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Games Entertainment

Off With Their HUDS! 128

Posted by Zonk from the it's-a-pun,-you-see dept.
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."
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Off With Their HUDS! More

Off With Their HUDS!

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  • HL Series (Score:5, Informative)

    by rwven ( 663186 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @07:41PM (#14638902)
    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.
    • That's a good point though. I mean, ammo? Is that realistic? Why not have an indicator on your weapon that shows you how much ammo you have left (or, in some cases when it wouldn't be obvious, just an unpleasant "click" sound)? Health and armor make more sense, although a visual picture (blood, debris, etc) would probably be better than either a bar or a number.

      • Re:HL Series (Score:2, Insightful)

        by IgLou ( 732042 )
        But didn't you find when you played after a while you forgot about the HUD? I did. In fact I had a bad habit of running out of ammo because I wasn't actively thinking about it until I was in a non-action sequence. :D

        Although what I think would be really cool for that type of experience would be when you're in the thick of a combat the hud should fade out so you can't really gauge how much ammo and health you have. But that's just my sickness.
        • I hate "i agree posts"

          but dude, i agree with all of the above. I never notice ammo level til after the gunfight or when i have left "auto switch" turned on and rocket myslef to oblivion.

          And the fading out makes a deal of sense too....... Never been in a gun battle myself (obviously) but does make you wonder if anyone can keep track of full mags whilst running hell for leather and trying to aim and dodge too (admittedly most of the gunfights in fps's would be impossible irl im sure).

          I have oft thought the

          • Re:HL Series (Score:3, Interesting)

            by usrusr ( 654450 )
            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

            • Re:HL Series (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Golias ( 176380 )
              Removing the cross-hair would probably be a bad idea.

              In most FPS games, the cross-hair is a stationary object, because the player is always facing exactly where they are aiming. This means that PvP gamers could "cheat" to get an edge on their opponent by adding a cross-hair to their monitor with a small transparent vinyl sticker, or even hanging a weighted string down the center, and taping another string across the horizontal axis.

      • Re:HL Series (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Gord ( 23773 )
        > 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.
      • I agree with the ammo... People manage to keep track in real life and the movies fine without any HUD telling them how much ammo they have. Or, they lose track and it makes it more dramatic... I mean, Dirty Harry just wouldn't be as cool with a little ammo gauge on his gun.

        Well, do ya, punk?

      • Re:HL Series (Score:2, Insightful)

        by MjrTom ( 68324 )
        Agreed. For a 'realistic' game, the unpleasent click that you get from an empty magazine is the best indicator that you're out of ammo. It's hard enough to count your shots with a semi-auto. In my very limited full-auto experience it's impossible. I don't know about health, but I think that maybe the blood and debris might work, or maybe a visual sagging of the player, or some kind of visual effect to indicate the dizziness/fatuige/general unease that comes (at least to me) after a grave injury.
      • About half of Doom 3's arsenal has the ammo counter on the gun and in singleplayer that replaces your HUD indicator. How the gun knows how much ammo you have in your pockets is beyond me, though. And I think the plasma will move out of your sight during full auto fire so you have to stop firing for the ammo counter to come back into view.
      • Have you played Steel Battalion for XBox? That game has a wonderful ability to piss you off. If you're one of those chronic reloaders who pops off 4 shots and reloads (with a a clip of, say 60 rounds), you'll hate this game. In SB your ammo isn't in a pool. It's in a clip. If you fire 23 rounds from a 50 round clip and reload, you're out 27 good shots. And you can't pick up extra (you can call in an air re-supply, but only one or sometimes two per stage).

        I think that if there wasn't an ammo 'pool' it

  • Too much to ask? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Azreal ( 147961 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @07:41PM (#14638907)
    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.
    • Kind of like WoW's API...
    • I totally agree. Something like the google personalized homepage interface. You just click the boxes and drop them where you want... Well, obviously not the good interface, but you understand what I mean.

      There are some games that give you this sort of control, but they're usually games with highly over crowded HUD's anyway. If you've played Planetside or Tribes 2, they both have configurable HUDS that are something like this... (at least i think T2 does. I know planetside does.)
    • Maybe it might happen on computers, but never on consoles. They won't even let you customize the controls. You can pick from 1 of 3 control configurations, but you can't customize them. I don't see what's so hard about customizing the controls. It's a simple mapping.
    • The client UI for the Dark Age of Camelot MMORPG is defined in XML and is highly customizable. I'm not sure if the license explicitly allows redistribution, but there are numerous sites distributing mods, and I've never heard of Mythic going after any of them.
    • Guild Wars does that. You can turn every part of the HUD on or off, drag them to wherever you want them and change orientation or size on many.

      I've seen some crazy HUD layouts in screenshots, but if it works for that guy...

  • The Riddick game... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PatrickThomson ( 712694 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @07:42PM (#14638911)
    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.
  • 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 intru
    • "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."

      I'll grant you that. Something else to consider is that video games have a very limited scope of exposure. You're playing with a simple controller, sound, and a monitor that is very small compared to what your real range of sight is. In real life, you can pat y
    • The HUD in the Metroid Prime games is actually really well done. Of course, in that game it has a reason to be there...since you're walking around in a really high tech powered armorsuit. It's okay to have a HUD if it's believable in the context of the game and isn't excessive.
      • It works well in Prime because the developers put some serious attention into the HUD. The displays and UI elements are fixed relative to the helmet, rather than the camera, so they move a bit when you fall or get knocked around. The helmet glass shows your reflection if you're looking towards a bright light.

  • "Rise" of the casual gamer? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anakron ( 899671 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @07:49PM (#14638943)
    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.

  • Not sure (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I know I've always liked an interface where everything is visible, even if not strictly needed to play the game.

  • This one isn't hard (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TubeSteak ( 669689 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @07:53PM (#14638967) Journal
    Allow users to select what & how much information (if any) the HUD shows.

    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
    The games mentioned above offer numerous examples to show how player status information can be presented in ways that are immersive and innovative. There are countless other solutions; in fact, the more specific a solution is to a particular game, the greater the odds that the developer is offering the player a one-of-a-kind gaming experience. As developers continue to challenge themselves to achieve more sophisticated levels of immersion and intuitive gameplay in their creations, they will no doubt devise equally sophisticated and unique ways to communicate critical information to the player.
    • Quake 3, or WFA at least, would let you greatly customize your HUD, even the size and style of your "life-left", ammo, etc. Unfortunately, you had to hack alot of config files to get that far. So, easy access to customization would be better than just allowing them to see what they want.
    • This one is a no-brainer.

      Yes, that's the classic "turn the user into an information architect" typical /. answer to any UI problem. Not mean to be trollish here, but your "no-brainer" have lots of problems on their own, and is usually considered a bad design solution among professional Interaction practitioners.

      The solution expressed in the article, namely having the game designer decide where should every bit of information go (instead of throwing that burden on the player), looks much more better to me.
    • 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.

  • Information clutter (Score:5, Funny)

    by the_demiurge ( 26115 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @07:55PM (#14638973) Homepage
    I agree. Now we just have to explain it to CNN Headline News and MTV.
    • buzzword: a word or phrase that is popular in use, but not as popularly understood as a concept

      I used to be in broadcast journalism, and from my def. above, 'information clutter' is mostly used as a buzzword in TFA. Yes, information clutter exists, but not when the user, receiver has control...

      you may reply that TV news like CNN, etc. have crawls and graphics all over the place that are not changable...indeed they do, but it's not the USE of the crawl that is bad, it is what is put on the crawl, and

  • Red Orchestra! (Score:4, Informative)

    by vertinox ( 846076 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @08:03PM (#14639032)
    How many times do I see articles that might as well be talking about Red Orchestra [redorchestragame.com]. 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.
    • They basically have removed all crosshairs, ammo counts, and health stastics.

      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.

      The few games I've played that used naturalistic elements like these to communicate your character's health ended up being quite frustrating, because I was unable to properly gauge whethe

      • Re:Red Orchestra! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by corbettw ( 214229 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @09:04PM (#14639330) Journal
        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!

        • Rainbox Six did this (at least in the PC version). If you were not killed outright, you would be forced to lip around. It was a terrible handicap to have, especially if you had to navigate any ladders.

          • Ghost recon did it better. Shot in the legs? well you can't aim just as well, you limp, and breathe hard. Shot in the arms? Damn well can't shoot anything well at all. Shot in the chest? Well, can't aim good AND you breathe heavy (sometimes coughing and wheezing as well). Makes it hard to be stealthy.
        • Last I heard and played, RO minimizes these kinds of 'features'. Reason being, despite how cool they sound, they really aren't that fun. Hobbling around the map at 1/5th speed because a bullet nicked you in the ankle really, REALLY sucked. Players were frequently using the /suicide command when injured with a permanent limp or the like. That said to the developers that, if your avatar is wounded to that degree, you're effectively a casualty and should be removed from play. The last time I played RO you coul
        • 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.
          That's fine for a game that is trying to be as realistic as possible.

          For any other type of game, limping around at a disadvantage is simply not fun.
        • This idea has already been done. Although a couple posters have already cited some recent games, there is at least one RPG series I know of, from the mid 90s, that have the full force of realism you are speaking of. I can't say it was the best game I've ever played, but at least they made an attempt!

          http://www.abandonia.com/games/568/RobinsonsRequie m [abandonia.com]
          http://www.abandonia.com/games/590/Deus [abandonia.com]

          I remember one time I played, as soon as I entered the game a bird came and plucked out one of my eyes... I had
        • lol sorry to be off-topic but I just love your sig. Probably the best I seen out there

          Btw, Deus Ex had a bit of what you're suggesting, only to a lesser extent, I remember having both my legs in the black, so the only way I could go on was to crawl on the ground.

        • In _Deus Ex_ (the first one), your body has six zones: two legs, two arms, torso, head. Take damage to your arms and it affects your aiming. Take damage to your legs and you can't run any more. Take more damage and you can only crawl. (of course, even if your legs are at 0/0, you can still crawl..)

          [take enough damage to your torso or head and you die]

      • 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.

        It probably wouldn't matter. Except in games that "throw away" unused ammo in clips that you swap out, most players reload after every kill. Empty clips simply never happen.

        In games that do keep track of ammo on a per-clip basis generally focus on one to two bullets killing someone so a nearly empty clip still isn't much of a problem.

        Hearing click-click as yo
        • One of my gripes with realistic games is that you throw away the old clip upon reload. You're supposed to put it into your ammo pouch! I mean, how are you going to get new clip casings during a mission? You can still reorganize the remaining ammo to get a few full clips but that won't work if you throw it away!

      • Re:Red Orchestra! (Score:3, Interesting)

        by vertinox ( 846076 )
        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 experien

        • 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?

          If you're squeezing your trigger for a full two seconds, there's probably some pretty serious shit going down and you'll be dead in a few moments. The way aiming and recoil work in RO, you're only accurate if you fire in bursts so the only occasion to spray is when you're surrounded.

          In answer to your question, you'll probably have around 1/3 of

        • 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.


          One might argue that realism does not necessarily equate to fun. :)
          • "One might argue that realism does not necessarily equate to fun. :)"

            Not to mention, it's not all that realistic to expect average gamers to have the same level of military training that their in-game character has.

      • Health in Red Orchestra is pretty much a non-issue. It usually takes only one shot to make someone fall down.
    • The last beta I played of RO, if you tried to reload, and rather than getting a message your avatar would simply put the clip back in if it was heavy. Please tell me this little bit wasn't changed! It was a nice way of doing it.

  • Removing a HUD is not an easy task (Score:4, Interesting)

    by LordZardoz ( 155141 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @08:11PM (#14639066)
    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
    • Quite a few games already do this. When you are running out of life the screen will contract, or the character will start breathing hard or leaning over or they will make the heartbeat loud.
    • ### 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.

      Or the game could be designed in such a way that there wouldn't be conventional health points in the first place. After all humans don't have a internal health meter either, so why should fighting games have one? Its just a convention that most fighting games follow these days, because every game did it that way. Bushido Blade is one of the few exceptions,
  • The AC series are about the only games I've ever played where you needed access to all of the information that you could get through the HUD. And while I haven't played any released in the last 2 or 3 years, on the PS2, they've also always had the best options for the HUD. You can customize it to display any of about 20 different items, including next to none at all. Sort of makes things more interesting if you can't see your ammo remaining. :)
  • I'd just be happy if the HUD in America's Army let you up the font size in the chat window. Note to game developers: You can't read 8 point text on a 1680x1050 monitor without shoving your face right up to the screen, and you can't do that without getting shot in the game.

    The small font size makes the "Report Location" button useless... I hear the beep, but I can't read the location.

  • Cycling colors?!? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by swmccracken ( 106576 )
    "Cycling colors or animated textures can also invigorate a lifeless HUD while decreasing the threat of burn-in."

    Aaargh! I HATE gratitious animation in programs. Things should NOT attract my attention unless they are important!

    The other problem is that fundementally computer games are running on a computer. They are not real life - thus, a HUD showing "your" health is just part of the connection between you and the game-world. In real life, you would already know how you were feeling.
  • I have always turned off most of the HUDs on my FPS games. The only HUD that I want/need to keep is the crosshair, without it I find that I usually cok my head to the side and try to look down the barrel of the gun (and end-up missing the target because the gun never actually points at where the crosshairs go.)

    I actually take it ever further, I will remove the gun too. I find I am a better player if I only have the crosshairs.

    My point: make them an option that you can turn on/off. OBTW, what the hell ar
    • Quake 1 worked fine without crosshairs but that was because the gun was centered, which those modern games refuse to do.
    • Wow, do you also have the Y-axis inverted while using your mouse in Windows? Because to me aiming at someone in a FPS is just like pointing at some icon or button in Windows, so you might liek to have Y-axis inverted on Windows too (makes sence)
      • Actually no. Windows (hrm, Linux =) mousing is normal.

        I guess it is because all of my gaming experience started with a joystick, (even the early FPS-style; like Descent) so 90% of the time I was used to airplane navigation.

        When I started using a mouse to FPS, it seemed natural to continue the joystick style of play. If I hop on a buddies computer and try to use the mouse I am fubar.
  • The HUD in Metroid Prime had a lot of useless decoration but it also added a lot to the experience.

    Similarly, The Prince is always in the bottom right corner of the screen in Katamari Damacy. He's a swell looking little fellow and fun to watch even if he doesn't convey much information to the player. I think it adds a lot to the aesthetics of the game.

    This may sound foreign to a lot of nerds, but most people like to use things that look nice. The interface of a game is no exception, a neat looking HUD wil
    • The nice bit about the HUD in Metroid Prime and Prime 2 is that it actually adds to the immersion instead of taking away from it.

      The HUD isn't fixed, and moves a little as you twist and turn. It fogs up in some situations, gets wet in others, and lets you see Samus' reflection. It really helps to make you feel like you're running around in a high-tech power suit, instead of something like the purely functional HUDs in Unreal and its cousins.
  • Make a 3D display like the ones in the .Hack TV series. Or at least make effective add-ons so you can have a wristwatch that has a compass on it, or a vest that turns red depending on how much your character's bleeding, stuff like that.

    But I'd rather go to the 3D glasses, because I really hate not being able to shoot backwards while looking forward. All that fast scrolling gives me migraines and nausea X-(

  • I personally hate HUDs. I wish games had a less obtrusive manner of letting us know our health, or ammo count. I feel any sort of HUD detracts from the experience itself. I want to feel like I'm in a movie or actually experiencing what I'm doing, and I can't do that with a HUD. I want to check my ammo count by weighing the magazine in my hands - I want to know how hurt I am by looking at my wounds.

    Then again, I'm a fan of realism games :)

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • ### I want to feel like I'm in a movie or actually experiencing what I'm doing, and I can't do that with a HUD.

      I wouldn't blame the HUD for that, while it might not help with the experince, I wouldn't say that it hurts much either. The problem is more in the underlying gamedesign that assumes things like a "linear health", in reality health isn't linear, if the arm gets hit, the arm is injured, your legs however are not, in most games however there isn't a leg and an arm, its just "player's health" and ever

  • The Getaway for PS2 lacked any HUD and I have to say it was a mixed result.

    The good: Definitely helps for immersion. No health meter, you just watch your character stagger around with bloodier and bloodier clothes, breathing heavily.

    The bad: When you're driving, there is no map. You have to watch your character as he signals left or right, and turn in the direction he is indicating. The problem with this is that you have no idea where you are going, but your character does, but you're the one driving, not

  • Something I never really understood about Doom 3. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 88NoSoup4U88 ( 721233 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @09:43PM (#14639471)
    Something I never really understood about a design decision in the development of Doom 3:
    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.

  • I can't even remember the last time I saw a HUD shown in screenshots of any games on high-profile gaming websites.

    Of course, the screenshots they show usually are 10 times better than what you actually get when you buy the game.
  • Some games HAVE done away with the HUD. In Hostile Intent, a mod for HL1, it's not used to add to the realism. You have to keep count of how many rounds you have left, and you have to aim down the sight of your weapon (no crosshair to speak of).

  • Thief! (Score:1)

    by grub ( 11606 )

    I can't imagine playing the Thief series of games without the light (visibility) gem.

  • HUDs aren't all bad... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MachDelta ( 704883 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @11:10PM (#14639847)
    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!
  • How about minimalist HUDs or customizable (as mentioned above a few times) HUDs rather than getting rid of them? Look at the HUD for Prey [prey.com]. It doesn't take up the whole screen, but it gives all the information the player needs in a (semi)creative format. How about Jet Force Gemini (N64) [emulazone.com]? The weapons indicator is always present, showing your current weapon/ammo, and expands to show more weapons when you change weapons. The health is only present when your health increases or decreases, and fades away afte

  • Did anyone actually RTFA? Crap! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Vo0k ( 760020 ) on Saturday February 04, 2006 @12:43AM (#14640164) Journal
    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.

    Coming Next to Slashdot: Fanless PCs, because PC fans contribute to drafts in your room and may cause cold, flu etc.
    • Maybe my sarcasm detector is off the mark, but I don't get it.

      I have a CRT HDTV, and burn in does concern me. You may be familiar with seeing it in places where they leave CNN or MSNBC on all the time, and even if you change the channel you can still see the station logo that has been burned into the screen. CRT HDTVs are particularly susceptible to this, while DLPs are not.

      I specifcially limit my video game playing on my HDTV, even though it's connected to a 5.1 surround sound system, because I don't wan

  • From Snow Crash: (Score:3, Funny)

    by thesupermikey ( 220055 ) on Saturday February 04, 2006 @01:54AM (#14640357) Homepage Journal
    "A screaming display flashes up on the goggles informing him that the millimeter-wave radar notices a steam of bullets heded in hi direction an would like to know where they came from, Sir?...He tuns off all the techno-shit in his goggles. All it does is confuse him; he stands there reading statices about his own death even has its happening to him. Very Post-Modern. Time tp get immersed in Reality, like the people around him" Neal Stephenson

  • Steel Battalion (Score:3, Interesting)

    by FLAGGR ( 800770 ) on Saturday February 04, 2006 @01:28PM (#14642152)
    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..
  • Next week, Google will unveil its new gHUD technology. gHUD allows the player to immerse themselves within a game without information overload. Rival Yahoo's HUD currently only lets players see 1/4 of their screen.
  • Im not sure if it was ever used this way but the Dreamcast VMS had the potential to be used as a stats display, and certainly the bottom screen on the DS is used like this, to great effect I think.
    I dont think any of the current or next gen of consoles are offering anything like this, but a separate lcd display on either the console or the controller could be used as compromise between the info rich but obtrusive HUD and a cool looking but confusing displayless gaming environment.
    If you think about the
  • First thing the article summary (DNRTFA) made me think of was one of the coolest unlockables for SF3: Third Strike for Dreamcast. In the Extra Options menu you could actually make it so you couldn't see your life bar (it was either greyed out or completely removed, I forget which). That made for some pretty interesting fights, because it was hard to tell (unless it was one-sided) who was winning at any given point in time until the round suddenly ended.

    I'm not sure I've ever seen that option in any other fi
  • Heh, it'd be cool if someone made a game where the character's hud is in a contact lens, and a la "The Diamond Age" at one point the HUD is hacked. Then again maybe not.
  • The article really hits hard on the fact that HUDs can cause Burn-In. It neglects though that almost every game it praises for not having a HUD, has static elements. People frequency forget that elements of their screen never move. For example, in a first person shooter, your gun rarely moves. It is typically perched in the center of the screen while all of the other elements around it, move. Third-person action games (Platformers) typically keep their main character near the same place on the screen.

    W
    • Is burn in honestly a concern with modern monitors? You'd think that the "hud" filling the bottom 5% of *every desktop in corporate America for as many hours as the machine is on* would have caused some complaints if static images were still scorching modern equipment. And yet I still don't have a screen with that little four-color Windows logo burnt into it yet -- maybe my LCD is afraid of being sued for copyright infringement...
      • Computer monitors should be pretty robust against burn-in these days, never actually seen one that had it. It however still seems to be a problem with plasma displays and some projectors. Anyway, I seriously doubt that a game will cause burn-in, people hardly play the same game for more then 100h normally, most often much less, 10-20h at most, that alone shouldn't cause burn-in on any type of system. Much more critical should be black borders when 4:3 is displayed on 16:9 screen or visa verse, since that is

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