I remember when I was in college for game development. At the time Mirrors Edge was in development. My instructor for UI made us study it as the perfect example of a good UI. The dot wasn’t so much a reticle as an anti nausea measure.
This was also a time where UI layers were occasionally just made in Adobe Flash (I think it was just after Adobe bought out Macromedia) so having a UI with crazy out of theme colours and issues syncing with the rest of the game was a real problem.
Designers felt the UI layers were often clunky, mechanical and in the way damaging the immersive experiences that had been becoming increasingly more “life like”. It also saves a lot of localization cost.
I didn’t end up in that industry but it seems like this became the norm for quite a while. Though I am starting to see better accessibility in game UI’s games depending less on audio or visual only feedback. Which is good as we are all getting older.
This was also a time where UI layers were occasionally just made in Adobe Flash (I think it was just after Adobe bought out Macromedia) so having a UI with crazy out of theme colours and issues syncing with the rest of the game was a real problem.
This was the reason early Skyrim mods rarely had custom UI*. Skyrim’s user interface is done in Flash and making even minor changes is a huge pain in the ass.
I believe Skywind and Skyblivion both ran into problems implementing features from the old games due to this. Skywind actually had to scrap an entire feature set (their original implementation of enchanting, IIRC?) very late in development because the feature’s developer left long ago and didn’t share their Flash project files, meaning the team couldn’t change it to work with later mod builds.
* I think there are modder-created UI libraries to make it easier now, but it was a huge problem back in the day.
Skyrim’s user interface is done in Flash
Still true for starfield, mind you.
Ugh, of course it is. What’s one more outdated component in an engine that’s just a quarter century of hacks duct-taped together? I wouldn’t be surprised if Bethesda are still battling technical debt from its NetImmerse/Gamebryo days.
Fallout 4 does have a bug that I first encountered in Morrowind.
I don’t get it. 2008 was the time where most games had a puss filter and i don’t think bloated ui has ever been a plus.
Real YMMV situation.
Some UIs added a lot of flavor and atmosphere. Others got in the way of the action or garbled the display in a way that felt distracting.
WoW famously had an interface that could easily consume most of the screen during raids. Elder Scrolls IV: PC port’s interface was notoriously text heavy.
I think the hud is a lost art, most games needlessly add icons and healthbars when alot of that info could be displayed in universe. For example the halo assault rifle has a ammo indicator on the weapon, or DeadSpace’s famous suit (RIG) with the healthbar integrated on the characters back. There will always need to be some info shown to the player especially in a RPG or Survival game but regardless of how stylized it is doesnt make it good. I think the right looks better, it just looks worse when theres not an expansive world to explore behind the hud. I just want to see the world the devs built and the mechanics the game has to offer.
Hud elements should always be easily moddable editable or toggleable.
Deadspace one is a work of art, health and ammo display is an in-universe thing instead of a hud for the player.
Even the menu for the map and inventory was physically projected in front of Isaac, as well as all button prompts and tooltips. No HUD whatsoever. Deadspace is a masterclass of diegetic UI
On that note, I did get a good laugh from the addition of the ammo counter on the Needler.
AI
This is what my brain feels like when i havent reloaded after killing an enemy.
If I ever got into an actual war, I would struggle to unlearn that habit.
Because in games, it’s practically automatic to duck into cover and reload every time you shoot an enemy or two.
The only thing worse than the anxiety of not having a full mag is the horror of having someone swing you mid-reload
It’s perfect, assuming there are a similar number of audio cues too.
That’s from reusing the Halo Infinite needler model, though why that one had the ammo counter is beyond me.
I wonder if there’s somewhere in the design department they did that because they don’t want to model the actual neddles disappearing at first, and then everyone hated it so they had to model them later but the ammo counter stayed.
I hate when they remove hud elements and do fuck all else to convey relevant info about shit you can’t see. Like they remove the hud elements that tell you what direction you’re being attacked from while also having the absolute worst fucking sound design ever so absolutely none of your senses work.
Really it should be Epic Steampunk Adventure Remastered Edition*
*
*We unlisted the original game from every platform and every shill YouTuber will do the marketing for us of convincing people this is definitely the superior product.
Generally I find it’s the opposite?
The start of the franchise is a minimalist work of art. The 5th entry is a bloated completionist campaign with a million ways to burn time and zero ways to enjoy doing so
Mirror’s Edge (2008) looks like the one on the right, and is an absolute work of art IMO. The sequel sucks tho
Man I feel like mirrors edge was a cult classic, my firat game on ps3 and one of my favorites. It was such a different game and the art and music were amazing.
Mirror’s Edge is not steampunk. It was futuristic with strong primary colors, and the aesthetic was consistent throughout the entire game including the HUD and menus. That’s why it looks like the image on the right.
doesn’t have to be steampunk, the meme was playing on the fact that games used to have really over-the-top HUDs back in the 2000s
get wooshed
Wooshed? It’s pretty obvious that the image on the right is not only minimalist, it’s also “modern” with the sans-serif font. You assume you could do a minimalist steampunk HUD.
On the flipside a game with a well made HUD nowadays immediately grabs my attention. As soon s I saw the blue butterfly select indicator in the Lies of P demo I knew these people were cooking.
On a side note this also convinced me to play Eternal Strands another game I love dearly.
No wait I like this. Kinda. Less UI in games please!
Nearly every game I’ve worked on since the mid 2000s has started with someone saying “this time it’ll be hudless” We do a bunch of work on some kind of HUD replacement, and then testers and focus groups come back with “I couldn’t figure out where to go,” “I couldn’t see the enemies,” “it’s very confusing.”
You need to do the art very differently to make a modern game readable without UI. To a lot of art directors and focus groups, UI is less immersion breaking than the art changes that readability without it requires. Not saying it’s impossible. Just requires a mind shift that AAA appears unwilling to take.
The only game I’ve played that really managed to pull of HUD-less was Dead Space. They really thought through the game design and interactions, it’s just a masterfully crafted game. I believe Dead Space 2 is almost entirely in a single continuous camera shot as well, kinda bonkers.
No ambitions for a hudless, waypoint-less gameplay system survive playtesting. There’s friction and then there’s watching someone do the same loop around for 30 minutes. I once watched a streamer play a game I worked on. The level artists had meticulously and organically sign posted where to go - like pulled out all the stops with lighting and directionality of the environment. Stopping just short of putting any yellow paint anywhere. The streamer still fucked it up.
Why would you watch DSP?!?
(Sorry, couldn’t resist)
Dyson Sphere Program?
darksydephil
He… is not very good at games. Or being entertaining.
The only game I can even think of that’s hudless is Astroneer and it took me like 30 hours to notice. Can’t imagine how hard that is to do well
Yeah … can UI be overdone? Sure. But in most cases, I still want a HUD-type UI, at least a little bit.
The best games out there give the player granular options to enable or disable specific UI elements, so you can have as much or as little UI as you want, and if some particular element is annoying you, you can disable it.
I love it. I mod out my UIs to be as minimal as possible. Especially games like Skyrim. No map, press button to pull up compass. No numbers or letters on screen. A small health, mana, or stam bar comes up only when not full.
My thoughts too. I often try to remove some/most of the UI if the game allows it just for realism and so that I have less distractions
It’s fine so long as they don’t just move it into some pause menu I’m then forced in and out of constantly to get information.
Also, we dulled the color palette.
Be happy it’s not Holywood style TEAL AND ORANGE EVERYWHEREEEEE!!!
I like the mini debate here about UI. I think less UI is winning, and for good reason in FPS games where visual real estate matters more than status info. I kind of feel we’ve gone too far in 3rd person ARPGs, though-- specially in removing minimaps and to a lesser extent quest log stuff for games with side quests and collectables.
At the end of the day, how important is that visual real estate? MMOs and RTS, yeah, not important. FPS and some other 3D games? Important. But there’s definitely a middle ground I want explored more for ARPGs and any other game with info that goes beyond ammo counts and health.
I’m fine with less info in RPGs as well as ARPGs. In particular I’m kinda happy if there’s no minimap to constantly be glancing at and even moreso if there are no quest markers. Put me in the world and make me learn it! Usually there’s still the big map for when you’re lost.
There’s definitely a balance to it. I don’t need 25 different meters and markers and quests and reminders, but I’m also one that does like just having the “go here arrow” because I can’t game nearly as much as I want to and remembering all the minor details can be hard
Kinda depends on if there’s visual cues and how linear things are, too, I suppose. No minimaps and terrible visual cues as to where to go make for an annoying experience, but use of lighting and stuff can do just fine otherwise.
Though I’m a bit of a completionist so missing any little thing bugs me, haha. But that’s a personal taste.
One thing ubisoft does right is the hud options. Can go from crazy everything to minimal/ nothing and all between.
I like what they do with Monster Hunter Wilds UI but ohh boy, it’s one hell of an uncharismatic UI.
And THANK FUCK for that, if you can have a minimal UI and still make the game ergonomically playable, then I love you and shall worship you till the death of the universe.
I remember people were literally praising Elden ring for it’s minimal UI while clowning on other companies with memes like “If Elden ring was made by Ubisoft”
And then, there is Control
Also, we dulled the color palette.
Not sure about that one. 2008 was firmly inside the “make everything brown for realism” era of videogames.
You know, you’re right. We sort of went from dull brown to dull gray since then - at least for first person shooters.
Mayber “darker” is a more apt criticism than duller.
I would say it went from maybe moody (this might not be the right term, but something like it) and more manufactured, to now being more realistic. Better technology has allowed games to have lighting that gets very close to reality, especially with ray-tracing. It sometimes comes with the cost of creative control though.
I wouldn’t say either is bad. They can both be amazing or shit depending on how they’re used. It’s easy to pick the best or worst offenders from either to make whichever one you want to look good though.
They all just went LOOK AT ME, I’M DOING HDR!!! while a fuck of a lot of systems can’t
It works for Demon’s souls because it’s a dark fantasy game and the new graphics absolutely nail that vibe.
Yes, but also…
You would find more colour in the mud at Passchendale.
laughs in quake
Wait, it’s just brown?
Always has been
I still dislike the piss filter
The main consistent difference I’m seeing here is contrast. The more modern versions have darker darks and brighter brights, with less midrange.
I miss the midrange in games. I’m tired of half my screen being streaking white or pitch black. Give me the midrange curves again!
Some games let you change this in settings. Adjusting screen settings can also help.
I just turn off HDR, unless it’s winter and I want to save on my gas bill
The brown thing is a myth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTjGDkDI49I
Not really. Mid-2000s was the exact time when mainstream gamemakers discovered shaders, but the power of those was only enough for a rough filter thrown over everything. So, armed with the solution, developers looked for the problem that it would solve, and decided that making games look grittier is just what’s needed. ‘Need for Speed: Most Wanted’ from 2005 was a major offender in this.
That was very much a repetition of the Great Browning of mid-late nineties, when textures got detailed enough that devs likewise sought to apply them as much as they could, and did that by using textures of dirty brown ground, scratched brown stone, and nicely looking brown wood. Particularly in FPS games like Quake 1—3. Can’t really showcase the textures with smooth-looking walls in bright colors, and few people were gonna make dozens of assorted textures for a variety of environments.
Interesting video, but I disagree that it proves that the “brown thing is a myth”. I was around back then and it was definitely a thing that was also being heavily criticized.
The thing is that with the methodology that guy employs, I guess it wouldn’t really be visible. The “brown game” aesthetic, while definitely a trend, wasn’t the only trend during that time. At the same time, you had the explosion of colorful Nintendo casual games on platforms like the Wii and DS. Many of those sold extremely well, so they’d be overrepresented when you only take the top 20 bestselling games of each year. Same with sports games, those never really change much, but they’ll show up heavily on every top 20. But with games that wanted to seem more “mature” and especially genres like first-person shooters (like in the meme), the trend was very real.
Too bad for you.
It’s also an echo chamber if you only consider the games you played are the only valid options.
Best selling is best selling and represents the general consensus. Whether you like it or not.
If you only consider a platform or a genre, you are narrowing the scope. Which is not the point of an industry average.You think ignoring what games were actually on the market in favour of only the best selling games is the right way to make a conclusion about the general quality of all games on the market?
It’s also an echo chamber if you only consider the games you played are the only valid options.
I mean, you couldn’t be more wrong lol. I played the colorful Nintendo games back then and mostly hated on all the brown PS/XBox stuff (unfairly, there were some gems among those).
If you only consider a platform or a genre, you are narrowing the scope. Which is not the point of an industry average.
Using just the top 20 narrows it too. But my point is more that an taking an average doesn’t prove whether a trend existed or not. And somehow I don’t think that the creator of the meme was thinking of Nintendogs and Wii Sports.
you had a flattening of video game color for sure, wether it was the brown mill sims like COD, the green of fallout 3, or the yellow of deus ex human revolution. and few very influential games ‘color’ our memories.
at the same time you have your oblivion surreal super contrast color explosion. compared to nows muted rerelease. before, the mono coloring was a stylistic choice, and now it’s a tapping into the game engines realism settings
This should tell you there is a flaw somewhere.
Maybe the perception of brownness comes from things that aren’t supposed to be brown; nobody looks at a basketball court or a sun-bathed road and says “This is abnormally brown”. If Gears of War, CoD, FO3, Doom 3, GTA4 aren’t coming up, you haven’t calculated the thing they’re talking about.
