or subclass. I use my subclasses differently between PVP and PVE activities. We see this as a non-destructive change that is no different than moving items between characters. It would greatly increase the utility of item managers as users could create loadouts that have item specific perks for an activity. It should still be limited to non-combat zone areas similarly to the limitations on equipping items.

Goose: Vault-less transfers would improve the experience. We have a lot of logic in the app that makes sure we can move large sets of gear through a Vault that may only have one spot open per category. Avoiding this constraint would make it easier for users to fill their Vault with their favorite items and not worry about having one spot open so transfers between characters can be successful. It would also speed up transfers since we only need one step instead of two to move an item.

Go give Destiny Item Manager a try. It’s a time saver and really helps switching between different characters.

We're always on the hunt for more community leaders to shine our spotlight on. If you know of a person or group doing great things in the Destiny community recommend them in the #Community forum with the tag #CommunityFocus.