Happy HUD

Ohaunlaim · 2013-12-23, 02:26 AM

I have never been a big fan of the Planetside 2 HUD. I am not alone as there have been many threads hoping to "fix" it. My turn.

I am not going to propose any major upheavals, just a couple (2) of changes that I feel make it less busy, less intrusive, and a little more useful. This may be a bit subtle but viewing the full sized images may help. Also, you might try and just compare the first and last ones if you're not seeing it.

First the current HUD:

What if the HUD wasn't so in-your-face all the time? Knowing things are on the other side of walls and buildings is useful I suppose, but in a zerg situation things get really messy. Lets go ahead and make those objects that are occluded already by the rendering engine have a 33% opacity.

Oh, that's much nicer. I still know where things are, but I can also enjoy those fine, fine textures. Mmmmmm, just look at the detail!

Urrgh, there is that bit of a mess in the middle. What's going on? Are those five infantry stuck in the floor? Why are they so much lower than the other two? Oh, wait. Could it be that they are further out? Lets halve the size of the current icons if the object in question is more than 150m distant (or some other number of meters).

Spot on. Huh, looks like those two hidden Reavers were further afield as well. That has the potential to be useful information. What a glorious idea that was!

If only there was some way to combine these two ideas. That would be rather a good thing, I say. Rather good indeed.

My, oh-my. Doesn't that look just lovely. Very clean and still quite useful. Perhaps, dare I say, even more useful? Immediate threats will be bright and large, hidden and distant threats will be soft and small respectively. Oh, yes. I think I prefer this indeed.

SOE, the gauntlet has been thrown.

camycamera · 2013-12-23, 04:56 AM

i like PS2's centralised HUD. it aint in your face, and it shows stuff only when it needs to, which i think more games need to do more often.

Carbon Copied · 2013-12-23, 07:59 AM

Give the community the power to actually make a professionally decent smart HUD and then we might start talking

Chewy · 2013-12-23, 04:30 PM

You sir lied to us. That is in no way a happy face. :{

Belhade · 2013-12-23, 07:33 PM

Are you talking about just the minimap? I should wait till I can get to look at these pics on my desktop....

Ohaunlaim · 2013-12-24, 04:29 AM

Camy, the central HUD is nice, but it would be much better to have more than just the two options we have now.

Carbon, I agree. Allowing the player studio folks to design some HUDs or simply giving a greater degree of control to the individual players as most MMOs have done for ages (including PS1) would be very welcome.

Chewy, the heart at the end is quite happy sir!

Belhade, I made no changes to the minimap. My changes are to the floating indicators for infantry, vehicles, terminals, and so-on. The easiest place to see my subtle changes is in the exact center where the gun is pointing.

I realize now that I should have zoomed in to make it more obvious. As well, these changes would be much more noticeable if there was motion instead of just the static screen shot.

Belhade · 2013-12-24, 02:19 PM

Oh - I see now. Yes that does make some sense; since I don't have all the base layouts memorized I sometimes run around a building trying to find a terminal, only to realize that it's all the way on the other side of the compound.

Ohaunlaim · 2013-12-24, 08:54 PM

That is exactly the situation that initially inspired this. Then the more I thought about it the more I realized how immersion breaking those floating indicators are at times; especially in zerg situations.

Crator · 2013-12-24, 10:50 PM

Took me a few to figure out what you were talking about too. But eventually noticed you had faded the icons in the center of the screen. I completely agree with what you are saying here. Would really be nice to have the UI elements for things further away less prominent then they currently are.

Verrijden · 2013-12-25, 12:32 AM

Originally Posted by camycamera

i like PS2's centralised HUD. it aint in your face, and it shows stuff only when it needs to, which i think more games need to do more often.

I use centralized HUD and I love it, but I dont love seeing every turret/vehicle icon on my screen.