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Off With Their HUDS!
Gamasutra has a piece looking at the move to unite player and gameworld by removing the HUD from the gameplay space. From the article: "Many elements found on a typical HUD are there not out of necessity, but out of convention; they represent a sort of 'info overkill' that, for the vast majority of players, has no impact on gameplay at all. For every piece of information you offer the player, ask, 'Is this information essential to the game experience?' In doing so, you might find that you don't need to bombard the player with quite as much data as you once thought you did."
Would it be too much to ask to make HUDS in games customizeable. Make it scriptable and also include a graphical means to create the HUD setup you like akin to the idea of customizeable home pages where you can add and remove "boxes", drag them around, and even choose what information is shown in each box.
$sys$droids
The riddick game actually does this quite well. Without combat, there's no hud, in hand-to-hand there's an abstract health meter only, and when reloading a weapon it shows a count of remaining clips. Ammo readout is on the gun itself, there's no other hud.
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
undergarmets!
Really, the question of whether HUD is more/less realistic depends on what the game is designed to do.
from TFA:
However, nothing screams "this is just a game" louder than an old-fashioned HUD.
Not so! If the game is a FPS, then having a HUD might greatly increase the 'immersion factor' (a factor which I don't necessarily think is part of good gaming...that's another post). A soldier of the future might very well have a helmet w/ an HUD.
another thing, HUD doesn't have to be intrusive. It could be modified to take up mere millimeters of space around the edge of the screen. Most games have options like this. (i'd give examples but I haven't played much recently...i still know a good game when i see it tho)
Thank you Dave Raggett
I find it interesting that they refer to the rise of the casual gamer as a reason to go hud-less. From what I've seen, game companies try very very hard to create immersive games that don't have much to offer the casual gamer.
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The reasons that HUD displays exist is that they do their job quite well. They convey information to the player very directly and very simply.
If you were to try to make a fighting game without a health meter, you would have to convey the state of health of the player in a different manner. This could probably be done through modifying the character animations, and by changing certain key textures. But this solution will require custom art assets for every player in the game, and it would need to be quite detailed. This will add months of development time to what should be an otherwise very quick job. On top of that, while the efforts to remove HUD Elements to increase immersiveness can be very effective, such efforts do not deliver the most bang for the buck in terms of improving a game.
Using the above fighting game example, I would much prefer to have the developers add extra characters, or more combat moves.
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> Health and armor make more sense, although a visual picture (blood, debris, etc) would probably be better than either a bar or a number.
Perhaps ID had it right all along with the original Wolfenstein 3D. A picutre of the characters head would get progressivly more bloody as their health went down, tho it did have a % score as well. A quick glance at the state of the picture was always a quicker way to get a feel for your health than distracting yourself by reading and interpreting percentage.
How about a damage system that actually impairs your avatar? Got shot in the leg? Ok, now you limp everywhere. Boot to the head? Ok, everything is fuzzy and you have tunnel vision. Stabbed in the back? Now you can't raise your weapon up to eye level and have to shoot from the hip.
Now that would be an interesting game experience!
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They had a very good thing going with some of the weapons showing the remaining ammo on the weapon itself, but imo the incosistency of some weapons that were -not- having that ability limited them in still sicking with a GUI for the ammo.
I don't get it why they didn't totally drop the GUI in favor of models with the ammo displayed on it.
A non-GUI thing, but a bit related: I -do- think that it was a very good decision of them to drop the 'use'-button in favor of point-and-clicking at items/objects within reach.
To me the question of HUD design really depends on the game.
Some titles really lend themselves to a simplified HUD. Something beautiful, elegant, and unobtrusive. For instance, Red Orchestra (as mentioned by another thread on this news posting) has all of three persistant elements: A paper doll, a clip count, and a pocket watch. Gorgeous HUD, awesome game.
On the other hand, some games DO lend themselves to detailed HUDs. Unfortunatly the only poignant example I can think of is a personal one, and that would be the custom interfaces in World of Warcraft. I've pieced together my own setup that not a lot of people seem to like (though i'm not suprised). During full raid-mode it's disgusting... to some, in the sense of filth... but to me, the only disgusting thing is just how much information I have. I'm an officer in my guild, so one of my duties is keeping things organized during raids. This means status indicators on all 40 players, multiple chat boxes, indicators of what the monsters are doing, etc, etc etc. A good 3/4ths of my screen is partially obscured by something.... and y'know what? I love it! I equate it to landing an aircraft by instrument (which, I guess, would be another example: flight sims). It may not look 'pretty' but in terms of control, precision, and raw data, its unrivaled by anything one could ever dream of with a spartan HUD.
So while I do enjoy the slimmed down or integrated HUDs we're seeing in more and more games, I still think a good solid HUD isn't something a developer (or player!) should shy away from in all situations. Sometimes half the fun of a game is being swept away in an avalanche of input, and then deciding how to act on it!
The thing is... those are tools the player generally needs in order to succeed in the game. If you're going to go with something vague like, "your clip is getting light", you'd better not make it catastrophic for the player to run out of ammo.
If you have 50 rounds in a PPsh Soviet submachine gun and squeeze the trigger for 2 seconds... How many bullets to you have in the gun? What about a Mp41 or a Stg44?
You might be able to make a guess of how many bullets are left by your guns weight or pervious experience, but there weren't Aliens-esque LED's on these guns back in 1941 telling you how many bullets were in the thing.
Often times I will just empty the gun into something to reload because I know I might need a full clip down the road.
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Read the citation only if you wish to see how horrible drone-journalism it is. Otherwise just look at the highlight:
It is only recently that console developers have begun to address the hi-def revolution taking place in living rooms around the globe. According to the Consumer Electronics Association, over 12 million high-definition televisions (HDTVs) were sold in the United States between 1998 and 2004, and the market continues to grow rapidly; research firm Strategy Analytics has predicted HDTVs in almost 30 million American homes by 2008. With the advent of a new generation of consoles, developers are finally taking advantage of the ultra-sharp screen resolutions and theater quality sound offered by these increasingly common home entertainment systems. However, millions of high-definition televisions have an Achilles heel that can hinder developers as well: burn-in.
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That game was 80% HUD, but it felt leet watching your mech boot up, and looking at all the pretty radars and switches and shit. Hell, look at the controller. Man I want that game..
agreeing a little more, i would even like to see an fps without a health level indicator at all. doom3 made me realize this, i was more trying not to get hit because of the random rotation and visual blur penalty than because of some abstract numerical value decreasing. of course you would probably want to lower the overall level of difficulty then, but i'm sure that games that focus less on challenge but more on atmosphere (doom3 did that for example) would benefit from that change. the challenge-aspect is in decline in single player shooters anyways, since nobody in their right mind would choose an "spfps" to put his aiming to the test if mpfps is always available.
speaking of the ammo-counter, it's definitely useless in an intense fight, you either roughly guess (or even count) bullets used and therefore have an idea when you have to reload or you just don't care and then no ammo display in the world could change that. an exception are some of the hl2 guns that have an audible warning for "low ammo" which is very intuitive (took a very long while until i consciously realized what it was, before that i just knew when ammo was low, had no idea why).
one last idea to throw in the pool: in reality being able to count bullets while being under fire is one of those important differences between a skilled veteran and a greenhorn, so giving the player hud displays (or a crosshair) could be the list of goodies you get for experience points in games with a skill system like enemy territory.
[i have an opinion and i am not afraid to use it]
Agreed. The X-Wing series nailed this one early on. The ships HUD displays took up a lot of screen real estate. But with the press of a button, all non-essential information disappeared so you could get a much fuller view of the battlefield.
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