2012-04-03, 03:41 PM (This post was last modified: 2012-04-06, 04:38 PM by -------.)
#1
New HUD
Okay, there is one big problem I see with the HUD in general.
The HUD is trying to overwhelm me with annotations, blinking and colorful stuff.
I'll explain what I mean. Please see this as constructive critism, not as a personal attack Wink I know the HUD is also much the fault of native AC, but I think something should be done there.
Also I know that the HUD can be partly modified/disabled by the player, but I want to show how it looks for new players.
[Image: 20120403213333acdesertt.png]

1.The killstreak display overlays other displays.
Also it is not in the design as other HUD elements (compare to minimap)

2.The skull in the lower left is pulsing. Does this have to be? It seems to be rather annoying then useful. Also another symbol like a health-cross could be more suited.
It would be also a good idea to show the health on the right, relativly big, top left next to it the ammo could be displayed (small).
Also, what about removing the grenade number or just hiding it by default?
Also, the skill (in blue) should not be shown the whole time, just at a respawn or the start of the map.

3.The messages here are too big and too centered. They need to be moved up a bit and be all just one color. Also the messages here are above the corpse and on my HUD, which is too much. I think they should be just in one location.(I like more the one over the corpse)
Also, here the text very often overlaps itself, making it hard to read.
Maybe also reduce the amount of those texts and symbols? Less is more sometimes :-)

4.The bloody screen is far too intense for the amount of health I have left.(76!)
It should start at ~25, because makes everything harder (and is not really realistic) (or do you have often blood drips over your eyes? Big Grin )

5.Again we have an element here that occurs three times. The killmessages can be found at the right, at the top left and at lower middle of the screen.
Also, too many colors. One color needs to be chosen that leads through the design of the HUD.

6.That tiny little icon is supposed to show you who you need to shoot and who not.I think it would be better if the icon is removed and the HUD shown in the color of the team you are in (but not full color, rather a desaturated dark tone of the color)

7.The crosshair is too big by default. I have played several shooters, and this crosshair is irritaiting because of it's size. Also the default crosshair looks... low quality and outdated. :X

8.What is that? A distance? Of what? Seriously, I payed some attention and time to try to get what this does, but it is just not understandable. Also, too colorful (as the whole HUD) I suggest to remove it.

9.This killmessage is there three times (see 5), but I marked it to show the information that is too much.
I'll comment on each phrase:
'you':Shouldn't that be uppercase? Just a thought.
'have shredded a bot': Okay, that makes sense. Nothing really bad about it, but why is the color yellow? Gray would fit to the minimap, white would fit to the health and ammo display... but yellow? The colors of the HUD should be thought about again.
'[4-0]':here the cryptic starts. A new color, so the player has to think it is important, but it is really hard to tell what this should be.
'(@4.13m)':Nice information, but not needed here. If some text appears that large, the player is prompted to read it all.
Also the player knows at what distance he fragged the opponent (at least approximatly).
It is a nice stat for multiplayer, but shouldn't be found here (rather just in the echo display top left)
'2 ds':Is this info needed here? I don't know what this means, new players don't know it probably... Is it needed?

Okay, that's about it.

If you want to do something at the HUD, I can help with advice and by making some artwork myself with GIMP(and ...maybe... help with programming)

Best regards, restcoser Smile
Post Reply Quote this message in a reply
2012-04-04, 03:18 PM
#2
RE: Points/EXP
Some responses:
The colors are a bit unexplained, and the kill messages are a bit redundant.

8. That distance is how far away you are looking at.
9. "you" is lowercase, since "you" can be replaced with any player name, which are usually all lowercase. [4-0] The bracket shows player type (human) [bots]. For humans, (cn). For bots, [cn-owner]. ds is "deathstreak".

It's not the dev's fault that the player doesn't understand.

Best regards,
Victor
//victorz.ca
Code:
Your antithesis compares favorably with any high magnitude of pwnage. (-you > |p|, you < -|p|)
My antithesis compares favorably with _that of_ any high magnitude of pwnage. (|-me| > |-p|, |me| > |p|)
Post Reply Quote this message in a reply
2012-04-05, 01:28 AM (This post was last modified: 2012-04-05, 05:08 AM by -------.)
#3
RE: Points/EXP
"It is not the dev's fault that the player doesn't understand."
First, that sound like you see this as I want to give you any fault, which is not the case. I simply want to improve the game Smile.
Second, things can be made more clear that more players understand the meaning of those. Also please understand that it's not neccesary to give the player too much information. I am not really interested in how far away i'm looking at or how often the bot,that I just killed, has died before.
Yes, this information can be useful, but if you really want those information, you could make it an option that is by default dieabled. Some option like "more information" would work.
For getting a bit farer, I'll try drawing a HUD that I think fits. (I'll take a screenshot without HUD and edit it)
This however can take some time. Smile

---------------------------------
Edit: Done. I'm still not 100% satisfied with it, but well, it is just a concept.

[Image: hudgs.png]

About the HUD elements that are not on the drawn HUD( How I imagine they could be):
*bloody screen: As I said in my first post; would appear from 25 health downwards
*damage indicator:Would stay as it is.
*console:Less colors, but everything else would stay
*Kill messages:They would appear as before at the right, but nowhere else, maybe some icon changes. Also the font color = team color
*'Headshot''Critical'- They would appear over the player that has been hit. Maybe other images for those events, to divide from Red Eclipse and to keep the ACR Style
Did I forget anything?
Post Reply Quote this message in a reply
2012-04-05, 03:06 PM
#4
RE: Points/EXP
If the bloody screen appears from 25 HP downwards, it almost never shows due to the pace of this game.

Thank you for creating a concept HUD. It does resemble the Battlefield HUD a little, doesn't it?

Best regards,
Victor
//victorz.ca
Code:
Your antithesis compares favorably with any high magnitude of pwnage. (-you > |p|, you < -|p|)
My antithesis compares favorably with _that of_ any high magnitude of pwnage. (|-me| > |-p|, |me| > |p|)
Post Reply Quote this message in a reply
2012-04-06, 01:19 AM (This post was last modified: 2012-04-06, 02:10 AM by -------.)
#5
RE: Points/EXP
I actually had to google battlefield HUD, I was just partly inspired by batlefield 3 for the position of the minimap, but the other HUD was mainly just trying out and fiddeling around with it.
I looked at the other Battlefield HUD (1,2) and the positions of the main elements are similar.
I forgot to say that the HUD would be blue if the player is in the blue team.
If you think that the bloody screen not appears enough ~50 might also be a good value. It has to be playtested. I just think right now it appears too often.

Edit: I actually forgot to mention that this HUD was also inspired by the position of the perk symbol. In the menu I could not remove it, and it was too much work to manually edit it out. I created the whole HUD around it :S

Edit2: While lokking a bit around in the source to see if my c++ coding skills are enough (they aren't at the moment) i saw in renderhud.cpp the following:
Code:
const char *crosshairnames[CROSSHAIR_NUM] = { "default", "scope", "shotgun", "vertical", "horizontal", "hit" };
Texture *crosshairs[CROSSHAIR_NUM] = { NULL }; // weapon specific crosshairs
Does this mean weapon specific crosshairs would be easy to implement? Cuz that would be awesum.Tongue


Post Reply Quote this message in a reply
2012-04-06, 09:33 AM (This post was last modified: 2012-04-06, 09:36 AM by Victor.)
#6
RE: Points/EXP
I agree, the HUD should be redesigned.

0. The blood should always appear if your health isn't at or above 100.0 HP, but maybe appear less?

1. The perk symbol should be removable, but maybe not in the current release.

2. Negative, but it would be easy to implement crosshair "types" for different groups of weapons. Every crosshair is rendered differently...
"weapon specific crosshairs" was a comment left by the AC devs, which should really say "specific crosshairs".

A few flaws:
The armor is missing from the display?
Where is the voting space?
Killfeed?

Best regards,
Victor
//victorz.ca
Code:
Your antithesis compares favorably with any high magnitude of pwnage. (-you > |p|, you < -|p|)
My antithesis compares favorably with _that of_ any high magnitude of pwnage. (|-me| > |-p|, |me| > |p|)
Post Reply Quote this message in a reply
2012-04-06, 12:24 PM (This post was last modified: 2012-04-06, 12:26 PM by -------.)
#7
RE: Points/EXP
eek, I missed some stuff... okay, so still some work to do. will work tomorrow (7.4.) on it... or maybe even today a bit.
I actually seemed to forget those because they were not on the screenshot that I created with HUD (I had no armor there)

Post Reply Quote this message in a reply
2012-04-11, 08:17 PM (This post was last modified: 2012-04-11, 08:18 PM by Victor.)
#8
RE: New HUD
Thread was split at 04-06-2012, 01:56 PM

Here is my concept HUD:
http://i.imgur.com/CauSx.png (not shown here due to large size/white contrast)

Best regards,
Victor
//victorz.ca
Code:
Your antithesis compares favorably with any high magnitude of pwnage. (-you > |p|, you < -|p|)
My antithesis compares favorably with _that of_ any high magnitude of pwnage. (|-me| > |-p|, |me| > |p|)
Post Reply Quote this message in a reply
2012-04-12, 12:53 PM
#9
RE: New HUD
Shows well the planned positions.
Some thoughts:
*FPS info is never that large thus less space needs to be reserved for it.(?)
*What is HUD console? The kill message? I'd think about leaving the big centered kill messages away or making the HUD console smaller.
*Flag states in the upper right are a bit alone there. Maybe moving them down; for example right or on top of the minimap (just 2 small icons need to be displayed)
*How will the team color be displayed? Will it be the HUD color?
*The whole ammo display takes up too much space. The option to just display the active weapon ammo + grenade ammo should be considered.
*I hope the graphics you used there are just to show the positioning Smile
Post Reply Quote this message in a reply
2012-04-12, 05:02 PM
#10
RE: New HUD
FPS info includes vertex count...

I'm thinking to make every hostile red, and all friendlies blue, similar to Cube 2.

The "HUD console" is where messages show up and drop. Those are "personal kill messages" plus "flag" messages.

It's just for positioning.

Best regards,
Victor
//victorz.ca
Code:
Your antithesis compares favorably with any high magnitude of pwnage. (-you > |p|, you < -|p|)
My antithesis compares favorably with _that of_ any high magnitude of pwnage. (|-me| > |-p|, |me| > |p|)
Post Reply Quote this message in a reply


Forum Jump: