High Dynamic Range Lying

In 2002, I attended the Electronics Entertainment Expo for the first time, and it would prove to also be one of the last times I would ever attend the yearly event. My memories from the experience stay with me even today, and while many journalists are fairly jaded about E3’s existence, I remained optimistic. After all, it was the most fun I had had in a convention center in years.

One of the most endearing parts of visiting E3 without the yoke of journalistic responsibility reining me in, was the ability to check out booths and games that I wouldn’t have otherwise encountered. One of the booths I frequented was Korean developer Phantagram. While Microsoft had already chosen to publish their games for the Xbox, the company was, at the time, relatively unknown to most gamers.

When I arrived at the booth, one of the representatives for the company seemed eager to show me a game they were very proud of at the time; a shooter named Duality. Taking hints from Metal Gear, Splinter Cell, as well as a plethora of third person shooters, Duality was a cyberpunk thriller that employed cover, stealth, and a cornucopia of gadgets. One of the features of the game that the rep was so keen on was the way it seamlessly integrated an options menu and a health bar into the game itself. Whenever players entered the inventory, the main character’s backpack would open, and the camera would zoom in for a better view. At the time, this kind of integration was pretty rare in games, and the implementation was pretty amazing. The game itself never saw the light of day, but if nothing else, it did its job; it made me think.

HUD (Heads-Up Display) implementation usually gets very little thought now days. Despite the advent of high definition, game companies don’t seem to use cleaner and more detailed graphics to display information in more inventive and integrated ways. The advantages of integrated HUDS and intelligent information display are many fold. The existence of health bars and ammunition counters on the screen serve to pull us out of the experience. They are an excellent reminder that, yes, we are still playing a video game. What can we do to make people forget that that world is not real.

HUDs have remained unchanged since the days of the Nintendo Entertainment System, but that isn’t to say that some games didn’t boldly attempt to change the way we look at HUDs, and have paved the way for what could be the future of information display in video games. What have we done right in the past? What have been the failures? Where do we go from here? HDRL hopes to answer that, with a touch of optimistic speculation, and a pinch of nostalgic golf clapping.

Games that did something right

Halo

This is a pretty obvious choice. Halo took a step in the right direction when it came to displaying ammunition information in new and inventive ways. The Assault Rifle had a digital read out for players to read, that was not only large enough to read, but also clear and easy to understand. Unfortunately, this wasn’t consistent to all weapons, and the game ended up still relying on the ammunition counter superimposed onto the screen.

Metroid Prime

While Prime did indeed use a very simple First Person Shooter style HUD, with ammunition and Health readouts lining the sides of the screen, Retro Studios did an excellent job of integrating the information into Samus’ helmet view. Instead of unexplainable floating numbers, the numbers serve as a holographic overlay, and the edges of Samus’ helmet are visible to create an incredible feeling of claustrophobia.

DooM

Despite using a very simple and rudimentary HUD, DooM also included a real time mock up of the main character`s face to spice things up. As the player began to lose health, the face became bloodier. When the player began to fire wildly, the face would smile maniacally. When the player was searching, the face`s eyes would dash back and forth. DooM might not have been the epitome of intelligent and inventive HUD design, but the face was a step in the right direction.

flOw

Sony`s flOw, an expanded downloadable version of the flash game by Jenova Chen, is the perfect example of seamless HUD integration. The game sports absolutely no numbers, no health bar, and no superimposed words. How then does the game display health? Small nodes on each creature denote how much health they have. Larger creatures have room for more nodes, which denotes that they have more health. Players or AI enemies attack other creatures by eating nodes off. The game integrates and accurately shows creature health information. Most games either do one or the other. flOw does both.

Biohazard

The Biohazard series (Resident Evil outside of Japan) had ideas ahead of its time. Not only did the series popularize and eventually reinvent the Survival Horror genre, but the game tried its best to convey the health of the character through simple posture change and walking speed. Unfortunately, because of technological limitations of the platforms that the series was initially released on, the system rarely worked. While there were effectively 3 levels of health (with invisible sublevels of health within each level), the game`s character only exhibited two different levels of health: Healthy, and dying. Without an accurate representation of the character`s health, players were constantly forced to go to the menu screen to check health before moving onwards. Sadly, the entire idea was scrapped in Biohazard 4, and replaced with a standard rotary shaped health bar.

Trespasser

Say what you will about the failure of Trespasser, the PC-only First Person Shooter based on the world of Jurassic Park, but the game was rife with unique ideas (albeit poorly executed). Player health was represented by a heart-shaped tattoo on the player`s breast. When players started to lose health, they would look down at themselves. While the mechanic was a step in the right direction, the sad part was that players had to constantly look down to check health, which disrupted gameplay to a large extent.

What needs to be done?

Asking what needs to be done in the future to make displaying vital information more immersive is not an easy question to answer. There are a couple pointers that can be gleaned from the preceding examples that might give us a good set of pointers, going forward.

1. Make it accurate. Don`t make the player have to guess what the display means. If a player gets hit five times by a monster, and their health still says “Not so bad,” we have a problem.

2. Make it easy to read. Don`t make the player move closer to the TV, or squint. If the display is so hard to read that the player actually has an easier time with a health bar, you have not done your job.

3. Make it seamless. Make it easy for the player to discern what it means, but make it blend into the environment in a believable and logical way. Here`s a test: If the player always knows where the health display is, but a passerby asks “Where`s your health?”, then you`ve got a winner on your hands.

4. Make it pretty. Nothing is worse than looking at an ammunition or health display that looks like poo. If you are going to integrate it into the game environment, make it look good. Bad looking displays can take one out of the experience just as easily as one that isn`t integrated.

Granted, these guidelines are easier said than done. The easy part is writing the rules. The hard part is developing a new and exciting HUD that adheres to those rules. The industry is thinking, though. Lionhead`s Peter Molyneux announced some new features for Fable 2 today at GDC. It looks as if the HUD has been completely removed, and all information will be conveyed via a canine companion that will accompany the hero throughout the entire game.

The next step is yours, readers. Do you have any ideas for an integrated HUD for a particular genre? For a particular game? For every game ever made? Post in the comments below, and let us know.