Cleaner marine HUD concept
Hello!
I've been experimenting with ideas for a new Marine HUD layout based off what's in the game now. I'm trying to come up with a concept that shows the player more relevant information while simultaneously reducing clutter on the screen. I've made some tests in LUA and am confident that I can implement most of this myself, though I would gladly pass off the idea to someone more familiar with the game if there is interest.
How does this look to you all? I'm looking for any and all feedback as ideally it would be great to come up with a design that suits everybody - competitive and pub players alike.
I've been experimenting with ideas for a new Marine HUD layout based off what's in the game now. I'm trying to come up with a concept that shows the player more relevant information while simultaneously reducing clutter on the screen. I've made some tests in LUA and am confident that I can implement most of this myself, though I would gladly pass off the idea to someone more familiar with the game if there is interest.
How does this look to you all? I'm looking for any and all feedback as ideally it would be great to come up with a design that suits everybody - competitive and pub players alike.
Comments
Only gripe I have with it is I can't see the exact health/armor of the marine.
The tech part is nice but it would be best behind map button and with numbers.
I for one want as less as possible info on the shooting screen, rest to be accessed with the scoreboard or the map screen.
Powerstatus can be seen from the lights, parasite from the model, no need for text. a little timer for the remaining parasite time would be awesome.
the rt amount is kind of useless, you can open the map and see for yourself.
The killstatus box is very good.
Thanks for the feedback, guys! Since health/armour numbers seem paramount, I've added them to the left of the bars and moved the armour/weapon icons over a bit. Parasite has been changed to a countdown timer as well. I completely agree about needing to know exact numbers.
As for kalakuja's other points (powerstatus, tech bit on scoreboard, rt numers), I'm going to take a minute to think about these things and collect other people's opinions.
EDIT: New update! I've removed the location power icon and added various icons from NS2. Also added a flashlight indicator (thoughts?).
Check font size for lowe resolutions and aspect
Check Layout Dependencies for lower Resultions specifically Aspect Ratios
Allways snatch a 100% lit room screenshot too since you want it to be perfectly readable on all contrast situiation
i think you could work more on the weighting on certain parts.
atm everything is even in its attention grabbing.
some feedback:
- upgrades should be larger then the cooldown timer for nanoshield for example, as its more imporant, maybe consider coloring the 3 different leveltypes, 2 against 3 bars is visible, but if you want to create a more subtle infograbbing by the user other then comparing, try numbers or colors, as the human can distinkt those more easy then the bars, i know its a small detail but the summ of those make good interfaces.
EDIT:: second thought, of the cooldown. If it is your personal nanoshield then its far more imporatnt then the upgrade level but then it should get a prominent design so you can see without conentrating to much on it
if its the commander cooldown i dont know if the player should know it at all, since its the role of the commadner to manage it and inform players when nano is unavailable and when not.
- Lowerbar health and armor placement is rather bad tbh. it completly blocks the lower part of your viewfrustrum,
making it impossible to see a skulk chewing your feet or even worse when jetpacking.
- researchbars do look good but this info shouldnt be onscreen, the way it works now with holding "J" is perfekt, since that information is temporal and doesnt deserve a permanent placement in the rines hud
the + and - on the killstream is a nice idea but also irrelevant, the System tells you allready in a colorcode who won over whom. no need to make a redundant Information. Also would those 1px lined elements in color mostly vanish infront of the games level assets.
Time is nice but the placement makes no sense, if there is no kill you get a clock somewhere onscreen, maybe you wanna switch it to a more solid spot.
The clock is kinda looking like a real clock, but i guess you wanted roundtime. Maybe switch the icon to a stopwatch then.
If you would like more feedback tell me, Interfacedesigner by job.
Some stuff I'd change though:
- I'd reduce the size of the minimap and put the room location in the upper left corner of the box rather than below it.
- Move the match timer and killfeed more to the right. Reduce the size of the health/armor bars, and/or move them more to the very bottom or side of the screen (with the other information displayed on it's sides).
- The research bars on the top left I'd also reduce in length.
- The "requesting medpack" lines are sort of redundant (you'll know what you're requesting anyway), so that can be removed. Thesame goes for the power indicator symbol.
- The nanoshield/catalyst timers are not that important imo, but the parasite timer would be very useful indeed.
- And I also never saw much use for seeing what stuff the commander is dropping. Mostly it'll be showing medpack/ammo spam anyway, so I'd remove that as well.
Anyway, went ahead, utilising my best ms paint skills, to illustrate my feedback. Something like the image below would be absolutely perfect for me.
10/10 would awesome again.
@Neoken:
Thank you! I love what you did with the information in the bottom left. It accomplishes what I was trying for with keeping all information pertaining to the player towards the bottom of the screen.
My goal with the central bars was to give the player a good peripheral view of their health/armour so they could focus on what's happening in the center of the screen. You design shows me that this can be accomplished by simply improving the appearance of the health and armour bars rather than moving them.
@sushifx: You're absolutely right about the upgrade bar colours as well as health/armour bar placement. Regarding nanoshield and cooldown timers, I do intend on having some other stuff happen to show the player that nanoshield is in effect, the cooldown timer was going to be a secondary indicator. Ultimately though, in this past iteration I decided to do away with most status indicators completely.
Regarding the "requesting" indicator, I've removed it for now but I'm thinking of revisiting it later. My thought was to have that HUD element mirror the state of the message that shows up for the commander. That way, the player would know whether their request was pending and unanswered or has expired.
A few things that I'm generally concerned about:
MAP ASPECT RATIO
- In my prototype, the map is exactly square which offers the player an even 360' view around their character while neither Neoken's nor UWE's does this. This was deliberate on my part because I feel that having any other shape of minimap would affect the player's ability to detect threats from certain cardinal directions.
RT COUNT
- Mige (and I'm sure others) complain that the RT count is problematic to have displayed on the screen. I'm not entirely sold on this as I feel that it is important to know what the commander is doing and capable of spending on at all times throughout a match. It's essentially a replacement for the little dots that appear next to your PRes in the vanilla HUD, which I would sorely miss without some kind of alternative. I moved it up towards the commander corner of the screen because having a good RT count is largely the product of having an active comm. It also relates very closely to the map in the sense that you must secure territory in order to secure RTs.
If anyone has any further comments or ideas, please let me know! I'm open to any and all ideas, and will credit others where credit is due.
EDIT: Removed the - and + from the killstatus area, since left it's pretty easy to read what's positive and negative when the text is left-justified anyway.
It's debatable, but at least in public games having knowledge of what the commander is dropping is important, since you don't get the same level of communication as you would a competitive game. It would be easy for players to miss the commander dropping a phasegate or an obs without communication.
Love this. I hope a mod like this gets made soon.
Wow, I'm getting a lot of mixed feedback on that. I've taken it out for the time being because a significant number of competitives feel that it's unneeded, and well represented by on the in-game tech tree as it is now. We could always revisit the idea down the road.
The number one thing I'd love some feedback on is the minimap aspect ratio. In neoken's post it's wider than it is tall. However, in my first post, it's exactly square. My concern with making it wider is that it would make marines more capable of picking out targets along a map's X axis than it's Y, which I believe should be avoided.
I've been busy with some other stuff lately, but I'll start building the HUD mod shortly, at the turn of December.
I did like the little tech bars though. Yeah, for competitive you don't really need it, but it could be useful on pubs for field players who'd like to know what their commander is up to.
If you want to experience your years of conditioning just fire up fraps. Fraps lets you decide in which corner you want to place the FPS counter.
Just play around with it and try every single position. You'll find that the upper left is most irritating and will grab your attention much more than lower right.
That's why I'd place the health bars in the upper left corner.
The most unimportant stuff should go to the lower right.
so what i'd REALLY like to have, is a modular HUD where everyone can (de)active whatever parts they want.
even better (but probably too much work) would be a WYSIWYG "editor" to drag&drop the components in, also moving them around and scaling them.