🛠️Item Definition Tools

Getting started with Steam Inventory via Heathen Engineering's Steam Inventory Manager tools

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Introduction

The hardest part about Steam Inventory is usually setting up your Steam Inventory Items. Have no fret Heathen is here to help!

JSON

JSON files are the easiest method to edit especially in bulk. Visual Studio can open JSON in a nicely formatted way its find-and-replace features make managing large definition files easier. You do not need to define all your items in a single file in general, we recommend you split your files up in a logical way. This could be 1 file per item, or per item type whatever makes sense for your game.

You can learn more about the JSON file schema in Valve's Schema Documentation.

Editor Tools

Heathen's tools can help you get started with creating your JSON definition files.

The very first thing you should do is import any Steam Inventory Items you already have. You can do this quickly by simply running the simulation (so that Steam API is initialized) and clicking the Import button under the Inventory list in your Steam Settings

Once done you will see every item you had defined already in your Steam Developer Portal has been pulled into Unity under your Steam Settings:

Screenshot of a WIP project with 57 items. You can see here how the Settings object categorizes the items based on type.

Defining Items

Creating new items is quick and easy simply click the "+ New" button in the Inventory list of Steam Settings and a new empty item will be created for you. Select that item and set the values as desired.

Every Steam Inventory Schema feature is available but the inspector will hide ones that cannot be used with the currently selected type.

Normal items can be traded, marketed, sold, etc.

Tag Generators only exist to attach to other items as generators

Uploading the Schema

Once you have defined your items you can copy the JSON data that represents the item, or optionally copy all of the items to your clipboard and paste the results into Steam Developer Portals item editor or into a text file to be uploaded later.

You can find the Copy JSON button on the Inventory Item object and in the Inventory list of the Steam Settings object.

On the Steam Settings object it will export the JSON for every item in a single collection.

On the item, it will export only that item's JSON

{	
	"appid": 480,
	"items": [
		{
			"itemdefid": 1001,
			"type": "tag_generator",
			"name": "Example Tag Generator",
			"tag_generator_name": "Rarity",
			"tag_generator_values": "Common:75;Rare:20;Epic:5",
			"granted_manually": False	
		}]
}

Once you have your items you should upload them to the Steam Developer Portal as indicated in Valve's documentation. You are safe to edit the schema in its text form if you need/like you can always reimport them from Steam later.

Using your items

Now that you have items defined in your Steam Developer Portal, and you have representations of those items in your Unity Project linked with your Steam Settings you can use Heathen's tools to manage the items at both dev time and run time.

The Inventory Item Definitions stored in your Steam Settings object act as an inventory. See the Inventory Item documentation for more information.

For developers needing to test, you can use the Steamworks Inspector to inspect, grant and clear items from your inventory. This is particularly useful since you can not use Steam client to view items for a game that is not yet released so the only way to view your items before release is to use our tool.