UI Feedback

[Dragonji]

[QUOTE=stealth6;410319]I like the game to be a bit immersive, so you only have things on your HUD that you’d know in real life. So just your ammo and health really. To figure out where objectives are you could take out a map and look at that, and after a few games you’d know where it is anyway.

Also the cool down on miniguns can be removed from the hud and transferred to the gun itself. Like a hightech touch screen on the gun that tells you when it’s going to overheat or just the color of the gun could change to a bright red. This could add a slight skill to these guns, knowing when they are going to overheat, without having a clear indicator on your screen.

Basically treat your hud like your real eyes, in real life I can’t see where an objective is unless I’m wearing some kind of special goggles like google glass with a screen overlay.[/QUOTE]
Totally agreed with everything you said!

[DarkangelUK]

Yeah that’s each to their own, you may see advancements zen, I see unnecessary clutter and too much hand holding. I’m not for a second believing that those UI markers were left out of older games because it was last on the list and an after thought, I believe they’re simply not as necessary as you’re making out. I more or less exclusively play fps games and can’t say I’ve ever been put off when everything wasn’t laid out in front of my eyes.

[Humate]

i thought etqw’s ui was pretty good… /cough

[Dthy]

i thought etqw’s ui was pretty good… /cough

We need this “Like post” button!

[zenstar]

Yeah that’s each to their own, you may see advancements zen, I see unnecessary clutter and too much hand holding. I’m not for a second believing that those UI markers were left out of older games because it was last on the list and an after thought, I believe they’re simply not as necessary as you’re making out. I more or less exclusively play fps games and can’t say I’ve ever been put off when everything wasn’t laid out in front of my eyes.

I do agree (as I have stated in my responses) that there is a point where it does become clutter. But by the same token you have to agree that some of the stuff we have now is better than what came before (eg: RtCW’s UI > Doom’s UI). Finding the right amount of information to display is important.
What I’m against is the whole “naked” HUD and “treat the HUD like your eyes” things.

We need a certain level of information to be displayed to make the game more intuitive and easy to pick up. If we can do that without any icons on-screen then great. I’m not advocating attaching a readout of player statistics to the players’ models on-screen resulting in walking novels. I’m advocating the right level of on-screen information.

If we go with the “treat the HUD like your eyes” then what do we do for things like objectives? No markings showing it’s an objective? So the Engineers can just stumble around with their pliers holding down fire until they get a bar filling up? or wait… that bar is also UI. I guess the wall will need to slowly construct itself while you work on it leaving timing and completion percentage to be ambiguous as all get out?

Context-sensitive, unobtrusive information makes for a good UI. A good UI helps people access the game beneath.

And a lot of on-screen UI was left off older games because of the screen real-estate. Text has a minimum size before it becomes an unreadable smear. Combine 14 inch, 4:3 ratio monitors with low resolutions (640 * 480 was godly at one point) and what you’re left with is the inability to write a players name over their head because it would block half the screen, let alone a class symbol.

[SockDog]

I think the problem is that the hud elements are not things we expect to see in the centre of our vision. Would it not be more natural to [strike]steal[/strike] borrow from L4D and have team mates show an outline when behind a wall? Okay that’s not natural either but you’re talking about seeing a human form instead of a block of text and colours. Should outlines could follow L4D and change colour depending on status, flash if necessary.

For objectives and guidance I think a clear map location should be sufficient at a minimum, if we want further help then guidance arrows like GPS should be place at the lower center of the screen and blended with the map not as part of the HUD.

Basically make a lot of the information present in a natural or integrated way with the environment rather than as a kind of labelled overly.

And yes, a Hardcore mode with most of the hud turned off would be good.

[zenstar]

[QUOTE=SockDog;410474]I think the problem is that the hud elements are not things we expect to see in the centre of our vision. Would it not be more natural to [strike]steal[/strike] borrow from L4D and have team mates show an outline when behind a wall? Okay that’s not natural either but you’re talking about seeing a human form instead of a block of text and colours. Should outlines could follow L4D and change colour depending on status, flash if necessary.

For objectives and guidance I think a clear map location should be sufficient at a minimum, if we want further help then guidance arrows like GPS should be place at the lower center of the screen and blended with the map not as part of the HUD.

Basically make a lot of the information present in a natural or integrated way with the environment rather than as a kind of labelled overly.

And yes, a Hardcore mode with most of the hud turned off would be good.[/QUOTE]

I like a lot of what you say here.

I also like the guidance arrows, but with a lot of different routes to an objective and with the maze-like nature of some maps I think that GPS style navigation may be less awesome than an icon with a distance.
Maybe make that icon fade more based on distance so it is visible if you look for it when you’re far away?
Unless you mean an arrow that points directly at the objective and not a turn-by-turn navigation thing? That could work… but how about this: options. You play with the arrow at the bottom of the screen. DAUK can play with no indicators and I’ll play with a small on-screen icon. That way everyone is happy?

EDIT: Do a google image search for what fighter pilots see in their HUD. Yeah, I know this isn’t a flight sim but if the army could make contact lenses that did the same thing you can bet that the guys on the ground would be seeing the same things.
It’s not about holding hands or ADD, it’s about freeing you to do what you want to do without having to source any information from elsewhere. It’s about letting you focus fully on what’s in front of you without needing to reference a map while under fire.
Now obviously a pilot’s HUD is loads more info than an FPS game needs, but a certain level of instant information is a good thing.

[stealth6]

In W:ET when you were near an objective it would come up with a little message telling you so and an icon would appear telling you what kind of tool it required. That was nice.

[SockDog]

[QUOTE=zenstar;410477]I like a lot of what you say here.

I also like the guidance arrows, but with a lot of different routes to an objective and with the maze-like nature of some maps I think that GPS style navigation may be less awesome than an icon with a distance.
Maybe make that icon fade more based on distance so it is visible if you look for it when you’re far away?
Unless you mean an arrow that points directly at the objective and not a turn-by-turn navigation thing? That could work… but how about this: options. You play with the arrow at the bottom of the screen. DAUK can play with no indicators and I’ll play with a small on-screen icon. That way everyone is happy?

EDIT: Do a google image search for what fighter pilots see in their HUD. Yeah, I know this isn’t a flight sim but if the army could make contact lenses that did the same thing you can bet that the guys on the ground would be seeing the same things.
It’s not about holding hands or ADD, it’s about freeing you to do what you want to do without having to source any information from elsewhere. It’s about letting you focus fully on what’s in front of you without needing to reference a map while under fire.
Now obviously a pilot’s HUD is loads more info than an FPS game needs, but a certain level of instant information is a good thing.[/QUOTE]

It really only needs to lay out a basic route, not necessarily the most optimal for a particular situation. Yes there could be alternatives to how that is displayed mini-map, direct directional arrow, waypoint arrows, a line overlay etc. Thing I see is that by doing something like a line you’re making a big change so it doesn’t need to be overstated.

I do think Fighter pilots are pretty much flying off instruments half the time, if it’s not in their hud then they’re going to be looking at a panel, something they probably can’t even do in a high G manoeuvre. I think a better case would be augmented headsets for soldiers and perhaps car HUD technology as that in particular has to be designed not to distract you. I’ll continue to google a bit more on that last one and see if I can find some good examples.

[zenstar]

It really only needs to lay out a basic route, not necessarily the most optimal for a particular situation. Yes there could be alternatives to how that is displayed mini-map, direct directional arrow, waypoint arrows, a line overlay etc. Thing I see is that by doing something like a line you’re making a big change so it doesn’t need to be overstated.

I would be happy with GTA style arrow guidance to objectives, but it’s going to be difficult to display multiple objectives with this method (defend this, build this wall, build that wall) without having some sort of selection menu and then you’re expecting people to browse through menus to see things instead of just some small icons displayed in the world.

ETQW had some nice menus but I still think icons in the world with a distance readout is a nice clean solution and if the alpha balance and size are done correctly (growing slightly when you’re near, becoming slightly more transparent when you’re far for optional objectives) then that’s a more informative and elegant solution.

[SockDog]

Yeah, not a big fan of scrolling through menus. Perhaps something in relation to the minimap, you could have icons on there and press a single key to tab through them which in turn would give you a hud gps guide.

[zenstar]

Yeah, not a big fan of scrolling through menus. Perhaps something in relation to the minimap, you could have icons on there and press a single key to tab through them which in turn would give you a hud gps guide.

Can we still have a “show me all the icons onscreen” option? For people like me who would rather just see icons?
I mean the code is obviously already there so don’t remove it…

[SockDog]

I don’t see why not. It would probably be a smart move to even sell custom HUDs. Perhaps allow placement and scaling to be user driven still as this can be important to individuals but colours and designs, why not make some money from it once the game is feature stable.

[stealth6]

I don’t see why not. It would probably be a smart move to even sell custom HUDs. Perhaps allow placement and scaling to be user driven still as this can be important to individuals but colours and designs, why not make some money from it once the game is feature stable.

lol, that’s an interesting idea, lua to script your own huds or something like that.

[amazinglarry]

I like the idea of having customizable HUDS. I hate to be that guy but cough PS2 cough has a couple of different HUD styles that one can select from.

Sometimes there can definitely be too many options, but I can definitely see some players wanting to X amount of information, while others want Y amount. Couldn’t hurt to give them a toggle option at the very least.

[SockDog]

It’s nice that this is getting positive responses. I think a combination of user customisation of hud elements and SD produced purchasable hud styles would be pretty nice. I might buy a hud or two if I like the style, I see that as a useability purchase rather than something purely cosmetic.