Updated and refactored how items and characters are chosen for interactions in the world. The new system has more precision, with items under the cursor taking priority (this helps with small items which are in front of large items). A new method CanInteractWith(Item) has been added to the Character class which does all validation of interaction with items, including new distance calculations based on bounding boxes. This gives more consistency in selecting and interacting with all sizes and shapes of items. Because of this pickdistance (not interactdistance) has been removed from all item configurations (in their XML config files) and the default InteractDistance for all items is now 120.

Barotrauma/Source/Items/ItemPrefab.cs

@@ -35,9 +35,11 @@ namespace Barotrauma
         protected Vector2 size;
 
         //how close the Character has to be to the item to pick it up
-        private float pickDistance;
+        private float interactDistance;
+        // this can be used to allow items which are behind other items tp
+        private float interactPriority; 
 
-        private bool pickThroughWalls;
+        private bool interactThroughWalls;
 
         //an area next to the construction
         //the construction can be Activated() by a Character inside the area
@@ -80,14 +82,19 @@ namespace Barotrauma
             private set;
         }
 
-        public float PickDistance
+        public float InteractDistance
         {
-            get { return pickDistance; }
+            get { return interactDistance; }
         }
 
-        public bool PickThroughWalls
+        public float InteractPriority
         {
-            get { return pickThroughWalls; }
+            get { return interactPriority; }
+        }
+
+        public bool InteractThroughWalls
+        {
+            get { return interactThroughWalls; }
         }
 
         public override bool IsLinkable
@@ -268,9 +275,10 @@ namespace Barotrauma
 
             Description = ToolBox.GetAttributeString(element, "description", "");
 
-            pickThroughWalls    = ToolBox.GetAttributeBool(element, "pickthroughwalls", false);
-            pickDistance        = ToolBox.GetAttributeFloat(element, "pickdistance", 0.0f);
-            
+            interactThroughWalls    = ToolBox.GetAttributeBool(element, "interactthroughwalls", false);
+            interactDistance        = ToolBox.GetAttributeFloat(element, "interactdistance", 120.0f); // Default to 120 as the new item picking method is tuned to this number
+            interactPriority        = ToolBox.GetAttributeFloat(element, "interactpriority", 0.0f);
+
             isLinkable          = ToolBox.GetAttributeBool(element, "linkable", false);
 
             resizeHorizontal    = ToolBox.GetAttributeBool(element, "resizehorizontal", false);