I think if there was one aspect of the game that has seen the most revisions it’s the Heads-Up-Display (HUD). This is the part of the screen that gives the player all the information and data they require to base decisions on and understand their status in the game world. Whether that be how much life they have, points, grenades or weapon, these are the details that the player from time to time needs to know in order to best decide what to do next.
When Killbox began, life was simple. You got points for shooting the other player and that was it. One-shot-kills meant no life bars, and an unlimited single pistol available meant that there was nothing else that the player needed to know. Then came health bars, then grenades, then knives, then an entire upgrade system with other weapons, shields and explosives. All this information and managing of upgrades needed to be displayed and cleary understandable on how it can be manipulated. As you can see, the HUD became much more complicated and elaborate to display all this information to the player.
After many revisions and play tests, I realised that there was certain information that is not interesting or needed during the game, while other details were very critical to decision making, but in the chaos of combat, were simply too far away from the players attention to be visible. Having to look over from the middle of the screen, where the player was, all the way to the edge of the screen were vital information was located was, surprisingly, far too time consuming to be of any help when it mattered. All this information also took up a large portion of the playing area.
To rectify this, critical information began migrating to the character itself. The most obvious example was the players ‘health meter’. Each character was given a headband, the length of which indicated how much life they had remaining. This headband also flashed if the player was getting low on health. Visually the headbands also helped to identify different players through the individually coloured strips. Now the player was able to immediately gauge not only how much life their player had, but also the characters around them, and also provided a visual cue when that health was getting low.
Other visual aids now include the grenades stock and a crown to indicate who is winning. The sniper rifle also received a visual cue to help players know when they had reloaded (since reload times with the rifle are much longer) and shields have their own health also indicated in their appearance.
Overall these important details are now easier to find and see, and also free up the HUD area up with less information for simpler navigation. For now I’m happy, although I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few more revisions before the game is finished.
