How about an icon telling that someone needs ammo.

Ghost Recon Future Soldier had a great X-Ray Vision called the Back-Scatter. Fall-off was 40 Meters

I noticed the sonar part of your feedback and I thought about it a bit. Has anyone seen a sonar/doppler visual mode in any other games? *snip* I can at least bug CCP Photon about this and see what he thinks (of the technical possibility).

Please tell me CCP Photon exists only to create new visuals.

Actually on topic while new display modes would be awesome quite a few people would have problems with them as they would be much hard to compile into a 3D model in our heads. I can look at a posistion on the map and know the terrain there as I've been there before and put together all the images together, I can't even imagine trying to do this with a location that displays in wireframe or radar, IR and thermal is hard enough.

Hey Everybody, CCP MC Peanut here--new to the forums (and this is my first post). I'm a Technical Artist here in Shanghai and was mostly involved in the HUD upgrade for the Project Legion Prototype you saw at Fanfest. I'm excited you guys noticed the work and are discussing it. The feedback is super awesome too (so awesome I forwarded the post to a lot of other devs). I thought I would jump in and give a little further explanation about what we did and potentially where we can go from here.

The HUD that you see in the Project Legion Prototype showed at Fanfest is now being rendered inside the 3D Scene. This is a significant change. While what you saw in the demo isn't incredibly different to what was there before, I want to emphasize that we have completely changed the underlying system for creating HUDs and have built a pipeline that puts the artist and designers much closer to the implementation. What you saw was the first implementation with the new system. And while the demo doesn't demonstrate it all--everything is working. In a very short time (a few weeks maybe), a few of us rebuilt the HUD, recreated all the logic, and tuned it to a slightly new visual design.

I'd love to go a little more in depth and explain some of the cooler benefits we are finding with this change:

Artist and Designers can iterate like crazy:
Unreal already has a lot of robust tools available to it, so why not take advantage of them. One of the things the artist love the most is being able to play the game with the editor open and update their material parameters in real-time. The 3D HUD is heavily utilizing the Unreal Material system. For example, all the 'bars' stem from the same base material, which has parameters to control the scale of the ticks, space between, color (including switching the color over position), flashing (speed and color). Tuning these parameters in-game is pretty awesome and very easy. Another example, the most obvious one probably, is that since it is 3D, we can change the position and layout very easily--it is as simple as moving it in the 3D package (Maya) and re-importing the geometry.

Logic outside of code
This was an interesting choice, but I believe it was the right one. We are exposing game data to the artist/designer through events in the visual scripting system, called Kismet (if you aren't familiar with Kismet, it is a node based scripting tool provided within Unreal that allows artists and designers to do more 'programmatic' things). With this change, much of the logic is in the hands of the content creators--the programmers are only responsible for providing the information when applicable. This sounds like it could become overwhelming, and we have been careful about not suddenly dumping everything in their laps. I can give one example. When your shield value changes, an event will be fired (a kismet event inside the HUD map file). This event will expose the current and max shield value. Luckily, our bar material has a max and current parameter input, so we just update the values (using a Kismet action) and all is good. While this is something that sounds like it could be completely programmatic, it is so much nicer to give the content creators the flexibility. If we wanted to, we could trigger a distortion animation every time the armor value changed, and as the armor got lower, the distortion could be more significant. This would require zero programmer support.

Lots of technology to utilize
Because we are in 3D we have access to all the rendering technology as other 3D stuff (suits, weapons, environments). We can also utilize the same tools (materials, modeling, an animation) that our 3D artists are familiar with, so the transition for workflow, was not so bad.

Capacity to be Dynamic
I can't make any promises about racial HUDs, but we are definitely in a much better position to be able to do them. It is very easy to create new 'visual' components without needing to rework the data hookup--and they would be lightweight and low cost.

There is more, and I could go on, but perhaps that is better for follow up posts. Our hope is that we have built a system the is flexible enough to give us more options to do the kinds of things you guys are asking for. Regarding these requests, I can definitely weigh in on their possibility within the system, but I am unable to comment on the likelihood (that is someone else's call). Please keep the feedback coming, and feel free to post follow up questions.

thanks!

*off topic

Geonosis was a rough day for the 501st, but we proved to the galaxy that we are real, and we will carry the fight to the very doors of our adversaries and beyond. Live strong, fight hard. Your brothers stand beside you.

You sir have been quoted in the wikia im maintaining, can we get a general background of yourself so we can hyperlink you on our wiki? e,g. technical background, whats your likes and dislikes, if you like long walks on the beach, why your so drawn to art.. stuff like that :) or is their a post relating to this and i missed it?

Wow. You make me feel way cooler than I should. There should be an official dev spotlight happening soon that should cover the information you want, but I'm happy to answer specific questions if you think they won't be covered in the dev spotlight.

Wow. You make me feel way cooler than I should. There should be an official dev spotlight happening soon that should cover the information you want, but I'm happy to answer specific questions if you think they won't be covered in the dev spotlight.

How about an icon telling that someone needs ammo.

+1 on this. im a logi primary class, and the ability to quickly see when someones low is a priority, and it makes sense in the fact that suits monitor ammo capacity as well as a number of other factors. this isnt COD, this is the future, please make this happen.

What's your favorite game outside of CCP's titles?

I can't pick a single favorite, but I can break down an 'at the moment' favorite for a few genres (FPS left out to avoid interest conflicts):
Adventure: Secret of Monkey Island
Fighting: Super Smash Brothers
Action: Uncharted Series
Racing: Big Bumpin' (the Burger King Game)
Indie: Hotline Miami

I can't pick a single favorite, but I can break down an 'at the moment' favorite for a few genres (FPS left out to avoid interest conflicts):
Adventure: Secret of Monkey Island
Fighting: Super Smash Brothers
Action: Uncharted Series
Racing: Big Bumpin' (the Burger King Game)
Indie: Hotline Miami

Yes - - a mana bar!

And while you're at it, make logis' symbol on enemy and friendly HUD be unique so that I know who to kill first. Come on, this isn't COD, it's the future!

favorite flight game

Although it's relatively new, I find Kerbal Space Program very satisfying.

I was just saying that because we were on the topic of sonars and being able to see hostiles/ friendlies behind walls. I apologize if it was off-topic. I'll stand by you to brother :) For the Republic!

The great and mighty CCP Saberwing flew to me from the heavens with his saber-sharp wings, and he has beseeched me, the glorious emperor god-king KAGEHOSHI, with a scroll with five-hundred-fourteen golden seals (Twitter message) asking me to compile a list of important HUD stuff. In the past I have made this thread (Improving the HUD) full of ways to improve the HUD, but here I shall extract only the most important functional stuff, as well as some new ones I have come across on the forums.


[Map/minimap]

East, West, and South on the minimap. Very important.

Grids on the map/minimap to make calling out locations more effective, similar to how the maps have grids in the map feedback section (example). Your current coordinates should be very easy to tell on the minimap. If possible, the target readout when aiming should also list the coordinates as well.

Building outlines shown on the minimap. This is very important information to know.

[Team/squad]

Who's talking indicator: A speaker icon along with the name of the person talking should pop up when someone on your team or squad is talking. Also the icon should float over their characters heads so you can visually see who is talking.

Squad list: A list of your squadmates right on the HUD. Should include sqad status indicators:

-Their current suit under their names (to quickly visually identify them)
-Squad leader indicator (duh)
-Shield and armor bar to easily tell who needs help, etc.
-Mortally wounded indicators (name highlighted in red)
-Inside a vehicle indicators (little car symbol)
-Clone terminated/respawning indicators (name is grey, or crossbones symbol)

Total squad WP below the list so you can tell how close to getting a strike your squad is.

An indicator for strikes that stays on the screen until the is used. Sometimes the notifications aren't noticed in the heat of battle, so having them last until the strike is used (or are no longer available).

[Equipment]

Support equipment icons: Its useful to know who is carrying a nanohive, repair tool, and nanite injector, even when you don't currently need those things. It can be very important to know what your teammates can and can't do for you.

Low ammo icon: those who carry nanohives should see a special icon over those with low ammo to indicate the need for nanohives.

Have the equipment that you or your squadmates deployed appear as a green to know which ones are yours or your squad's.

Some sort of notification of when your equipment has been destroyed.

[Weapon]

A different crosshair to indicate when a weapon is done charging, right now its hard to tell when for example a forge gun is fully charged because the charge gauge is all the way down inside the ammo meter; I shouldn't have to take my eyes of the target to check if fully charged. This would not be needed if all weapons had a distinctive sound, animation, and/or visual effect synchronized with charge completetion to queue the user. This one isn't really that important since you can just get use to it, but I think it would be good for usability.

The grenades-carried indicator on your HUD should display different symbols for the various grenade types, or some text to tell you what your type of grenades are.

[Other]

We need an indicator to know when we are being repaired by a repair tool. This is very important for teamwork; you don't want a guy you're repairing to run off from you because he doesn't know you were repairing him. This is a must, we had it before a while ago, but it was removed (thought its removal was a bug, but maybe it isn't).

I noticed right now that messages about whether you are scanned, hacking taking place, and others occupy the same place, and only one can be displayed; if an enemy starts hacking a CRU, I will no longer get information about whether or not I have been scanned. It might be good idea to just stack these messages, and even the squad order, RDV, and strike messages to the right where the kill-tracker currently is, and move the kill-tracker thing lower on the screen to make room (inspired by this).

-Upper right corner may be able to display squad orders, if you have been scanned, pending RDV requests, what is being hacked, etc.
-Lower right corner will show who kills who.


Behold the mighty list! marvel at how I typed things!

[Team/squad]

Who's talking indicator: A speaker icon along with the name of the person talking should pop up when someone on your team or squad is talking. Also the icon should float over their characters heads so you can visually see who is talking.

Squad list: A list of your squadmates right on the HUD. Should include sqad status indicators:

-Their current suit under their names (to quickly visually identify them)
-Squad leader indicator (duh)
-Shield and armor bar to easily tell who needs help, etc.
-Mortally wounded indicators (name highlighted in red)
-Inside a vehicle indicators (little car symbol)
-Clone terminated/respawning indicators (name is grey, or crossbones symbol)

Total squad WP below the list so you can tell how close to getting a strike your squad is.

An indicator for strikes that stays on the screen until the is used. Sometimes the notifications aren't noticed in the heat of battle, so having them last until the strike is used (or are no longer available).

Thank you for the reply, what HUD features are among your goals for Legion by release? What do you foresee the HUD being like?

This I like to know as well.

This is not something I am able to comment directly on, unfortunately. I am not in a position to make decisions on what we ultimately implement. What I can say is that the new HUD pipeline is dramatically more flexible such that our artists and designers can be more directly involved to implement the things that they want. I can say that the feedback is immensely helpful and you guys have challenged me with lots of questions that have made me re-examine some of our system implementations (which is good).