heads up display in CP 2077

[cyborgironside]

In short, I want to be able to have two presets for my HUD. One for 3rd person and one for first.

Thats basically the same thing I said. I want a different more advanced HUD in 1st person, seeing as my character see the world. Third person should be simple, seeing my character without augmented vision.

To be able to pop in and out and see through my cyborg eyes would add depth to the game, you would feel as though you just entered your characters shoes. And to do this at anytime I choose would give me a great sense of being AUGMENTED.

 

[chriswebb2020.736]

Thats basically the same thing I said. I want a different more advanced HUD in 1st person, seeing as my character see the world. Third person should be simple, seeing my character without augmented vision.

To be able to pop in and out and see through my cyborg eyes would add depth to the game, you would feel as though you just entered your characters shoes. And to do this at anytime I choose would give me a great sense of being AUGMENTED.

TBF, you said a HUD should only be available in 1st person, not 3rd.

I think some elements should be first person only, like IR and thermal vision.

 

[PafetkBazerka]

Modular HUD dependable on skill sets and cyberware. Some personal preference is Ok but I think the HUD style should also be more influenced by the quality/expense and branding of your cyberware as well.

Also any info that cant be put directly to your cyber eye or brain should be on a piece of paper/notepad/tablet or inventory list you need to hotkey too.
Give some incentive to get those jelly balls sucked outa ya skull.

 

[cmdr_silverbolt]

Jah, and I'd like to add: maybe a way to upload your HUD settings for others to dl and use. How do you like that?

 

[thewarsend]

TBF, you said a HUD should only be available in 1st person, not 3rd.

I think some elements should be first person only, like IR and thermal vision.

I think HUD elements should depend on the players view. But i would hate it if we got some heavy restrictions between 1st and 3rd person. It just doesn't seem fair.

 

[Garrison72]

While I'm down with the modular HUD idea, I'm not a fan of having to pay more for a better HUD. I think any HUD we get should be well done. I'm not sure how many different HUDs CDPR is willing to design either, so if we just get one good one I'll be happy with that.

 

[thewarsend]

While I'm down with the modular HUD idea, I'm not a fan of having to pay more for a better HUD. I think any HUD we get should be well done. I'm not sure how many different HUDs CDPR is willing to design either, so if we just get one good one I'll be happy with that.

Think of it as your in game progress. You don't imagine a rich corp guy and a regular bandit would use same HUD implants or glasses, do you? There has to have better, more popular and more expensive versions so it can reflect on the players progress as well as the power of money.

It is true that it would be more than enough if they provided us with a modular HUD. But i think they can easily put a company logo on one side, change color of the HUD and call it with a different name. (Stats and the capabilities of the device would also change)

 

[garyjones]

HUD should be gained by getting some kind of eye implant or wearing glasses, helmets etc. (Both should have their upsides and downsides. And having both should give you some sort of bonus) So you start the game without any HUD. Then in the beginning of the game you get your HUD glasses.

Like this one:

Some HUD glasses and implants can give you more detailed information about whats happening in your body (Like "A" model HUD glasses can give you information about your health and maybe your ammo, but "B" model is the better model, so it will give you information about weapons condition, information about enemies health etc.

And the implant should be able to do much more than that. It should show everything glasses capable of and should show you, where you are hurt, it should show you a minimap, while a high level implant can give you information about where the enemies are attacking from. (Like in Fallout 3 HUD) But the real diagnostic monitor should be something like a touchpad and both the implant and the glasses should be connected to that.

This system would work well enough in First Person mode, but i'm not sure how well it would look/work in Third Person.

please excuse the poor quality of this mock up, but I thought visual aids would be better than mere descriptions. A picture says a thousand words after all.

You see here a view of Night City, through the eyes of our protaganist. Without any hardware, he would see nothing of the HUD overlay. However, our friend has invested in some Russian 'Cyber Eyes' on the black market. He has yet to get either a skill chip for Russian Language or get a firmware update for English. He does, however, have a targeting reticule, Smartlink, Nav-Comp and personal organiser installed. He also has a Bio-Monitor linked and his armour has been upgraded with a new integrity detector.

As we can see, his vitals are good, his armour is pristine, (for now,) and he has a full 15 rounds in his weapon, with 7 mags spare. To top it all off, he has 2 messeges and he is recieving a call from a withheld number.

Opinions?

Right. I've had a wee play around this evening and come up with a slightly better 'Arasaka' based HUD concept for you guys to muse over.

Health bar - The Heart and Dragon are the health bar. They slowly turn green, then yellow and on to red as health drops. once beow a set percentage, (chosen by the player,) they will begin to flash. Our frind is currently in perfet health.

Armour Guage - Each segment of the stylised suit of armour on the right turns green, then yellow and on to red as your armour takes damage. Eventualy, the segment will turn black when all protection is lost. This only works if your armour contains electro reactive mesh, making it compatable with armour diagnostic software. As you can see, one of our friends arms has sustained damage.

Ammo Counter - The counter next to the stylised handgun counts how many magazines of the current type are being carried, as well as individual rounds left in the loaded magazine. The weapon is currently holstered. This is why the targeting reticule is not present, but the interaction reticule is.

Minimap - It is currently minimised, in the top left corner.

Contact List - Our friend here was going to call his fixer, "Twister"; probably to see if he had sent him the junk mail cluttering his inbox. However, before he had a chance, a mystery caller, (using a withheld number,) has called him and he is currently deciding whether to answer or not.

Aside from that, the Arasaka Logo is in the bottom-middle of the display.

What alterations would you guys make to this? (Please bear in mind the idea we are currently working on is that the HUD would be modular, as different hardware upgrades provide different styles of readouts and differeent options.)

One more for our cause! NIHAHHAHAHAHHA!!

*Clears Throat*

So.. Anyway

ChrisWebb made some awesome points about this, you should be able to fully customize your hud to make it fit your needs. (You can adjust it for your class, skill set or just to your personal preferences)

I think it would be nice, if HUD had a basic firmware and software (app) system, where you can install (and uninstall) things to your HUD. So you could go and install tiny legal upgrades that doesn't really work all that better. Or you could go and buy illegal HUD firmware and software upgrades to enhance your HUD system in order to make it work whole a lot better!...

This would be a great way to implement HUD elements in CP 2077. Imagine if your HUD is susceptible to being hacked, that would make for some interesting combat scenarios.

So, I really like the ideas which developed in this thread, and I am going to summarize them here:

- modular, customizable HUD
- hardware and software components, download or install components of HUD onto your favorite hardware.
- HUD components can be bought or sold
- illegal software availability, e.g. HUD which helps you find caches to loot.
- software available is specific to role or skill, e.g. "find the mark" for Solos.
- it's possible to completely remove HUD, both hardware and software, i.e. ability to toggle what you can or can't see, or play with zero HUD.

Also, HUD can either be an eye implant or glasses. (Eye implant mostly being the better option, but it has its down sides as well.) Many companies produce and sell these implants/glasses and each of them give different bonuses. For instance, Arasaka makes and sells HUD glasses, they mostly sell their products to military. But a civilian can buy a "toned down" version of the glasses. Which can be corrected by illegal software, which makes it even better than the military version. Kiroshi produces eye implants, it is a lot more expensive, but it is worth it. Since it can be modified to work with other implants. (Which can give extra bonuses to accuracy, perception and reflexes) And both glasses and the implants are connected to players in-game datapad. Also, HUD language can change depending on manufacturer, for instance, a hud bought from the Russian arms, will be Russian in language. You can change the language by updating the firmware or getting Russian language chip.

I'm certainly forgetting something... Oh well..

I have just started reading all these, but it seem like a great idea. I love it. Great job guys. Also, wouldn't it be nice if the HUD had distinctive versions for cop, corp, military and others? (Depending on your profession.)

 

[username_3688833]

Well, I honestly think that if you don't have Cyber, and don't have at least Smartshades (sunglasses with cyberoptic options), then you shouldn't have an HUD at all... the way you know you have suffered damage is that your arm hangs limply to your side, or you walk with a limp, o you are hunched over trying to hold your intestines in your body...

In the pen and paper game, every time a wound is received a hit location is rolled. You take wounds in specific parts of the body. And those wounds have effects... the worse the wound, the more detrimental the effect. That is how you immerse someone in the game.

This!

 

[username_3688833]

I have just started reading all these, but it seem like a great idea. I love it. Great job guys. Also, wouldn't it be nice if the HUD had distinctive versions for cop, corp, military and others? (Depending on your profession.)

All this, but please with an option for less cluttered HUD designs. Last thing anyone needs is "Incoming Call" laminated over their FOV while in a firefight...

Definitely a fan of multiple components to be added, but also of overall themepacks, so that things like Icon sizes and appearances, fonts, and sounds can be at least partially managed. Think of the modules as expressions of the game's base information, whereas themes would be ways of representing/managing them. This is a modular future after all. The illusion of customization is king. Take Myspace for example (take Myspace, please! *rimshot*), you still get the terrible information, but you can have it with glitter if you want. In fact, now I'm giving serious thought to running an overly-optimistic, unflappably happy glitterpunk through the game if it's available.

Ooooh... which leads me to a quick rant on the dark side of AR, as opposed to the purely functional. There was a wonderful Terry Pratchett short story set in an AR-heavy future, in which he mentions, offhand, that some racists simply have software to edit everybody white. I still have minor aneurisms over the complex ethical vs. actual benefits argument in my poor meatbrain. But that does give rise to the potential to play the game in Big Head mode without breaking the reality

Me, I hope they don't go for loot detectors, as without a sound scientific backing, it'd be problematic to justify. Certainly motion detectors, enhanced audio and echolocation ware coupled with high-grade military-coded processors could result in direction arrows for threats, perhaps even identifying enemy guns and guessing their ammo-load based on rounds fired. But, like all good sci-fi geeks, we have to avoid the Star Wars trap, and show our working out, as opposed to using the justification of "Because space magic"...

 

[Sioclya]

Since we've been talking about the idea of an in-game HUD a lot...

The idea of not having a conventional HUD at all has been flung around. I like it, but some things need to be done to make it a viable option against using a HUD (maybe some players just don't like using a HUD at all?).

No crosshairs, making iron sights a must (exception for third person mode: crosshairs available, but static like in Fallout 3, only when aiming and only providing a middle point to aim with).

No ammo indicators. Now, it would be nice if we got a key to look at the magazine contents, a key to look at how many grenades/gadgety gadget stuff we have (as in holding the key makes you look that way in first person). In third person, a similar system could be devised, but I think that in this case, the "grenade look button" is not required, while the button for looking at the remaining ammo would probably cut to first person for the animation time.

No minimap. I'm fine with this, in most games I'm barely using the minimap anyway. But... how about at least giving us two things: a compass, and a map of the wider area of NC, not necessarily with our location on it.

No enemy markers (if enemy spotting is to be involved). This we can live with.

No health display. Now, I don't like red goo, just like most other people. I suggest two things: a watch-type thing for first person with a button to look at it, that constantly displays med information about your character, like where he/she is hurt, how much more bullets to what extremity he/she can take... et cetera. For third person, a little indicator light on the character that goes from green via yellow to red as the health depletes. This is obviously bound to having the appropriate implant, otherwise the watch thingy just gives you a little light that goes from green via yellow to red like in third person, as well as the time.

Also, the general style of the menus might as well steal a few ideas from Dead Space. Instead of having the menus conventionally built, have them projected inside the game world, or on-screen inside the game instead of on a special menu screen.

I have no idea how this could work with a controller, so those guys are probably going to like using mouse and keyboard (PS4) or are just going to have to live with using some kind of "normal" HUD.

 

[username_3688833]

I would very much rather not anything that meta-gamey....

However, enemies that not only react physically to damage, that would be awesome... not only would they limp, or hold their arm.... but they would grunt, cry, scream, etc....

Oh my yes! If a game, for once, actually had gunshot victims act like gunshot victims! Sure, the odd, near-fatal round can be shrugged off due to shock/adrenaline (Like a youg ganger I saw on the news years ago, got shot in the liver at close range with a small calibre pistol, but thought he'd just been punched. Only went to the hospital hours later, when he took off his jacket and saw blood...), but an armalite round through a meat-elbow is a showstopper for anyone not chipped with serious pain resistance.

As for enemy health, that's a bit much. Do your scifi geek homework and come up with even a tenuous justification for that ability and get back to me

 

[username_3688833]

Ahh..where were EMP grenades? I want to say Chrome 1. LET ME CHECK FOR YOU.
Chrome 1. Page 47. Same page as the hilarious Saucer Grenades.

Internal cyber offline 4 minutes, limbs 10 minutes, MRAM fried. L-5 ( Orbital) tech unaffected. I.e. they hardened it. 10 m radius.

Mock not saucer grenades! I got to read chrome 1 over someones shoulder in a shop once (he wen't on to buy it, it was their last copy ), and that was the one thing I stole from it. That then led to many drunken discussions resulting in many, many odd grenade designs, some of which exist in the now (distance-to-target triggered, launcher style grenades) and half of which I'd swear were stolen and blown out of proportion for Borderlands 2 (We had a sort of Bouncing Betty for taking down cybers, basically a tungsten-dart nailbomb that had a remote-triggered ability to launch off flat surfaces to a meter off the ground before detonating with a shaped charge, sending AP death out horizontally...

 

[username_3688833]

No health display. Now, I don't like red goo, just like most other people. I suggest two things: a watch-type thing for first person with a button to look at it, that constantly displays med information about your character, like where he/she is hurt, how much more bullets to what extremity he/she can take... et cetera. For third person, a little indicator light on the character that goes from green via yellow to red as the health depletes. This is obviously bound to having the appropriate implant, otherwise the watch thingy just gives you a little light that goes from green via yellow to red like in third person, as well as the time.

I think you're mistaking CP for a game where you have a number of bullets you can take before dying. Unless they're polymer one shots, or you're a massive meat tank with MBL out yer arse and a skinweave on top, or Metalgeared up, or cybered up to the degree of my namesake (Though .5 humanity makes conversations... difficult...), then I can give you a quick answer to how many bullets you can take before you bleed out in an alley. Probably one. One round in the head with an average roll for damage from a medium handgun gives someone with Body 5 a 50/50 chance of death.

Welcome to the streets of NC, choombatta...

 

[username_3688833]

Sorry to spam the thread, but just had a little notion to run by you all, but in game character voice could be useful for certain skills mayhaps? The only thought I had along those lines was simply having your Solo, with half-decent Combat sense muttering that the alley you're entering, with all the dumpsters and fire escapes looks like a playground for ambushers, or anyone with appropriate streetsmarts opining on the attributes of the neighborhood (lotta people get jumped around here...)

Just a thought. A lot of skills would otherwise only come up as speech checks or combat rolls, it'd be nice to have a mechanic in place, other than purely visual ones, to give some of them a more engaging use...

 

[Sardukhar]

Death. You know you can hit the Edit button at the bottom of your posts? Makes it a bit neater to read.

Your interactive voice idea is a good one and dovetails nicely with my minimal-HUD preferences and suggestions for audio cues and focussed vision.

Trick is to record at least a half-dozen warnings for each flag so players don't go nuts on hearing the same warning all the time.

 

[Sioclya]

I think you're mistaking CP for a game where you have a number of bullets you can take before dying. Unless they're polymer one shots, or you're a massive meat tank with MBL out yer arse and a skinweave on top, or Metalgeared up, or cybered up to the degree of my namesake (Though .5 humanity makes conversations... difficult...), then I can give you a quick answer to how many bullets you can take before you bleed out in an alley. Probably one. One round in the head with an average roll for damage from a medium handgun gives someone with Body 5 a 50/50 chance of death.

Welcome to the streets of NC, choombatta...

I'm not, be assured. I just don't think that CDPR can implement a system that has correctly splintering bones, among other things. So my best guess is that it would be a system where health is measured either on a per extremity or on the basis of hits to respective skeletal bones (meaning the animation skeleton, by the way, not an actual human skeleton).

Anyway, the watch displays med info if the player has the correct implant for it. Blood pressure, heart beat, blood composition (which enzymes are most active at time of measuring, how many of which toxins are in the blood - as in, how much lead is in your blood and how much more you can probably take based on the watch's calculations... which might be wrong, especially if it was a cheap buy on the black market).

 

[username_3688833]

Death. You know you can hit the Edit button at the bottom of your posts? Makes it a bit neater to read.

Then how will I ever catch up to your post count?

Yeah, it would require a lot more voice-acting time for enough cues to minimize annoyance value. My girlfriend still occasionally leans over to me while I'm playing Torchlight 2 to tell me "Your pet has departed."

 

[username_3688833]

I'm not, be assured. I just don't think that CDPR can implement a system that has correctly splintering bones, among other things. So my best guess is that it would be a system where health is measured either on a per extremity or on the basis of hits to respective skeletal bones (meaning the animation skeleton, by the way, not an actual human skeleton).

Anyway, the watch displays med info if the player has the correct implant for it. Blood pressure, heart beat, blood composition (which enzymes are most active at time of measuring, how many of which toxins are in the blood - as in, how much lead is in your blood and how much more you can probably take based on the watch's calculations... which might be wrong, especially if it was a cheap buy on the black market).

Well, I am a fan of unhelpful technology...

 

[dragonbird]

Then how will I ever catch up to your post count?

You won't. He'll always be one step ahead of you.

Yeah, it would require a lot more voice-acting time for enough cues to minimize annoyance value. My girlfriend still occasionally leans over to me while I'm playing Torchlight 2 to tell me "Your pet has departed."

Well, if they implement that multiple-language feature that they were talking about a few months ago, they can say "Your pet has departed" in half a dozen different languages, which will give some variation. And relying on tone of voice rather than being able to understand the words would add an extra dimension to it.

I do like this idea.