My only recommendation is a marker for true north. Looks great, not going to lie, but to someone who doesn't have knowledge of how aircraft compasses work it looks like a bunch of numbers that are relative to my position. Also, what's the scale of the compass? 0-100? 0-360? This kind of information could greatly help tactical communication. If 0 is True North, then I can tell my team-mates that the sniper is "Twenty degrees from my location" or something to that extent.

Wow--this is cool--totally do-able. Thanks for making me think about it. I'll propose it to the team.

Yes absolutely. I agree--I didn't even know it was moving backwards with the numbers. It would have been more obvious if I turned right and suddenly I'm facing West. I'm pretty sure the artists, when they update the texture for this, will add some markers, but I can't say for sure.

As for displaying objectives and such on the compass (an earlier question asked this). This is a little more complicated than the compass itself, as the position is related to the objective position and your position/orientation. Actually, when I first thought about it, I thought this was hard, but then after a day I realized it isn't. You just need a normalized vector to the objective and the players facing vector--then you can figure out the angle (same way with the compass--arctan2). This could actually be done with a shader, but you would need texture sampler for each objective. Also you could create a different polygon ring for each objective and let them sit slightly on top (so close you couldn't tell). The hardest part is getting the position of the objective--this wouldn't be immediately available in the shader, but it could be set with an event, as objectives don't change position (but if we wanted to track other things that do change position that may need to use a different way).
Wow--this is cool--totally do-able. Thanks for making me think about it. I'll propose it to the team.

Combine this sort of tactical viability through information gathering with a grid-map on the actual overhead and you've given the guys on the ground everything they need to effectively communicate in the same way that we would in the military. Can play into a whole new meta for effective squad leaders/commanders who can accurately read into the battlefield and provide that information effectively to their team. Congratulations, you just achieved everything Field Command leaders have been asking for.

EDIT: Oh, right - on that note - if we do get a grid-layout for the map... Any chance you could include what grid we're in on our HUD? Just something simple, off in the corner or next to the compass to signify that I'm in G6 or where-ever. That way someone can tell me that "Enemy is at H7" and I know exactly where I need to be / how close they are, instantly

Here's an example of what I'm trying to illustrate:
http://i.imgur.com/ScbP8SX.png
http://i.imgur.com/k4m9amb.jpg

ANOTHER EDIT: Albeit in retrospect that may be rather difficult to accomplish. Your call though.

Yes absolutely. I agree--I didn't even know it was moving backwards with the numbers. It would have been more obvious if I turned right and suddenly I'm facing West. I'm pretty sure the artists, when they update the texture for this, will add some markers, but I can't say for sure.

As for displaying objectives and such on the compass (an earlier question asked this). This is a little more complicated than the compass itself, as the position is related to the objective position and your position/orientation. Actually, when I first thought about it, I thought this was hard, but then after a day I realized it isn't. You just need a normalized vector to the objective and the players facing vector--then you can figure out the angle (same way with the compass--arctan2). This could actually be done with a shader, but you would need texture sampler for each objective. Also you could create a different polygon ring for each objective and let them sit slightly on top (so close you couldn't tell). The hardest part is getting the position of the objective--this wouldn't be immediately available in the shader, but it could be set with an event, as objectives don't change position (but if we wanted to track other things that do change position that may need to use a different way).
Wow--this is cool--totally do-able. Thanks for making me think about it. I'll propose it to the team.

^_-

Combine this sort of tactical viability through information gathering with a grid-map on the actual overhead and you've given the guys on the ground everything they need to effectively communicate in the same way that we would in the military. Can play into a whole new meta for effective squad leaders/commanders who can accurately read into the battlefield and provide that information effectively to their team. Congratulations, you just achieved everything Field Command leaders have been asking for.

EDIT: Oh, right - on that note - if we do get a grid-layout for the map... Any chance you could include what grid we're in on our HUD? Just something simple, off in the corner or next to the compass to signify that I'm in G6 or where-ever. That way someone can tell me that "Enemy is at H7" and I know exactly where I need to be / how close they are, instantly

Here's an example of what I'm trying to illustrate:
http://i.imgur.com/ScbP8SX.png
http://i.imgur.com/k4m9amb.jpg

ANOTHER EDIT: Albeit in retrospect that may be rather difficult to accomplish. Your call though.

In the description of the domination game mode for Legion, it said that the object changes every 10min, so that might be a problem.

Actually it is ok if it switches infrequently. I was more referring to marking positions of things that could be frequently (like every frame) moving, such as a player.

Some HUD features I would like for immersion.

HUD boot-up when we spawn. The various HUD elements should turn like 1 seconds after you spawn.

Head-shot damage visual distortion effects. Sensors & cameras for vision are located in helmet, so when shields are down and you are hit by headshot, the cameras' vision should be effected. This could make the HUD flash off briefly.

Thank you

Don't we already do this with Squad Orders though? Not bringing that up as a way of saying "Hey, copy/paste the methodologies of that here" I'm saying that as: If we already have the functionality to track a moving player with squad orders, no reason to add something that does the same thing =P

Yea we already do that and are doing it in a 2D system and generally it works fine. If we moved this to a 3D system we would be able to better control (on the content side) the visual rendering of these icons. We would also be able to add more complex /dynamic information, such as animations, dynamic text, visual states, and shaders (like a health bar on an icon). It may also give us more flexibility to expand on it since it becomes more content driven. However, we would likely only move to a 3D system if we felt the benefits were worth the cost of moving. In the case of the HUD, the benefits were worth the cost.

As for doing this on the compass--this can't use the existing system because the compass exists in the 3D world while the current icons are drawn in 2D (using 3D positions and converting to screen position). Also we probably can't track the player position on the compass using the method I described above because it would require constant updating, and kismet is not great for that--this would be better to be done on a custom actor class and controlled within the class itself (faster).

Or am I missing your question again. I am actually not incredibly familiar with the workings of squad interaction so I may be missing the point.

CCP MC Peanut has a youtube channel now

I got permission to upload some footage of the compass. The texture is still a work in progress and will be updated later by artists, but you can see it moving with the camera.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTk3C5HPoZs

A few questions. Pardon me if these have already been answered, I only just noticed this thread.

1. A semi-common feature in shooters is to have your ammo amount be displayed holographically next to the weapon. Would it be possible to implement this as an toggleable feature, perhaps also showing heat as well as ammo?

2. If we ever get speedometers, how would you feel about implementing an accelerometer as well for vehicles, especially aircraft? It would be interesting and helpful to know how fast I'm speeding up as well as how fast I'm currently going.

Any chances for interhud glass effects?

Like walking through a steam vent fogs up the hud glass? (ala Metroid Prime effects?)

I was interested int this idea at first...but the dropsuits we have in Dust aren't like space suits with helmets. In other words, our merc isn't looking through a face shield/glass

Instead it's more like Ironman where there is a holo display inside the helmet, and that displays whatever the outside cameras are displaying.

MCP replied about this a few pages back...another thing was balancing and making sure that certain effects won't have any ill effect on gameplay to make it unfair or not fun.

Still, the cameras have to have some sort of shield cover or protection against the elements, so there's always the possibility. My favorite effect from the Metroid Prime games had to have been the way you'd see a flash of Samus' eyes reflecting in the visor when there was a bright light or when missiles hit near you. Either that or when you'd get hit with some sort of EMP blast that made you have to restart your suit system before you could get your HUD back.

Talk about putting you in the game...immersion at its finest in those games for sure.

Thanks for the assist. Nailed it.

Of course; also issue of performance as well.

Metriod prime's effects I felt while nice where a bit too powerful for a multiplayer competitive environment.

However there been other games that have made the effects terrible
Namely the bleeding blood splatter and 'health bar'
Including dust 514's own repair aura.

Immersion details is just the sprinkles on top of the ice cream not the fudge ribbon.

I know they previously looked into a grid overlay on the overview map before, but they ran into issues with the terrain being in 3D and the UI being done in 2D Postprocess--this doesn't work well because the terrain has depth and the grid overlay is flat and above the terrain--it will not line up properly.

It can be achieved if the grid is done in 3D. There is one shader technique where you can draw pixels only at the intersection points of polygons. I attempted a small prototype by adding some polygons that intersected with the terrain (they are huge), but the thickness of the 'line' changes too much with slope and distance, so we would still need to figure out a way to improve this (and there are ways). Another way this could be done is by building it into the material on the terrain and use WorldSpace mapping coordinates (basically you can use the x,y value as a texture coordinate). This seems better and I'm leaning more towards it (although the first technique would be useful if we wanted to show a scan effect going across the landscape). Still there is a roadblock in figuring out how to apply this grid material--we don't want to it as part of the terrain material all the time--some of the starmap work is requiring something similar, so I'm hopeful we can learn from that.

I know they previously looked into a grid overlay on the overview map before, but they ran into issues with the terrain being in 3D and the UI being done in 2D Postprocess--this doesn't work well because the terrain has depth and the grid overlay is flat and above the terrain--it will not line up properly.

It can be achieved if the grid is done in 3D. There is one shader technique where you can draw pixels only at the intersection points of polygons. I attempted a small prototype by adding some polygons that intersected with the terrain (they are huge), but the thickness of the 'line' changes too much with slope and distance, so we would still need to figure out a way to improve this (and there are ways). Another way this could be done is by building it into the material on the terrain and use WorldSpace mapping coordinates (basically you can use the x,y value as a texture coordinate). This seems better and I'm leaning more towards it (although the first technique would be useful if we wanted to show a scan effect going across the landscape). Still there is a roadblock in figuring out how to apply this grid material--we don't want to it as part of the terrain material all the time--some of the starmap work is requiring something similar, so I'm hopeful we can learn from that.

If we can make certain our overlay map is placed mathematically correct, then it shouldn't be too hard to display what quadrant you are in. In fact, this could be completely done on the content side if the terrains always align to the same world space point (which I believe is true). In the material for the grid coordinate we just look up the world space coordinate and convert it to a grid coordinate--then we have a texture with each coordinate label in a grid (like a texture atlas), and we shift our mapping coordinates appropriately. Probably not too bad, but I'm simplifying the steps and might be missing something.

Since we are on the topic of screen effects... I've posted a very early prototype of doing one. This is so early, you will see the 3D HUD is still mostly un-textured polygons (it was probably going through a makeover at that point). So please excuse the ugliness there, but I thought it would be cool to show off at least a little proof that this type of thing is possible. The fog effect is a translucent material (with a color of white). There is also a little bit of blurring going on, but the blur control has since been improved, so I know we could achieve an even more realistic effect here. Of course, as discussed, an effect like this is questionable if it really follows the fiction of the suits having screens and cameras. Still, the technique remains the same: visor mesh + shader with access to the screen texture.

http://youtu.be/-TUr4W9vOG4

Could you give the player an option (maybe on the tactical map) to view the map in orthographic or perspective mode? In orthographic you could overlay a 3D grid over the map with no warping.
I personally think the radar/hopefully soon to be mini map, should always be orthographic.

For those who might not know,
"Orthographic projection (or orthogonal projection) is a means of representing a three-dimensional object in two dimensions."

Via http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthographic_projection

Immersion details is just the sprinkles on top of the ice cream not the fudge ribbon.

You realize that if you do that, then you would have the option of projecting the grid onto the HUD so that solders would see the grids as an overlay on the live environment, just as the other blue and red items are overlays. (Might want to make this an optional feature that can be turned on or off.)

Could you give the player an option (maybe on the tactical map) to view the map in orthographic or perspective mode? In orthographic you could overlay a 3D grid over the map with no warping.
I personally think the radar/hopefully soon to be mini map, should always be orthographic.

For those who might not know,
"Orthographic projection (or orthogonal projection) is a means of representing a three-dimensional object in two dimensions."

Via http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthographic_projection

Ello Peanut!

I just wanted to chime in and say great work as of yet! It is pretty much the way I wanted to see you guys to proceed in terms of UI/HUD elements. Also cheers for the YouTube channel and the continued discussion and feedback you give us here in the community!

With that said, regarding a few points you have made considering racial HUDs/transitions and a few immersive UI elements. Could you guys over at the CCP give your points on my thread on UI elements, especially the idea of transitions and the removal of load times in between actions? LINK

Also start up sequences for dropsuits and vehicles would be a cool idea worth exploring. Check out this game for the xbox called Steel battalion and their startups. You might not need the startups to be as flashy as theirs but it would be nice idea for the removal of transitions: LINKWatch all of the ones in the play list to get an idea of the variety of startups that could be possible.

Whether or not you guys check it out I am happy just for the sake of the work your doing, I am interested in seeing more!

Keep up the good work!

I have to agree with IWS on this one. Having watched the video with the intense sun glare (thanks for sending those out; it is great to see that kind of stuff) I can say that it could be a pure detriment to the game if it is that intense. I think back not to games, like IWS did, but to movies. Effects like a slightly shaky image or blood/liquid hitting the camera can add great immersion to a scene in it being chaotic or frantic; it gives you the impression that you are there. However, when any effect is overdone it pushes it away from "Holy s*** this is frantic and intense" to "why the hell did they decide to do that?"