INTERFACE GFX in GAME - QUESTION!

#1

hey there! does anyone know if the interface (the garphics where you can see which weapon you have at the moment, how much ammo you’ve left, life, etc.etc) in a FPS game can be really advanced? by that i mean, can the graphics be KICKASS looking, without slowing down the gameplay? is this part of the graphic sort of an “overlay” and has nothing to do with the actual 3d-engine thingy in the game? hope you understand my question…and if not, let’s say person 1 made ten thin lines, each line represents ONE bullet, and person 2 makes ten really kickass looking images of shotgunshells (which contains more gfx than just ten thin black lines) to be at the right corner of your screen…will person 2 have problems with his boss complaining he made it to intense and that he need to redo it with more simple gfx?

URGENT NEED FOR HELP!!! THANKS / Tobey

#2

they are always an overlay on top of engine ‘layer’, and are invariably bitmap graphics, and as such are static…the only time they change is just a shift triggered based on whatever code pattern you are using (most likely MVC for an interface of a game). Of course, the more you have happening (for example a map of the area) the more CPU ticks you are using that would have otherwise been used by the engine, and so you will suffer performance (a good example of this is in the Halflife mod Day of Defeat they included a fairly simple overview map that showed the position of your team mates and also allowed you to set waypoints for other peoples reference…this tends to take about 10fps from the game when i have it on)

#3

thanks poe!! so, basically what you’re saying is that static gfx won’t hurt the CPU? only when I have things happening inside the interface? or am I way out in the woods? :wink:

#4

you seem to be defining “kick ass” as detailed images rather than simple lines, these are both still controlled by bitmaps and to be honest they wont impact too much, if you were thinking of doing the HUD in 3d then don’t. its pointless, and it can be achieved in 2d.

#5

I can’t see where I wrote that I’d do the interface in 3d? I’m very aware of the possibility to create the art using photoshop for instance, which would be the app I’d choose after 11 years of using it! Ok, so, back to the topic my friends, well, thanks for the replies, now I understand that I can be creative when designing interfaces for the game industry :wink:

Cheers / T

#6

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.