This week I have among other things been restructuring the HUD, or head-up display. We chose to place the pumpmeter (which can be seen in previous posts) at the bottom of the screen instead of having it in the top left corner. This in turn called for some changes to the HUD as a whole, so after a few different drafts it came down to the designs that I will present in this post.
Our HUD consists of the pumpmeter, a score counter and a frame that indicates the types and number of power ups the player has collected. In the game, the player collects a power up by smashing open trashcans positioned on the sidewalks. An unexpected problem with this design presented itself during last week’s play testing, the people who tested the game found that there was no visible indication or feedback that made it clear that you should hit the trashcans for power ups!
So in response to that feedback I decided to incorporate a hint to the smashing of trash in to the design of the power up holder, in this way I am hoping that I will have hinted enough with as few means as possible and spared the game from having text indications popping up all over the screen.
I wanted the art-style in the power up holder to feel unison with the style of the rest of the game, so I used elements and shapes from other designs in the game. For example I used the “pow” explosion that appears when the player punches an enemy, as a frame behind the power up holder. The circles that hold the power up icons I drew from the shapes of the pumpmeter, and the text has the same style as the “alert effects” on the pumpmeter as well. A thing that I have had in mind throughout all the art in the game is to frequently use the same thickness in the lines in areas that are connected, so to give a balanced impression.
When choosing the color scheme for the holder, my main concern was that it should stand out from the background, but at the same time it should not compete too much for the eyes attention with the pumpmeter. So I went for a cool cyan color, complemented with a warm orange, I then put in a highlight in the explosion to make it stand out from the background a bit more. I used the same shapes and colors for the score holder, so to not create dissonance in the visual impression of the HUD.
Here is the new version of the pumpmeter, so you can get some understanding of the design.
Nils Wennergren 