Health Display Concept

[Macsen]

Yeah we don't really need to swamp the player with choince. Springheel's design here looks great enough for all.

[New Horizon]

Yeah we don't really need to swamp the player with choince. Springheel's design here looks great enough for all.

If it bothers them enough, they'll change it on their own.

[sparhawk]

I also agree with NH that it doesn't need additional HUD choices. As with the example of T3 there can always be some addons to make other huds. It's not as if this is THAt hard. The placement looks really god Spring. Only thing that I would change is to make the icons bigger. They can be as large as the lightgem itself, but I think this can be easily tweaked.

[Renzatic]

YOU WILL NOT GO OVER MY HEAD, SIR!

 

I'm okay with that, but I do have one concern...how easy the healthbar is to read and how it could potentially clash with the lightgem once it's put into action.

[New Horizon]

YOU WILL NOT GO OVER MY HEAD, SIR!

 

I'm okay with that, but I do have one concern...how easy the healthbar is to read and how it could potentially clash with the lightgem once it's put into action.

ALRIGHT THEN RENZ...LETS TAKE IT OFFLINE!!!!! PUT UP YER DUKES!!!!

[Renzatic]

You are so dead, son.

 

PARKING LOT BEHIND THE HOP, 3 O'CLOCK, BE THERE OR BE SQUARE!

[New Horizon]

You are so dead, son.

 

PARKING LOT BEHIND THE HOP, 3 O'CLOCK, BE THERE OR BE SQUARE!

OH YEAH! I'LL BE THERE!!! I'LL BE TAKING A LITTLE FRIEND OF MINE NAMED GLOCK!!!

[New Horizon]

Anyway, back to business. Yeah, I like it.

[Darkness_Falls]

Which only leaves open the question how the player can see which weapon he currently has selected. In case of the blacjack it's no issue, but in case of the bow he can see only the bow until he pulls the string.

My apologies -- I didn't have good quality originals to work from when making those mockups. I basically had to take that tiny icon from your screens and tweak it. Spar - The weapon would be shown beneath the ammo quantity indicator. It was in the mockup, just not very easy to see. I've brightened the image so you can see better. This was just a quick mockup of a water arrow icon to show you that we'd put the weapon icon here. Look under the "12" -- that's a water arrow (showing the selected weapon):

 

Please don't close this thread yet. I'm going to re-post in a while with more thoughts. I still feel those wire frilly things on the left and right of the gem in Spring's mockup (which I think originally came from oDD) are wasted space. With something along the lines of my wire design, the weapon icons fit snugly underneath them and the quantities nicely above them.

 

I agree the health meter could go beneath the light gem. If we wanted, we could even make it fold out when the thief is hit so it's not always visible -- similar in function to oDD's health crosses popping out. EDIT: And when hit, maybe even make the health bar's red color go brighter than normal for a second then fade back to normal luminosity.

Edited March 14, 2005 by Darkness_Falls

[Renzatic]

OH YEAH! I'LL BE THERE!!! I'LL BE TAKING A LITTLE FRIEND OF MINE NAMED GLOCK!!!

 

Glock what? BRANG IT!

 

Like I was saying, I do like it..but something does need to be done to the health indicator to make it stand out a bit more.

 

Why not use Spring's circular gauge idea and attach a smaller version to the right of the lightgem?

[Springheel]

I think if the health is going to be part of the central display, then it needs to be centered. Having it off to the side would unbalance the whole display.

[sparhawk]

Spar - The weapon would be shown beneath the ammo quantity indicator.  It was in the mockup, just not very easy to see.  I've brightened the image so you can see better.

 

OH MY GOD! How could I have not seen this when it's there right in my face. But I think we shouldn't clutter up the HUD with such huge imges, the player can barely see the surroundings. A 2x2 pixel icon should be more then enough for showing which weapon is selected, and with a good artist we might be able to also squeeze in the inventory selection as well.

[Springheel]

I agree those might be a little too small, but not enough for that level of sarcasm. Keep in mind that while a player is selecting a weapon/inventory item, there will be text names for everything. After that, a fairly small icon should be enough to remind them whether it's a blue water arrow or a red fire one. Almost all the icons on the website here are more than half the size of the classic Thief icons, and some are probably 1/10th the size. And they are still capable of communicating information.

[New Horizon]

Taking all the comments into consideration. Something like this makes the most sense to me.

[New Horizon]

Taking into consideration that this is just a rough photoshop and that the icons will be much more clear than this, I think it would work nicely.

[sparhawk]

Hmmm ... Now where do I have my magnifying glass? Wait a Minute! AH! There it is. Yes it looks nice.

[Springheel]

We have to be careful not to cram TOO much information into the same 40x100 px space. I agree the icons don't have to be large, but I don't think they should be so close to everything else. The more I look at this, the more I'm tempted to spread them out again.

[New Horizon]

It can be spread out more or less if we please and the fonts will be adjusted for maximum visibility but that can all be tweaked at along the way.

[Darkness_Falls]

You're forgetting (or didn't read) Sparhawk. My proposal is that while you're selecting your weapon you get the big icon and weapon name off in the corner, like in Thief 2. Then after a short pre-determined length of time (a couple seconds), the selected weapon will only appear in one place -- that is, as a small icon next to the light gem. It's only a reminder, like Spring says. Do you really need a huge rotating weapon icon the entire time you're carrying a wapon like in Thief 2??

 

Next attempt (below): bringing the weapon icons closer to the gem again. Brightened the health bar; dimmed some of the metal speculars/highlights to create more contrast with the health bar; painted the North point of the compass gold. Brightened the colors in the weapon icons a tad. Added shading where the compass edges meets the gem. The compass also looked a little too much like a sailor's steering wheel, so I sharpened the points.

 

 

EDIT: Sorry NH. Looks like you beat me to the punch. My mockup's cleaner, so maybe that will help.

Edited March 14, 2005 by Darkness_Falls

[Springheel]

Here are two actual-sized shots. The first one I think crams too much in a small space. The second one, if the gem were lowered a bit, would be my preference.

 

Compressed

 

Non-compressed

 

edit: ok, fixed the second one so that the gem is smaller and close to the healthbar. That's the one that would get my vote.

[Darkness_Falls]

Hmm, even those seem large to me. That light gem seems huge. Is that how big it really is in T2? I'd vote for smaller ...and compressed.

 

I remember the suggestion being introduced that we should implement opacity/transparency options for the HUD (0% to 100% opacity). I hope we implement this. No matter what we decide on, I don't want a 100% opaque HUD. Except for maybe the light gem/health bar, but give me this option, IMO.

 

The spread out option just makes things look too disconjointed (is that a word?) to me.

[Macsen]

The compressed one is my favourite.

[New Horizon]

Try this out. It's a "meet in the middle" approach. I too like the compressed version, but I think it could work better like this. Actually, I take it back...I don't like the picture I just posted..so it shall disappear.

 

At any rate, I would have to say the compressed version. It's very compact and I think it would read well on screen as real graphics.

[oDDity]

Deinfitely the uncompressed, but the healthbar should be moved up to the gem, so it can pop out when the player is injured.

You have to remember that the vast majotiry of time, it'll only be the gem construction with the compass you'll see.

You also have the whole thing way too big in that image.

I post the full size here so you can see the scale properly.

Edited March 14, 2005 by oDDity

[New Horizon]

Deinfitely the uncompressed, but the healthbar should be moved up to the gem, so it can pop out when the player is injured.

You have to remember that the vast majotiry of time, it'll only be the gem construction with the compass you'll see.

You also have the whole thing way too big in that image.

I post the full size here so you can see the scale properly.

That's pretty much what I posted too oDD but you made it look much better than my version. That's the type of inbetween look I was going to suggest. It's still compressed but at the same time it's spread out. I think it's a good compromise.