346 réponses à ce sujet

[Rurik_Niall]

That could kind of get annoying after a while though. I like Edi and her voice actor is wonderful, but after the first dozen times hearing Edi inform me that my shields were down followed by telling me they were back online ten seconds later I'd want to unplug her and jettison the AI core just to shut her up.

[Razagon]

Rurik_Niall wrote...

That could kind of get annoying after a while though. I like Edi and her voice actor is wonderful, but after the first dozen times hearing Edi inform me that my shields were down followed by telling me they were back online ten seconds later I'd want to unplug her and jettison the AI core just to shut her up.

I see your point.

[Hathur]

Rurik_Niall wrote...

That could kind of get annoying after a while though. I like Edi and her voice actor is wonderful, but after the first dozen times hearing Edi inform me that my shields were down followed by telling me they were back online ten seconds later I'd want to unplug her and jettison the AI core just to shut her up.

True and this is why we only hear Shepard say her own shields have failed sometimes rather than all the time.. the fear is it can get annoying.

However, this problem can be alleviated in a couple ways.

1) Have more than 1 or 2 spoken lines for the notification.... if you make a dozen different phrases for "shields down", chances are you won't hear the same one over and over in a given battle.

2) Mix it up. Have it randomly check to see who informs Shep that her shields fail... Either Shep says it herself, or maybe Garrus shouts it (i.e. "Check your shields Shepard!" ... or maybe Thane shouts it "Shepard take cover!" or Grunt "Get yer head down Shepard!" etc).  By simply mixing it up like that you greatly alleviate the problem of annoyance through repetition.

Modifié par Hathur, 26 mars 2011 - 02:17 .

[Razagon]

I also imagine there could be small human figure on screen or even a light on armor that tells you about your shields simply by changing colours like green/blue/yellow/red.

Modifié par Razagon, 26 mars 2011 - 02:19 .

[Rurik_Niall]

I think I'd go with something more along the lines of the verbal cue when your shields would overload on Hastrom. That distinct shattering noise when they'd go down, but without the beeping noise that accompanied it.

[Razagon]

Rurik_Niall wrote...

I think I'd go with something more along the lines of the verbal cue when your shields would overload on Hastrom. That distinct shattering noise when they'd go down, but without the beeping noise that accompanied it.

That could be a problem if you are in middle of a fight or let's say a Reaper is blowing up the city in background.

[Chala]

Brenon Holmes wrote...

javierabegazo wrote...

Alright, seeing as how ME3 is in production, I would like to start a discussion on HUD Elements, and what we'd like to see in Mass Effect 3.

<snip>

Now seeing as how Shepard will have part of his back, if not near all of it covered up with Heavy Weapons and two primary weapons, I think there are other possibilities, like putting the Life guage on his shoulder, or perhaps his helmet.

Obviously I think Mass Effect 3 will have to compromise and cannot totally take advatage of Dead Space 2's gorgeous HUD free system because it still is a squad shooter, so we'll need some info for our squadmates.

We actually had the exact same thought during ME2 development and did a few prototypes of a health and shield indicator in world on Shepard's armour. The end result was not as great as we'd hoped...

It was ok when Shepard was out of cover, like in the image you linked. The issues started to crop up once you popped into cover, with the way that the camera was positioned and with Shepard's orientation changing we had to do some fairly crazy stuff to get the health indicator to display in a reasonable position. Even then it ended up being rather confusing to reference when you were in the middle of a fight. I think if we'd simplified our health system so we only had one meter or bar it might have been easier to represent it on the armour (like on Isaac's back in DS).

All that said, we're still really interested in trying to move information into the world. That's one of the things that I love about Dead Space; the interface... it feels really immersive. I just want to touch the hell out of those buttons :happy:. So we are still investigating ways of putting some of our HUD elements into the environment... we'll see what we end up with.

I'd be interested to hear what you guys think might be interesting though... even beyond simple health and shield indicators.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE!! I spent the first 2 hours looking how awesome is the hud of the first Dead Space a few years back (same thing happened with the second part). I want this to happen in Mass Effect 3!

[Bluko]

I do prefer ME1's HUD over ME2's.

The most important thing about HUD is making sure you give the player the info they need, clearly, and easily. The HUD needs to be simple and easy to understand. I found ME2 somewhat confusing in that I really never have a proper gauge on squadmate health and I typically don't notice until they're near death which is generally too late to do anything. I much preffered the Health/Shield bars, although you no longer have seperate Health Bars really since you can't bypass defensive layers so I sort of see why they aren't there. Most people (myself included) likely appreciated the power cooldown bars in ME2, although again they are rather obscure and I don't think I even noticed them my first time playing.

My biggest gripe with ME2 was the removal of the Radar (except when paused). Umm why? Most people like having a little radar to know where enemies are at. Considering that the most populous shooters make Radars an integral part of their gameplay, I'm baffled why it was largely hidden in ME2. Given that this game features sort of futuristic combat wouldn' soldiers want active Radar displays? I know I would. And if it's an issue that you don't want the player to know where all the enemies are (although the pause function negates that anyways) just make some enemies invisible to Radar so that they can be truly "sneaky".

As for Dead Space. I like those games a lot, but copying the HUD elements is a bad idea. First Dead Space's HUD is what makes it Dead Space. Trying to do this with Mass Effect just makes it look like you are blatantly copying another franchise. It works for Dead Space because it's a horror game and they you want to feel like you are actually Isaac, so you freak out more when necromorphs show up. However both Dead Space and Mass Effect are Third Person Shooters, which means you're already "detached" from your character. Removing or making the HUD doesn't really add to immersion since you're already looking from an outsider perspective.

Frankly I always figured the HUD I saw in game was what Shepard would see if they were wearing a helmet with a visor.

Look if Bioware wants to learn anything from Dead Space, it shouldn't be the HUD so much as how they handle vacuum environments. Dead Space does a phenomenal job of giving you the feeling that you are actually in a vacuum. Something I wish Mass Effect could/would do. Unfortunately ME2 seems to have taken a turn for the worse not even issuing squadmates proper space combat entire.



Anyways in a nutshell...

• Bring back an active Radar display
• Health Bars on Shepard back are silly looking (And don't work for squadmates!)
• Have more concise squad health bars (ME1 style)
• Holographic ammo indicators on weapons are a good idea
• Make text readable on SDTVs dammit!
• Have a better power cooldown representation on screen (Xbox 360)
• Keep info on  more-important left to less-important right basis (English readers eyes are trained to do that)

[Praetor Knight]

Bluko wrote...

Frankly I always figured the HUD I saw in game was what Shepard would see if they were wearing a helmet with a visor.

Bioshock 1 and 2 even has the edges of a visor on the HUD, maybe that could be another effect?


On second thought, maybe not for a TPS.

[Gill Kaiser]

The only thing I hope they change is the horrificly ugly red tendrils that appear when you're low on health.

Why couldn't they have had the screen become washed out, or played a heartbeat sound or something? Anything but the godawful tendrils.

[Brenon Holmes]

Bluko wrote...

My biggest gripe with ME2 was the removal of the Radar (except when paused). Umm why? Most people like having a little radar to know where enemies are at.

That was largely a performance consideration (sadly), the radar in ME2 was very expensive. While the game was paused it was easier to bear the cost.

Frankly I always figured the HUD I saw in game was what Shepard would see if they were wearing a helmet with a visor.

That's how I usually think about it when I'm playing ME. :happy:

Gill Kaiser wrote...
The only thing I hope they change is the horrificly ugly red tendrils that appear when you're low on health.  

This is also something we're actively iterating on.

Thanks for the feedback guys (feel free to keep the ideas coming, but I'm bowing out for a while... need to get put my head down, music up and work on a few important things for a thing).

Modifié par Brenon Holmes, 26 mars 2011 - 03:03 .

[slimgrin]

I loved the PC interface for ME1, the customizable/expandable hot bar in DA:O was fantastic and facilitated gameplay. I did not like the hud in ME2. Health bar as a rainbow...? Squadmate info may as well have not been there. Basically, the hud in ME2 was pointless. It was the freaky 1970's horror veins creeping across the screen that mattered. That was the HUD for ME2. Bloody veins...SO REAL!!

[Gill Kaiser]

Brenon Holmes wrote...

Gill Kaiser wrote...
The only thing I hope they change is the horrificly ugly red tendrils that appear when you're low on health.  

This is also something we're actively iterating on.

Yay! That's great. As I said, that was my only real gripe with ME2's HUD.

[Captain_Obvious_au]

For my take on it, I ran a poll and it was fairly evenly split with people slightly preferring the ME1 HUD to ME2. Personally I MUCH prefer ME1. It gives much more information (plus, it's useful), you had the radar, and it's easier to tell your squadmates what to do. In other words, you can use the HUD for almost anything.

Perhaps here's a solution - when you have the HUD active, it's like you're looking throug Shepards eyes? So essentially the camera moves in and you have the HUD displayed as Shepard would be constantly be seeing it in battle.

As a final note I actually liked the red tendrils in ME2 when you were low n health. It made Shepard feel more natural and practically screamed 'get into cover, NOW NOW NOW!'

[Rurik_Niall]

I suppose you know many people who see red veins when they're in pain? Because I've never seen anything like that.

[Pwener2313]

ME2 HUD was very badly done, I never use it. The one in the E3 demo actually made sense, they should have kept that one.

[slimgrin]

Captain_Obvious_au wrote...

As a final note I actually liked the red tendrils in ME2 when you were low n health. It made Shepard feel more natural and practically screamed 'get into cover, NOW NOW NOW!'

I give up.

[DylanZeppelin]

Well I didn't read all the comments as I am very sleepy right now, but I just wanted to say that DS/DS2's system works for that game and the action genre (horror or not, you know what I mean) uncharted, sotc are just some examples of numerous games that reduce the hud and have it disappear, a lot of games do this now, but not for an rpg, I think rpg games should always have a hud.

Modifié par DylanZeppelin, 26 mars 2011 - 03:44 .

[javierabegazo]

Pwener2313 wrote...

ME2 HUD was very badly done, I never use it. The one in the E3 demo actually made sense, they should have kept that one.

I thought the one in the E3 demo was really ugly, in that sort of early 1990's kind of way and that it was just tacked on last minute, (which we learned later was the truth).

[Terror_K]

The main thing that needs to go from the ME2 HUD is that silly "squadmate heads and bars" stuff in the bottom centre of the screen. It was seriously awful, both in appearance and in getting across what it meant.

Again, I never understood why the ME1 HUD had to go and couldn't just be tweaked a little to suit ME2 a little more. It was pretty much perfect, IMO. The radar is the thing I miss the most, beyond an actual clear indicator of what's going on with my squad.

I'm not a fan of this recent trend of minimalist HUDs in games, simply because most of the time I find they go too far and don't provide enough info in the process. It kind of saddens me that the Mass Effect team are jumping on this HUD bandwagon for that reason. I get the whole notion of it being more immersive, but when you don't provide enough info and/or things aren't immediately clear or even when your eyes can't just flick to a place and back and take in the info easily, it does far more harm than any damage to immersion that's done by having something on-screen all the time. I've found just even moving something to the wrong place on the screen can make a big difference (e.g. the companion icons for DA2 being moved down to the bottom rather than top left stopped me from being instinctively with only a slight glance tell if a companion was in trouble or not). ME2 kind of suffered this too with companion's heads simply going grey, which doesn't draw the eye as much as the bright red did in the original. Little things can make the difference.

[Mr. MannlyMan]

I found the ME2 HUD just didn't give enough information about my squadmates; compared to ME1, I found my squadmates in ME2 died much more often without me even knowing. It's not that the "face" icons for the squadmates weren't obvious enough, either; it was that the way their shields/health were represented just weren't accessible enough during combat.

With the ME1 health bars, I could take one glance at it and note: "Shepard at 80%, Kaidan at 25%, Liara at 60%." With the ME2 representation, you have to stop and examine the color of the blocks to determine exactly what state their vitals are in. The more traditional representation in ME1 was simply more effective (because it was simplistic); it's one of those things that "just works".
So yeah, please bring back health "bars" for ME3.


I think I'll also add my voice to the "NO WEIRD VEINS!" crowd. If I had a choice, I would make it so that Shepard's vision narrows and darkens as he loses health, and in addition to his heartbeat, we also hear a faint alarm sounding in the background; kind of like the one in Halo 2/3, only very faint.


Last but not least, I found the message popups on the right side of the HUD to be fairly annoying, especially after upgrading several pieces of equipment all at once. Would it be better to have summaries of each entry show up in the upper-right corner of the screen? For the Cain, for example, just show "Acquired Cain; access your Codex to view this weapon." You could even stack those, if you wanted to:

Acquired Weapons:
Cain
Locust SMG
Carnifex Heavy Pistol


Edit: On the topic of immersive, in-game indicators, I don't really see why we need MOAR... we already have some key in-game indicators, such as Shepard's shields sizzling out when they're cooked, the visual layer that's applied whenever Shepard's health goes down (in this case, the veins). Do there really need to be flashing lights on Shepard's back that tell us where his health is at?

On the other hand, I would definitely advocate an immersive, in-level menu system for shops, but that's about all I can think of that's general.

Modifié par Mr. MannlyMan, 26 mars 2011 - 06:01 .

[AcidRelic]

Rurik_Niall wrote...

That could kind of get annoying after a while though. I like Edi and her voice actor is wonderful, but after the first dozen times hearing Edi inform me that my shields were down followed by telling me they were back online ten seconds later I'd want to unplug her and jettison the AI core just to shut her up.

Not sure if has been said but that's less annoying than a Fable I know of where an old man keeps reminding you your health is low and you need to drink you tonic to stay in good shape LOL, at least EDI had a cute voice.

[Terror_K]

Modifié par Terror_K, 26 mars 2011 - 06:04 .

[Praetor Knight]

AcidRelic wrote...

at least EDI had a cute voice.

[AcidRelic]

Whatever666343431431654324 wrote...

It looks really nice and immersive. I would support that.

Although, they should make it optional. Some people ("clickers") would like the full interface. Others may just want it when you pause.

I'm trying to think of ways they can support squad members without intruding with a visible HUD. You could also put indicators on their uniforms as well, and they could provide audio clues to their status.

Like the million times I heard Jacob say "I'm Hit" ... damn that was annoying.

Modifié par AcidRelic, 26 mars 2011 - 05:59 .