Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
attachment, such as the color of your new hair. Since HUDs cannot be “clicked through,” a center-based
HUD will block much of the mouse's target area and hinder building and interactivity with environmental
objects. It is expected that this HUD will be detached soon after use so the user can see where he or she is
going or can continue what he or she was building. The next most important positions are the bottom right
and bottom left, and these are most often used for tools, weapons, and other things that game and combat
systems utilize. The player should not have to move the line of sight too far from center to ind his or her trig-
ger or spell caster, or the consequences may be too horrible to imagine. Further down in the priority-of-use
list are the drop down menu's remaining positions: top, bottom, top left, and top right. These positions are
often used for HUDs that contain ongoing tools and systems used by the avatar, such as radar, chat language
translators, animation overrides, and such. Positioning and content of the surrounding viewer in a virtual
world game is subjective, and that can have an impact on the design you develop for your HUD. There are
several studies about the importance of positioning in the HUD [1], and much consideration should be given
regarding the possibilities for interaction when a HUD is positioned. Of course, the player/avatar in a virtual
world can always edit the position, and often does, when seeking to make a custom screen interface.
In Second Life and OpenSim, the Firestorm Viewer acts like a gaming HUD by displaying the health meter
on the top bar and many basic orientation and informational tools on the lower bar, at the very bottom edge of
the screen. The buttons for these toolbars can be customized with drag and drop on your screen until you have
a setup customized to your activities. Eventually, as you purchase content and activate the HUDs that come
with it, you will ind that there are too many HUDs on your screen. To remove one, simply right click it and
select Detach in the pie menu; it will be whisked back into your inventory. If you think you have lost a HUD,
it has most likely just attached outside the visible screen menu. Just select one of the other HUDs or attach a
simple cube prim to the center HUD position, right click on that cube, and put it into edit mode. By using the
middle mouse button, you can zoom out and ind HUDs that have been attached outside the ield of view and
return them to your inventory. Simply reverse zoom to put the frame back into the correct screen size when
you are done; the edges of the screen frame will be shown in your viewer as a white box to guide you back.
Sometimes, HUDs are heavily scripted and as such should be used with caution. When you are going to a
large gathering, special event, or a place that has lag problems, it is prudent to remove as many of your HUDs
as you can or, if possible, put them to “sleep” so they will not add lag to the sim with their running scripts.
Furthermore, an avatar that is loaded with HUDs is dificult to teleport across sim lines. It is advised that you
minimize or remove all of your HUDs if you are going to teleport around frequently.
15.2 TYPES OF HUDS
How many types of HUDs are there? Thousands—let's explore some of the most commonly found HUD
types.
Note:
If you would like to do a design survey, signiicant numbers of various HUDs are available on
the Second Life marketplace (https://marketplace.secondlife.com/).
Later in this chapter, you ind a project showing you how to build one of your own: a URL giver HUD that
can be customized for your favorite websites. Let's explore the various types of HUDs, arranged by usage or
function, in the following sections.
15.2.1 a
nimaTion
o
Verrides
Animation overrides can be an individual HUD or a customizable menu built into the bottom bar of the
viewer interface. The Firestorm AO (animation overrider) interface (Figure 15.2) is one such HUD. The
purpose of an animation override is to provide a place for storing and deploying all the avatar animations
that go with the character you are wearing. These animations “override” the basic out-of-the-box animations
