The HUD Poll

[Mister_Prophet]

Greetings fellow savages! I present to you the first of hopefully several Polls for the development of Savage Land. In my ongoing hope for transparency I would like to open the topic of HUD.

In the Demo, you all saw that the default Unreal HUD was in play along with default Unreal gametypes. As we continue to develop the campaign, this has escalated somewhat. We've needed custom gametypes and have even required additions to the HUD, thus enabling a custom variant of the classic HUD.

We're sort of trying stuff out. Would love to hear some opinions. It started with just having an option to make additions to the HUD without other changes, though this quickly began to help us customize further. For the most part, I favor the classic HUD approach, with normal style customizations and other normal functions. But since we've been making some font adjustments and color style changes...we've sort of wandered into potentially controversial territory here. Nothing is final and nothing is off the table, including trying to backtrack to more classic Unreal HUD preferences. Here's a mock up of the kinds of things we're trying out:



Feel free to hit the poll or just chat about it. Some details on HUD additions that have been made so far:

-New Fonts included, Special Event Broadcast messages and Level entry text updated
-Space for New HUD actions
-Ammo Bars can be color changed.
-Health/Armor/Ammo Numbers have altered Font and Colors
-Optional Icons, including removal of Killcount Skull to be replaced by another feature.
-Boss Health Bars

[Mister_Prophet]

Here's an alternate shot. Currently we've removed the Red font color changes to health/ammo when low to maintain a constant. Other attempts are being made to remove other Greens from general Unreal text. We'll have to think of a crosshair solution as well. The Frag Counter has been removed also now and that space will be used as a level Key counter (think the Nodes from map 2).

[ividyon]

While I have no strong opinions on the HUD changes, I would like to point out two changes in 227j that should be taken into account:

• There is a "HUDScaler" variable which just sizes the entire HUD up and down. It essentially "pretends" that the game is rendered at a lower or higher resolution, and the HUD grows or shrinks accordingly. This dynamically applies to any HUD and needs no further custom code to work. So if you're concerned about legibility and scale, you don't need to worry about HUD sizing features for 227j.
• Coupled to that, there is a "HDTexture" variable where HUD textures can be replaced with a higher-fidelity version, if the game detects that HUDScaler is being used. This can be used for HD variants of fonts, new icons etc.

While I know you are making a cross-platform title, these could still be valuable to know when developing for 227.

[jackrabbit130]

While I have no strong opinions on the HUD changes, I would like to point out two changes in 227j that should be taken into account:

• There is a "HUDScaler" variable which just sizes the entire HUD up and down. It essentially "pretends" that the game is rendered at a lower or higher resolution, and the HUD grows or shrinks accordingly. This dynamically applies to any HUD and needs no further custom code to work. So if you're concerned about legibility and scale, you don't need to worry about HUD sizing features for 227j.
• Coupled to that, there is a "HDTexture" variable where HUD textures can be replaced with a higher-fidelity version, if the game detects that HUDScaler is being used. This can be used for HD variants of fonts, new icons etc.

While I know you are making a cross-platform title, these could still be valuable to know when developing for 227.

These are true facts, I would agree with the above argument as I've had players already complain in my server about the small HUD because of their 4k resolution. That being said, it's entirely possible to code in a .ini variable bNewHUD to fix this issue and maintain compatibility with the original HUD. I guess whatever is going to replace the skull wouldn't work if bNewHUD was false, but it sounds to me like that wouldn't be such a huge deal. Now, if this 227 HUD scaler will scale your textures up, i'm assuming they wont have S3TC variants then they will scale stretched by default. Curious to know what that looks like.

I think the new HUD looks good, personally I don't play Unreal at resolutions higher that 1024x768 even with a modern PC.

[Mister_Prophet]

These are all good things for us to consider, certainly. My main viewpoint is to make sure we cover all our bases. Changing the HUD might be construed by some as drastic given our commitment to "keeping the faith" with the Unreal feel, which is why I wanted to poll it to begin with. Ultimately the burden will be on us to provide the platform choices with....well, choices. So while we can work in the realm of what's available now (227, 436, and 469) it's good to know what else we can include in any final packages. I'm keeping one eye on the development of 227j and 469 as it is.

What I don't want to do is have a HUD that's too radically different from Unreal's and too intractable like the one used for my older projects. I generally want ours to be able to do anything the default one is able to do for anyone playing, on all platforms.

[CrocMagnum]

Hi! After having read the diary here’s some food for thought on the hud:

1] The Shape

Like I opted in the Poll, I feel you should make it your own thing. I understand you want to avoid the kind of custom hud that was present in Xidia Gold and 7 Bullets. I don’t know if it’s for aesthetic or technical reasons, but that particular hud grew on me after a while.

Despite filling around 1/10th of the screen, it wasn’t pervasive in my view. In the end -when the campaign is great on the whole- the hud becomes part of the experience, you forget about it and just have fun. Considering your credentials, I trust your coding skills and your artistic flair.

2] The Color

In my mind the title Savage Land conjures images of hostile nature and mysterious enemies. The facts that you gave Patient 3 a crossbow in his arsenal and that you plan to add environmental hazards (poison and cold among others if I recollect) reinforce this feeling. Basically you’re facing the unknown on hostile territory.

Coming back to the title Savage Land, I would have thought a green color could have been appropriate: green is the quintessential color of Nature after all. Thing is: Unreal has already a green tone by default, it notably shows when using the universal translator.

What about a "muddy brown color" then? It might fit because it suits the earthy theme I mentioned earlier, the savage "land". That’s why I think you might be onto something with the mock up screenshot you posted with an orange color above (post 1 in this thread). It’s not too far from a muddy-brown when you look at it.

To give a concrete idea of the colors I was thinking about check this movie poster of "Full Metal Jacket", the iconic helmet consists of a variety of browns and greens which I humbly believe are worthy of note:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093058/me ... 606436352/

I hope I’m not overthinking too much. Still it’s a privilege to be allowed to take part in these polls and discuss them. Cheers.

[Mister_Prophet]

Hey Croc!

Believe or not, some years ago when I decided that this new project was to be called "Savage Land" I originally thought of a Green theme for the title. My other projects were sort of "color coded" too, Xidia being hot Orange (fire) and Seven Bullets being White and Red (Bone and Blood). Residual Decay was to be Blue. What ended up happening is that, like you pointed out, Unreal actually seems to favor Green in much of its font and fire textures. I opted for Orange ultimately out of lack of interest in other options (its also my preferred color). I have also really liked the Orange HUDs used in some other games I've played.

What's interesting is that in terms of the HUD, brown doesn't really work. It's sort of very close to red, believe it or not. We originally had the Orange ammo counters revert to Red as per usual and you really couldn't see it too well against the red, at least not enough to differentiate. Brown on Orange or Brown on Red would be even more of a muddled look I think. We're currently thinking of colors that pair well with Orange for instances of alternate ammo bars (I'm leaning to Blue again on this).

I still like the idea of a flexible HUD, however. It might be possible to give the player a color choice from a couple of selections.