HUD and UI in Videogames

If you're not familiar with the game it's fine to say. It's fairly easy to tell where Your main weapons will go and where your secondary weapon will go, where your armor is, where the rings are and where your perishable items go. All of this can be done with a glance and the menu is actually moved so you can see what effect it has on your character.

It's probably the best design choice dark souls 2 has out of a rubbish game.

Dead Rising 4 takes the mini-map approach which I'm not a huge fan of.

Fair enough.

Metroid Prime is still one of the best, if not the best, UI and HUD in all of gaming. It's completely in-universe and provides all the information you need, while still looking cool as fuck. Even the little way the HUD lags behind when the helmet moves is a nice touch.
Going in the completely opposite direction, I'm also a fan of minimalist HUDs that maintain atmosphere without showing off "gamey" features like health or waypoints or minimaps or anything. Metroid Prime's gets a pass on this because it's all done in-universe, and The Witcher 3 also gets a pass because so much of the UI is customisable and it even disappears when not in use. But stuff like in Dragon's Dogma where you character will begin to huff and stagger when low on stamina while sprinting, things that tell you your stamina is low without needing to show you a green bar that's flashing low, is all fucking sublime.

I'm a minimalist, but of course it depends on the game

I wish indie games didn't neglect their UI and HUDs so much, I hate seeing the generic black boxes like in Banished or KSP

Superb.

Praise kek

Not gonna lie, DS2 UI is the best of them all.

Keep it the way it is, green for when your camera is facing the objective, red when not. Add distance counter in METERS (optional).

Does anybody know what the addons are in 4th pic related? I've never seen them before.

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Google the filename

I haven't played Morrowind, but i like how UI handled there.

Say what you will about the game's content, but Persona has always been stylish as fuck.

I've always been a big fan of Morrowind's UI. No switching to different menus since they're all in 1 screen. Everything is clearly laid out. Moving items is easy. Simple visual feedback on your character with armor on. I wish there was a mod that added Morrowind's UI to Skyrim.

how did morrowinds ui work on the xbox? I don't think I ever tried that version.

God I missed that in Skyrim.

Has there ever been a fighting game with a bad UI?

It looks the same, but you have to switch between menus.

cant forget this gem in a thread like this

I loved how it was a projection so you could look at it in any direction and it would be a different angle

I unironically like how Eve does UI
It's like I'm really configuring Archlinux

A good UI should be informative, simple, and clean and uncluttered, wth no flashy animations, especially for elements that you see often. I've been playing the new Dude Sex fight me and while the UI is pretty good, they do this little white flash on interaction prompts and other stuff, and it's really distracting. That game has a lot of objects that only exist to be moved or thrown, and the game insists on naming every single one of them, which forces you to read the prompt–it should just say "Throwable" or "Grab" or something, every single time.
Also, something I've noticed in a lot of games these days, are interaction prompts that "follow" the object. That's not good UI design. There should be one part of the screen (usually just under the center of the screen) where all your interaction prompts show up. Otherwise your eye is looking all over the screen searching for shit to interact with, instead of simply noticing when it shows up in the single spot dedicated to it.
NuDoom again, fite me had a pretty good UI, but whenever you'd open the in-game menu, there were these fucking annoying sparks that would constantly move around in the background. Never do that. Either blur the game world, or simply have a blank (usually black) background.
Sorry for the autism.

pls respond

say what you want about dead space, but the one thing it did perfectly was the UI. health bar is on your character, same with your freeze ray charge. Ammo counter for your gun would appear on the gun itself. The menu was a projection, 10/10. sorry for gushing

God bless

I remember reading a paper on the UI in Dead Space. Was pretty cool to see devs place such a high amount of effort in maintaining the players immersion in the world. Look up Diegetic game UI if you want to learn more about it and other games that used it.

Fucking shitty deadspace, try to play it on pc fucking character spazzes out and mouse circles the player and points in the up direction.

I simultaneously love and hate the chunky UIs from the DOS era. When most computers weren't even strong enough to display games fullscreen, devs got creative and just jammed as many useful things in there as they could. It's crude, but it's got a charm that we'll never see again. The ones that were just a void with the game's title can piss right off, though. Also, good on id for letting you adjust the screen size how you wanted.

One thing I hate about modern UIs in the last couple of years is how everything uses this bland boxy menu that looks like something from an earnings report, made worse by using boring Arial fonts. After seeing games from SFV to Dindufield 1 to the system shock remake using this UI it makes me want to punch a hole in the wall

I've always liked Kojima's HUD's and interfaces the best. You can see that he and his team value ergonomic menus and this isn't more apparent than in ZOE2. Every button does something and has more than one use. Jehuty has an "enemy ring" around it, which warns of incoming fire and enemies. Not only does it warn of enemies and projectiles, but also how close they are. Projectiles are marked with several rings with cones and they get smaller the closer they get to you, while enemies are marked by the ring getting smaller. The rings are able to move 3-dimensionally, so you can see any which way enemies are coming from just by looking at Jehuty.

You have sub-weapons which you can switch by either holding down a button to bring up a sub-menu, or by lightly tapping it to switch between previously chosen weapons. You can also take recommendations from ADA, and she will switch to the sub-weapon she recommended if you want. The camera issues a game like this would suffer from is fixed very smartly: reset the camera in the direction you are facing every time you stop moving. The lock-on is nothing fancy, but considering this was in 2002-03, it was probably the first of it's kind: lock-on to an enemy, and tilt the right thumbstick if you want to change targets.

Combat is also it's own area. At the end of a combo, press X to slam an enemy downward to the ground, or triangle to toss the enemy up. You can also make a charged attack at the end of it. If an enemy is close, you will make a sword attack, but if he's far away Jehuty will make an energy ball attack. The same button you use to make these charged attacks is also the same one you use to give Jehuty a boost in speed, which also offers a lock-on attack. You can also grab enemies and just smash them into other enemies by throwing or just using them as an improvised club. When you throw an enemy, you can tap O and it will fly harder and faster. You can immoblize them by using the charge attack button while holding them, and you can heal held team-mates with the charge attack.

Some of these design decisions are so smart that they are impercetible once you get used to them. You can't really appreciate the genius that is ZOE2's design until you play it yourself. This is beside the point, but what they did in 2002-03 with a PS2, graphically and gameplay wise, shouldn't have even been possible for that time. Graphically it's like Japanese black magic, shit explodes around you constantly and there is almost no slow-down. This is the kind of stuff I would have expected to see more of in 2017.

Such exceptional design which we will never enjoy, because Konami has the rights. MGSV had a fucking Jehuty hand for Snake for God's sakes! It was over 10 FUCKING YEARS with bits and pieces of ZOE content in-between. Just when things were looking hopeful for ZOE, the Japanese Ultra-Jews kicked him out, and now we will never get a proper ZOE3. The advances and lost technology in ZOE2 will be unearthed in maybe the next 20 or so years, if even that.

I understand your pain. It's this needless iPhone "aesthetic" that everyone uses, even when it doesn't fit the theme of the game. It's so random to see a game that is thematically gritty and worn use a slick and smooth iPhone interface. It's so fucking distracting how much it clashes with the theme of the game. It takes me out of the game and any immersion I had in it. I don't even know why this triggers my autism this bad.

What about the ut99 menus

You might enjoy Star Wars Republic Commando then.

turn off vsync.

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I hate how some of those old games make it so the actual world is just a sub-window within the game's HUD. Doom had it right by dedicating as much of the screen as possible to showing the game world.

I'd rather have a UI that's boring but effective than one that goes for stylization at the cost of readability. Dishonored, for example, insisted on all its UI elements being slanted up and to the right at like a 15-degree angle, and it was obnoxious as fuck.

Playing Metro in the mode without HUD is one of the most beautiful experiences.

All modern UIs are pretty awful because they prioritize function over aesthetic.

I always liked Jedi Academy's HUD (as well as Outcast's). It's simple and non-intrusive but also has a memorable aesthetic.

The absoulte best ones I can think of are Metroid Prime, Republic Commando and Dead Space, though, for reasons already listed by other anons earlier in the thread.

Guess.

Semi-related, does anyone like it when a game uses neat sounds for menus. Like when you scroll through items in your inventory, confirm a selection, or go back.
Dark Souls 1, Killer7, MGS 1-3, and Silent Hill 2-4 come to mind

Kingdom Hearts 1 at least had some nice menu sounds. Not intrusive, pleasant, and fairly memorable.

thank god the series ENDED while it was still pretty good

I feel like EA would stick their jewy idiotic claws more into the development of the 3rd dead space and ruin it completely, so Its great that the studio STOPPED at the 2nd game

But user that's fucking autistic as shit.

Millenial faggot detected

You do know that they had to do that because of engine limitations right? If Ultima Underworld were to take up the full screen back when it came out in 1992 it would've been unplayable

I guarantee you most people who played Doom at launch in 1993 couldn't run it in full screen and had to shrink it down in a border to run reliably. It was a few years before it Doom could be played full-screen at a high frame rate.

Implying it's not possible to do both.

Wow, almost makes me want to play it, especially considering how focus grouped it got.

Retards like you are why have bland iphone menus in games now, consider suicide please.

I was born in 1988, so take that for what you will.
Modern meme, good job showing your age. See, I can do it, too. :^)
Why? It was already using the entire screen, just not for the game world.
It is possible, but if I have to pick one, I'll pick effectiveness over stylization.
So you enjoy the prospect of looking at menus that make your head feel like it's jutting out of your neck at an angle? Sure. The game itself is alright.
You seem awfully buttmad over some UI discussion, friendo. Clean UIs existed well before mobile games. Your tears are amusing, though, keep 'em coming.

Try playing games with a Mac, Macs have a really good UI

Kill yourself.

Metro 2033's diegetic HUD and inventory are amazing, especially on ranger mode with the HUD completely disappearing which necessitates the player look at a sub-menu to get an accurate ammo count. In particular, I love that your med kits aren't med kits at all, but small needles of what I can only assume to be adrenaline and maybe cocaine or speed. They take several seconds to start affecting you, and once they do they only cause your health to regenerate more quickly instead of instantly healing you. The game itself is unoptimized and heavily flawed, but it's the best attempt at actual realism I can think of outside of something like STALKER or ARMA.

Street Fighter V, while a trainwreck of a game, also has a wonderful UI because every single game mechanic is represented by a bar and every single bar is easy to see. I have no idea how the fuck people put up with eight goddamn years of SFIV's barely visible EX bars, hidden stun gauge, and shitty, barely animated, artifacted fire.gif on the revenge meter. It was atrocious and visually unclear even in 2008.

The base menu is okay, but it's so washed out I can't stand to look at it for more than a minute. There's a mod which makes it dark like DaS's menus, and that is the most godlike HUD I've ever seen. Visual sex.

Dead space handled it best, placing everything in the character.

fuck your visibility
think you're getting out of it to next gen?
enjoy your touch controls

I always liked how elegant it was.

All street fighter games?

perfection

I JUST WANT A CUTE FACE TO LOOK AT NOT FUCKING MAN-JAWED SHIT LIKE PIC RELATED