98 replies to this topic

[MasterKunt]

As long as the glass visor can become slightly scuffed from gunfire(bullet impact in situations when you are heavily damaged, or just slight marking in the glass from shrapnel).This was done very slightly in MW3 (i think you got like 1 area that a bullet scuffed up) i always think its a nice touch.
The franchise to me since i started playing MW (MW2:MERCS was my first, played all of them at this stage) has always been that of a Mech sim, not a run and gun shooter.

And people, im so excited about this game im soiling myself up to 20 times a day.

[Orzorn]

Dukov Nook, on 13 March 2012 - 09:43 AM, said:

Ah, nevermind, I found it.

So, it looks like they are going with the old school HUDs of MW3 or Wing Commander - Privateer. Not sure I like that. It's a waste of valueable screen real estate to include rendered components of a cockpit into the gaming screen just for a little added immersion. The Hud should simply be a display of the components you will need to manage and maintain you mech in battle; speed, damage, radar, targetting; weapons, and comms. Adding the other items is not only fluff, but creates a distraction.

Actually, that information is actually useful. In past Mechwarrior games, there was no way to know just how many heat sinks you had left, for example. Now we have a very clear read out of that information, which is extremely useful. If you'll notice, the sensors panel also tells you whether or not some of your sensors are jammed, which is also important.

Besides, if you played Mechwarrior 3, that game has a rather large amount of the screen being taken up by the cockpit...which was entirely functionless.

[Atlai]

Paul Inouye, on 07 March 2012 - 10:47 PM, said:

If you look at the center reticule then move your eyes slightly to the right, you'll see something like 73m. The range is there, just during the movement of the Mechs and the timing of the screenshot, it's kinda hard to see with the split reticule line covering it slightly.

I saw it

[Spooky]

CyBerkut, on 13 March 2012 - 08:26 AM, said:

- Weapon Min/Max range listings. My Opinion: They do not belong on the HUD, near the reticule.

I think I see where the confusion comes from . The HUD, Head-Up Display, is everything you see overlayed in your head view. It's not just the reticule. People were not saying, that the weapon min/max range belongs near the reticule. Simply that it should be displayed on the HUD in its designated place, the weapon list.


That said, the devs said that you can look at additional read-outs in your actual cockpit geometry, so may be you can put it there, if you don't want to have it on the weapon list. But it would be a bit redundant to have 2 weapon lists.

Edited by Spooky, 13 March 2012 - 11:52 PM.

[Spooky]

Pht, on 13 March 2012 - 08:11 AM, said:

I'm asking what he means by "point;" which he didn't define. If he didn't mean mw4 style accuracy, than the language is ambiguous and a bit scary.

He certainly did not mean MW4 style and I don't understand what is ambiguous and scary about it. If you snap your reticules back, they will both point at the same target, meaning they will fire on the same point (i.e. the same convergence point).


This has nothing to do with the behavior in MW4 you are meaning, where weapons with a longer firing duration (e.g. ACs and lasers) will stay on the same point for the whole duration. You can clearly see in the videos that this is not the case at all. If you fire a laser and swoop it across the target during its discharge, the damage is (visually at least) spread across the target, neatly indicated by the glowing, molten armor visible on the enemy Mech. It's exactly like in MWLL, with the exception that the convergence point of the weapons does not change instantly.


Unless I misunderstood you and you mean something else entirely about MW4. But that's at least the most unique thing about the combat in MW4, compared to the other MechWarrior games.

Edited by Spooky, 14 March 2012 - 12:10 AM.

[Fingle]

Can I customize my dashboard Hula girl? I'd rather have a ballerina, like a Misty Copeland, or Maria Tallchief! That would be AWESOME!

[SnowDragon]

From 1850 Mr Welsch can no longer do in an RPG.

I will NOT cover up my lancemate's cockpit readouts with pin ups.

[Voxelman]

As much as I think the HUD design looks great, I can't really say I like how the HUD sits over the top of the cockpit readouts, I thik it could be distracting. It would be cool if you could choose which you want tho.

[SnowDragon]

PGI, if you're reading this, give us design our own HUD. That'll make us happy.

[Paul Amistad]

i'm a mechwarrior mercenaries HUD fan back in the days... time to take the old catapult off the garage xD

[Sylow]

Watching the combat videos again, i find a few possible improvements:

• As already mentioned elsewhere, the damage status of both the own and the hostile mech should be brought closer together, instead of being at opposite corners of the screen.
  
• Both might be somewhat smaller, but be closer to the center.
  
• The current color-coding of the damage indicators is of limited value. The undamaged / damaged / gone status doesn't tell me if my center torso was hit by one SRM or two PPCs, which makes a "tiny" difference. A suggestion on how to improve it is below.
  
• The current weapon group indicators could offer much more information. Currently they only show if all weapons of a group are ready to fire or not. They neither work for mixed groups, nor do they help with weapon lock / range. A suggestion on how to improve it is below.
  
• The indicator of the distance to the target quite regularily gets obscured by other HUD elements. This is mostly due to being on the same level as the targeting reticles, which mostly get moved horizontally. Thus an easy fix would be to move the distance indicator two centimeters up or down.
  Edit: I just watched the videos again. While the range indication was unreadable several times, that's not because of the own hud but because of laser fire and the likes. Thus i guess this point is invalid and to be ignored.

I think the display of damage on the mech can be improved without resorting to bar display of old MW implementations. Of course, for MW veterans the bars are a superior choice to the low-information color code mech model, but they have the charm of a bad power-point presentation (which we all learned to dislike) and require some time to learn to read them properly in the head of battle. Two factors which easily turn away new players, thus not really a good choice.

Instead of going that way, i would build something like the Diablo health glasses. Due to limited graphical skills on my side, i have to explain in words:

• Reduce the bulk of internal structure display to increase the thickness of the armour outline. Currently only the status of internal structure is easily readable, while armour is harder to read on a quick glimpse.
  
• The color code might still be green (more than 90% intact), yellow (below 90% but over 25%), red (below 25% but still over 0%) and black (gone), but also use a black or grey overlay to fill out the sections status according to damage done.
  
• So yes, just like the health bubble in Diablo 2 gets empty on the top the more damage you take (and the less red "liquid" remains on the lower half of the glass), the armour status of each section might get blackened out from the top.

I think this concept both displays more accurate information than just the color coding, while being more intuitive and thus more friendly to the new player, than any bar display.




Last not least my suggestion for the weapon grouping indicators. Currently it seems to only display "all weapons ready" or "not all weapons ready" and nothing else. My first step would be to diversify the color options:

• Red: all weapons on cooldown
  
• Yellow: at least one, but not all weapons of the group on cooldown
  
• Green: all weapons of the group are ready to fire.

Additionally, while we have the "distance to target" next to the weapon groups, i also think it would be useful to include a bunch of other informations on range and missile lock. This would be:

• Target out of range of all weapons: Display an X.
  
• Target in range of some but not all weapons of the group: display the outline of the current square.
  
• Target in range of all weapons of the group: display the current square.
  
• Target below minimum range of some weapons of the group: change the square to a diamond.
  
• Target below minimum range of all weapons of the group: display the outline of a diamond.
  
• Target below minimum range of some and out of range of other weapons of the group: display "Utterly incompetent pilot warning!"
  
• Weapon group contains weapons which require target lock, but no target under reticle: draw a thin grey circle around the weapon group icon.
  
• Weapons in group acquiring target under reticle, not locked on yet: replace the grey circle with two yellow quarter-circles rotating around the icon.
  
• At least one lockable weapon in the group has lock and is in range: display a solid yellow circle instead.
  
• All lockable weapons in the group are locked and are in range: display a solid red circle now.

This way, much more information would be right next to the targeting reticle, where the pilots focus is in the middle of the fight. As conclusion:

• The change of the armour display would give more information while being easier readable and more intuitive for new players.
  
• The change of the weapon groups will display more information, but i admit that this overload on information might stress players new to the MW series. (Vets have adopted to much stuff in the run of MW to MW4, this little thing won't make a difference. ) Still i think that new players can easily adopt and it will help pilots a lot when they learned to use it.
  
• I have proven that i like to use bullet points.

Edited by Sylow, 14 March 2012 - 04:03 AM.

[Spooky]

Sylow, on 14 March 2012 - 02:31 AM, said:

• As already mentioned elsewhere, the damage status of both the own and the hostile mech should be brought closer together, instead of being at opposite corners of the screen.

What for? You need to see both out of the corner of your eyes and you should not confuse the two. There is no reason to have them closer together.

[Sylow]

Spooky, on 14 March 2012 - 02:43 AM, said:

What for? You need to see both out of the corner of your eyes and you should not confuse the two. There is no reason to have them closer together.

Several reasons. The key ones:

• Aestetics. One on the lower left, the other on the upper right just looks weird.
  
• Efficiency. The more time you spend looking in to the corners of your screen, the less you spend at important places.

Point two is the sole reason for the existance of HUDs and helmet mounted displays in modern time combat planes. So why have a HUD in a mech if you don't follow the principle for its existance? In this case, all the head down displays in the mechs cockpit would be sufficient...

[Pht]

Spooky, on 13 March 2012 - 11:55 PM, said:

He certainly did not mean MW4 style and I don't understand what is ambiguous and scary about it. If you snap your reticules back, they will both point at the same target, meaning they will fire on the same point (i.e. the same convergence point).

I don't think you're getting it.

What was posted does not indicate whether he's saying that both reticules will be aiming at a single point; or whether all of the weapons will fire at a single point when the reticules align, which is the scary thing I was referring to, that breaks gameplay balance very badly in an MW game.

Quote

You can clearly see in the videos that this is not the case at all.

You're presuming that the visuals exactly match the actual underlying game mechanic, and they do not always do so.

Edited by Pht, 15 March 2012 - 05:11 PM.

[Spooky]

Pht, on 15 March 2012 - 05:01 PM, said:

I don't think you're getting it.

What was posted does not indicate whether he's saying that both reticules will be aiming at a single point; or whether all of the weapons will fire at a single point when the reticules align, which is the scary thing I was referring to, that breaks gameplay balance very badly in an MW game.

Well, unless weapons have an additional "cone of fire" (i.e. accuracy randomness), they will hit the same spot, the weapon firing direction converged to the distance of the target point.

What you see in the video is the weapon convergence lag in action. There are some scenes where several lasers are fired on to the enemy, but they do not hit in the same spot, because the convergence still lagged behind from a previous distance.

Artificial randomness will hopefully not be introduced in MWO.

Pht, on 15 March 2012 - 05:01 PM, said:

You're presuming that the visuals exactly match the actual underlying game mechanic, and they do not always do so.

Generally I'd say what you see is what you get, in such shooting games, if you take network lag out of the equation.

[Spooky]

Sylow, on 14 March 2012 - 02:58 AM, said:

Several reasons. The key ones:

• Aestetics. One on the lower left, the other on the upper right just looks weird.
• Efficiency. The more time you spend looking in to the corners of your screen, the less you spend at important places.

Point two is the sole reason for the existance of HUDs and helmet mounted displays in modern time combat planes. So why have a HUD in a mech if you don't follow the principle for its existance? In this case, all the head down displays in the mechs cockpit would be sufficient...

Admittedly, one thing that I find weird is, that they deviated from the norm. All MechWarrior games had your damage indicator in the lower right, the enemy one in the lower left and the weapon list in the upper right. MWO switched your damage indicator with the weapon list, for some reason.

[nobodyhasthis]

Changes I Want: Put mech display in the bottom right, put weapons in top right. Allow the player to change hud color to something besides yellow.

Other than that it looks amazing.

[LordDeathStrike]

nobodyhasthis, on 16 March 2012 - 01:32 AM, said:

Changes I Want: Put mech display in the bottom right, put weapons in top right. Allow the player to change hud color to something besides yellow.

Other than that it looks amazing.

colors arent too hard to alter, moving stuff around can be a pain in the ***, might be stuck with having the layout the same for everyone.

[Catharsis]

Sarah Dalrymple, on 07 March 2012 - 10:10 PM, said:

They probably have something in the works for that as well. The weapons are probably just 'grayed' out when a target it outside of the range of that weapon, really. Seems most logical to me.

know Mechwarrior 4 did that with the weapon group display next to the crosshair. It worked fairly well and was pretty useful, but I found it extremely hard to see, especially since it went from dim green to bright green. Maybe if it changed from red to green or some other contrasting color like that, it would be easier to see in the thick of combat.


All in all, my opinions on the cockpit and HUD are that they should be as busy and as full of information as possible. I like having a display that tells me EVERYTHING I need to know and other things that I do not need to know without having to switch between different modes and such. Like how the target display in MW4 showed both a 3D picture of the mech and a 2D damage readout, as opposed to the MW3 version where you had to switch between 3D image and 2D damage readout and again to HTALs

Plus, at least for me, the busier the HUD, the calmer and more immersed I am.

Edited by Catharsis, 16 March 2012 - 01:43 AM.