Blog Post #4 – HUD
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Hi! The Beta deadline is getting closer and our group is set on implementing all the assets needed. In this days post I am going to write about the process of making the HUD for Mermaid River. The elements that the group had decided should be in the HUD was:
Previously our HUD was built up by two rectangular bars for health, air and a scoreboard. A problem we had with this HUD was that it didn’t explain itself well to the player or notify the player when health or air was lost. To explain what was going on I wanted to make a doom-like display of the character were you could see the condition of the avatar and relate it to the actions of the bars. In the picture above you can see how the avatar reacts to the reduction of the Health bar. Here the reduction of the Air meter and its effect on the avatar is displayed (The scars is not added from loss of air as in the picture, the only change is in the blue color). As for explaining itself better I think the health bar and air meter now works out pretty well. On the other hand, the playtesting for the pre-beta version clearly showed us that it still did not notify the player enough. In the future work including the HUD I will make the bars lager and implement flickering lights as feedback when the meters and bars change. The HUD also needed to contain a scoreboard and a power up display. First of when I started the designing of the scoreboard I searched for a way to make it pirate like. And I thought to myself – “Pirates, they like ships.” So then I started sketching on ways to make a pirate ship with a score attached to it. The results that I got did not satisfy me and the logic of scribbling score onto a ship felt nonexistent, I trashed this plan and started over. This time around I wanted to make it fit to the Avatar as the Doom-like avatar did. The avatar has had both of his legs cut of and replaced with wooden oars. These now should provide as scoreboard. I liked the idea that the avatar keeps his score by markings on these new wooden legs. The power up bar became a flipped version of the scoreboard, this solved a problem I had with making the HUD centered.
The Score and Power up boards. -Nils Folker
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