Awesome UI's

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Less is more, UIs should be reduced to the absolute minimal necessity, a thing we are more or less seeing; Dead Space is a great example, problem is more with FPSs.

The fluidness with which the player can interact with computer panels in the environments of Doom 3 is unparalleled and something more games should do. It's not about the aesthetics (which I like) but the interaction, so it would be best shown in video, if I could find some decent material instead of this shitty 240p:

in some documentary/interview i've heard Carmack saying this was his call, one of the objectives with that engine iteration, so kudos to him.

Dead Space is really neat in this regard. The UI adds to the tension since it's just objects in the actual gameworld (suit or holographic projections). There's no pausing. No big menus that cover the entire screen. It's all there and it makes you feel insanely uneasy (at least it did for me).

The Display system in Doom 3 is really sweet too!

Quote from Beck

I'd love to do a bit of UI design if I was better at 2D stuff. Sadly I suck at it xD

I think UI work is more about the concept than the art. What is truly important is the experience and the flow of the informations (UX)... so if you have some ideas you should go ahead because you could come up with a cool concept that would then need just an art pass

I'd like to cite Carmack again, when talking about Wolfenstein 3D (or Doom) said that he requested and pushed to be able to play with the less button presses as possible... and in fact 3-4 taps and in those games you are playing!

I was baffled when I tried the Dead Space 3 demo, because with an in-game system that worked, they clearly didn't know how to make different* the game interface (menus), so they built this 3D thing that I found really annoying: with all those camera movements it didn't simply made you waste a lot of time, it was almost giving me motion sickness (first time ever).

Btw in contrast to the excellent in-game UI, Dead Space's menus were quite messy from the first game.

*this is an argument that should be discussed imo: in games there seems to be the tendency to redo everything every time, just because you need to change it to not give the customers something to gripe on "copy-pasting".

Then you get something awkward and unusable like the Assassin's Creed Animus' UI that is carried over an entire series of games :-/

+1 for Doom 3

And I agree that less is more!

This is bad in my opinion:

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Also bad:

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I way prefer to see contextual and minimal HUDs. This obviously depends heavily on the game, some games demand more prominent HUDs because of their complexity but I still believe a lot more work can still be put into making game HUDs be better.

Last of us is the perfect example of good contextual HUDs. If you don't need that kind of info, get it the fuck out of the screen!

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I've personally really been enjoying Skyrim's (console) UI. It's very easy for RPGs to end up with clutter dripping out their asses yet Skyrim manages to show you exactly what you need when you need it. Also the menus for managing inventory, magic, etc are sublime (although different on PC I think).

Some cues were taken from Fable I suspect, which typical of Lionhead games had a lot of thought put into its UI.

Quote from [HP]

+1 for Doom 3

And I agree that less is more!

This is bad in my opinion:

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Display More

that is taken from when you freeze the game to open up all interactions you can do during combat, and is taken from a tutorial segment. So not really fair to use as an example

this is how it usually looks:

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Hah, really? Fair enough, It's been a while since I played that game.

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I know it's a joke HUD but I wanted to add that the HUD in Brink is almost as bad as this.

Agree with Dead Space and Doom~

I wanna add Borderlands.

It was really immersive when I started playing it and an NPC upgraded my character's "vision" so I could see how many bullets I had left. It was so cool that it didn't simply pop up on my screen. It was LOADED! Each new feature got loaded on my HUD before being completely displayed. Simple, diegetic and immersive.

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Quote from Zyn

I know it's a joke HUD but I wanted to add that the HUD in Brink is almost as bad as this.

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I actively hate the Borderlands menu interface.

Dead space definitely has one of the best interfaces. The jacket in alone in the dark is also very cool, although the icons are a quite intrusive.

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I remember they tried to eliminate all HUD elements and such from Grim Fandango. Adventure games were traditionally more like this:

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Whereas Grim Fandango was like this:

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You got around using the arrow keys on your keyboard, not by clicking to walk to places. Instead of clicking on items, the main character would point his head towards them as you went near them, and a key let you switch between multiple targets in one area.

Talking and interacting were separate buttons. The only time you really saw a HUD was when choosing dialogue options. The inventory was represented like this — he'd basically just get each item out of his pocket as you pressed left and right.

It really did make the game a lot more immersive not having icons and shit everywhere. So simple yet so effective, although purists missed their classic pointing and clicking I recall. Unfortunately the adventure game genre more or less ended on a high right there anyway.

BTW just looking at those made me stupidly nostalgic and I now want to play them. Wish they'd do a HD remaster of Grim.

Quote from Thrik

Instead of clicking on items, the main character would point his head towards them as you went near them, and a key let you switch between multiple targets in one area.

That's exactly one of the things i'd like to see more.

Speaking of FPSes, HUDs are a thing of the past ("a thing of the future past" ); makes sense on all the sci-fi themed stuff, but on current scenarios... I'd like to see at least some options to easily remove it. But I'd like to see to what extent it's possible to arrive at implementing realistic hints to remove UI in a shooter.

I have a friend who's a CO and I always have really interesting chats with him about possible solutions in games... I would have supposed that a soldier would request absurd things like some forum nerds do, instead he leans pretty much more toward having the most fluid experience as possible, so "go ahead and automate, if makes for better experience" because "we do a lot of things instinctively, so I don't see why I should push a button".

I want to pick his brain next time on interfaces and how soldiers behave on the field to check the status of things, and if that could be translated naturally in a game.

I barely tolerated Dead Space's UI, since it was entirely navigated by the keyboard on PC. Personally, I give a lot of props to Crysis:

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This is a ballin UI. Perfect, simple, fast, mouse-driven instead of relying on a bunch of keyboard shortcuts or browsing through menus. Just hit a key to hold up your gun, and click on the options you want, or hit the numbered hotkeys to toggle. It's super quick and intuitive.

Also Hitman: Blood Money.

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Those three prompts seem intimidating at first, but you quickly and intuitively learn (and/or are taught) the three separate groups of actions they belong to. When multiple things are available on one button, you simply hold the button and scroll your mouse wheel, where most games would pick one and only one to be available based on what's closest to your cursor/viewpoint center.

Blood Money also perfected the map, making great improvements over the previous three games. Too bad Absolution took a backslide.

Yep Crysis UI was on fire, the way it handled weapons was so awesome.