Graduate Games Blog

First off, thank you to everyone who responded to the “Which HUD is Better Post.” I, the lowly programmer, spent some time this week laying out nearly all of the HUD information and toying with a few different designs.  Ultimately, I ended up with the one above that is working really well in the game and fits with Zak’s motif and the main character’s color scheme.  As you can see, I’ve fused some elements from both the Metroid HUD (I went with darker colors/black) and the Shadow Complex HUD (transparencies, different text sizes, visual ammo indicator).  I explain most of the HUD below for those interested in learning/guessing a little bit more about the game…

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1. Top-Left Box/Icon – Displays your current weapon. Next to this is your current ammo in bright red.  The current ammo is also displayed below the weapon icon and indicates the clip size (20 /32)
2. The Large numbers at the Right Bottom show your total remaining shots with the currently selected weapon (in this case 322)
3. To the Left of the Large numbers is a picture of your holstered weapon.  Like Halo and other FPS, you will only be able to equip 2 weapons at any one time.  Your total ammo for your backup weapon is displayed to the left of the icon (38 x)
4. Finally, the square boxes along the bottom of the HUD display the total number of  ’storage spaces’ in your ship.  Gray means they are empty and red means full.  More on this later.