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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."
I think the Half-Life series very well understands this...
-You get a weapons menu when you try to scroll through weapons but otherwise it's not there
-You get the flashlight in the top right
-You get health, armor and ammo
Then you have games like Deus Ex: Invisible War.
-Half the stinkin screen is HUD. To make matters worse, the HUD is elyptical so it creates this circle in the center of your screen that is the only useful part of your video display...
Nuff said.
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
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.
There are 11 types of people. Those who understand binary, those who don't and those who are sick of this lame joke.
This one is a no-brainer.
The article isn't just talking about removing HUDs, they want alternative methods of conveying the same information.
Anywho, reading the conclusion gives you a good idea of what the rest of TFA is about
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I agree. Now we just have to explain it to CNN Headline News and MTV.
How many times do I see articles that might as well be talking about Red Orchestra. They basically have removed all crosshairs, ammo counts, and health stastics.
All information is through visual, sound, or textual cues.
Example1: If you are low on stamina, your guy breathes heavy.
Example2: To find out how much ammo you have, reload and you'll get a message that says, your clip is heavy etc.
Example3: You don't get cross hairs. If you want to aim, you hit ironsites and it brings you guy up to your eyelevel and you use the 3d model to aim.
Very fun... Very realistic... Prolly the best WWII sim out there and these guys are an indie company.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
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.
END COMMUNICATION
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!