Improsign - Health
inFamous Fighter
Join Date: 2011-07-09 Member: 109262Members
Join Date: 2011-07-09 Member: 109262Members
<div class="IPBDescription">My current improvements to the (marine) health bar</div><u>Explanation of the Title</u>:
In the title I put "Improsign". And by Improsign I mean Improving the Design. I just put the two words together and made the work improsign.
<u>Health Bar Concept</u>:
The health bar. The seemingly useless but all important item in the game. This is the one spot every player knows to look and keep a constant eye on in the game to make sure they don't die. Even a player who is knew any FPS game knows that your health is key to winning. In thinking this I tried to think of some ideas to add to the health bar that would not pull the eye to far away from gaming, but still giving the player more information in one key spot on his/her screen.
<u>Idea</u>:
So while gaming for servery months I figured out a bunch of things that could be useful to game play, but none seemed to be able to fit small enough and not take up to much space on the screen and detract from the game. But once I was talking to NS2HD and was trying to help him design a better Banner for his scrims. In the end it didn't work out, but he sent me one e-mail that said he wanted to implement the idea of the current armor upgrades and damage upgrades live in his casts. He told me he had an idea for a grid system of dots that would show when they were upgraded. In thinking of this I thought it would be a great idea to implement this into the health bar area. It was a good idea because the design up just using dots and highlighting them was big enough to catch the eye when needing to be seen, but not catching the eye when not wanting to be seen. So I took his idea and put it into the health bar. In all honesty, when I'm playing Natural Selection 2, there's always one thing you have to keep asking the commander, and that is "Hey comm, what are our upgrades at?" So to fix this, I added a dot system to the health bar to make it more convenient to everyone.
<u>Arguments</u>:
<i>1)</i> Some people might argue that they can just look at how much armor they have, and be able to find out what their armor upgrades are at. But what I say to that is what if you don't know the exact armor levels, or what if you forget. What if you don't have full armor levels, are you just going to guess? Wouldn't it just be simpler to look at 3 dots and figure out what ones are highlighted and then that tells you it? I think so.
<i>2) </i>What I don't think people will argue is that the damage upgrades is easy to find out. "Well just see how many shots it takes to kill a Skulk!" That's a good idea till you consider what the Aliens armor might currently be at.
<i>3)</i> Some might even say "Why do I need to know my current damage level?" To that I say that it is easier to help the commander keep up at using resources, and help remind them by saying "Hey Comm, we don't have any Damage upgrades yet!" Instead of "Hey comm whats our damage upgrade at?" and having to go through the process of him taking time to look at the arms lab.
<i>4)</i> The one that I expect most is "Why are the attack upgrades by the health?" And to this I don't know how to respond but just say that I don't have any other logical place to put it. There is the idea of putting text next to it saying "Damage" and next to the Armor Dots put "Armor". But I think this would detract to much from the game play by putting in text and make the health bar feel to funky.
<u>Screen shots</u>:
<i>InGame like</i>:
<img src="http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/3580/idea2ingame.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
<i>Transparent</i>:
<img src="http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/8329/idea2transparent.png" border="0" class="linked-image" />
<i>Graphic Explanation</i>:
<img src="http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/4383/idea2explanation.png" border="0" class="linked-image" />
<i>Thanks</i>,
Wil
<i>Special Thanks</i>:
<b>NS2HD</b>
<i>Bio</i>:
Hey, my name is Wil Simpson and I just saw a current tweet of Unknown Worlds posting about how they were looking for people to apply for jobs. I don't really think I want to be payed more as just to help out by giving ideas into the new design and artwork side of Natural Selection 2. I am currently just a self taught graphic design artists who wants to make a living doing what I like, graphic design. I normally just do free work for all the clans, guilds, and orgs out there who need a cool logo or some signatures for forums. I hope at least some of my ideas and designs can somehow work into the games play and make this game as good as it should be because I really do enjoy this game and seeing it evolve.
In the title I put "Improsign". And by Improsign I mean Improving the Design. I just put the two words together and made the work improsign.
<u>Health Bar Concept</u>:
The health bar. The seemingly useless but all important item in the game. This is the one spot every player knows to look and keep a constant eye on in the game to make sure they don't die. Even a player who is knew any FPS game knows that your health is key to winning. In thinking this I tried to think of some ideas to add to the health bar that would not pull the eye to far away from gaming, but still giving the player more information in one key spot on his/her screen.
<u>Idea</u>:
So while gaming for servery months I figured out a bunch of things that could be useful to game play, but none seemed to be able to fit small enough and not take up to much space on the screen and detract from the game. But once I was talking to NS2HD and was trying to help him design a better Banner for his scrims. In the end it didn't work out, but he sent me one e-mail that said he wanted to implement the idea of the current armor upgrades and damage upgrades live in his casts. He told me he had an idea for a grid system of dots that would show when they were upgraded. In thinking of this I thought it would be a great idea to implement this into the health bar area. It was a good idea because the design up just using dots and highlighting them was big enough to catch the eye when needing to be seen, but not catching the eye when not wanting to be seen. So I took his idea and put it into the health bar. In all honesty, when I'm playing Natural Selection 2, there's always one thing you have to keep asking the commander, and that is "Hey comm, what are our upgrades at?" So to fix this, I added a dot system to the health bar to make it more convenient to everyone.
<u>Arguments</u>:
<i>1)</i> Some people might argue that they can just look at how much armor they have, and be able to find out what their armor upgrades are at. But what I say to that is what if you don't know the exact armor levels, or what if you forget. What if you don't have full armor levels, are you just going to guess? Wouldn't it just be simpler to look at 3 dots and figure out what ones are highlighted and then that tells you it? I think so.
<i>2) </i>What I don't think people will argue is that the damage upgrades is easy to find out. "Well just see how many shots it takes to kill a Skulk!" That's a good idea till you consider what the Aliens armor might currently be at.
<i>3)</i> Some might even say "Why do I need to know my current damage level?" To that I say that it is easier to help the commander keep up at using resources, and help remind them by saying "Hey Comm, we don't have any Damage upgrades yet!" Instead of "Hey comm whats our damage upgrade at?" and having to go through the process of him taking time to look at the arms lab.
<i>4)</i> The one that I expect most is "Why are the attack upgrades by the health?" And to this I don't know how to respond but just say that I don't have any other logical place to put it. There is the idea of putting text next to it saying "Damage" and next to the Armor Dots put "Armor". But I think this would detract to much from the game play by putting in text and make the health bar feel to funky.
<u>Screen shots</u>:
<i>InGame like</i>:
<img src="http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/3580/idea2ingame.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
<i>Transparent</i>:
<img src="http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/8329/idea2transparent.png" border="0" class="linked-image" />
<i>Graphic Explanation</i>:
<img src="http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/4383/idea2explanation.png" border="0" class="linked-image" />
<i>Thanks</i>,
Wil
<i>Special Thanks</i>:
<b>NS2HD</b>
<i>Bio</i>:
Hey, my name is Wil Simpson and I just saw a current tweet of Unknown Worlds posting about how they were looking for people to apply for jobs. I don't really think I want to be payed more as just to help out by giving ideas into the new design and artwork side of Natural Selection 2. I am currently just a self taught graphic design artists who wants to make a living doing what I like, graphic design. I normally just do free work for all the clans, guilds, and orgs out there who need a cool logo or some signatures for forums. I hope at least some of my ideas and designs can somehow work into the games play and make this game as good as it should be because I really do enjoy this game and seeing it evolve.
Comments
I guess its personal preference but when i look down to my health bar, i usually only do so because i need to know what my health is and if i need to go back to base and heal up, but it seems having more information than you would typically be looking for could be somewhat distracting and may feel a little clustered. Cause lets be honest, you'll only need to look at what upgrades you have once per tier, and then you wouldn't really look there again, or at least not very frequently, which i would prefer reserving the health bar for strictly health information.
In NS1 if you really wanted to know what your upgrades are you could look to your right and would see the icons of your upgrades, armor, weapons, and equipemt, keeping it separate from other information that you wouldn't need to know about at the moment, for example if you died, and just respawned and wanted to see what upgrades you had, and vice versa during a gunfight you would want to see what health you had, and would probably had known what your upgrades were beforehand.
I guess this is all personal preference but its still something to consider or think about, plus when a new player joins the game, the icons will be pretty self explanatory, not needing as elaborate tooltips, which would already be cluttering their screen.
My suggestion (in another thread) was to show all those informations when you bring up the minimap. There you should / could see team res, personal res, upgrades etc.
The scoreboard is still useful, since you see what weapons / equipment the other guys in your team carry.
Better than in NS1 covering your HUD on the right. If you already did it (it seems so) give it out for a test :-D.
Good idea +1
Bot....
Edit: Account has been deleted