When I got onboard this project, it has already been moving along for about a year. Let's just say the hud and Front end needed a lot of love. We basically redesigned everything from scratch visually. We only kept certain elements due to programming and feisibility.
This is the final look that we used for the game. The major changes along the way were the metal bars. We started off with something that was almost identical to this, changed it several time, and came right back to it.
At one point we had an AD change so things had to be revisited.
More grungy was the way to go. But this clashed with the rest of the style of the game,
so we came back to the original brushed metal textures later on.
More grungy was the way to go. But this clashed with the rest of the style of the game,
so we came back to the original brushed metal textures later on.
ANIMATIC
Once I had the look down (besides the metal bars, we knew we would tweak those), I really needed to animate everything to sell it to the team. Besides some visual upgrades and an actual 3D scenes for customizing, the end result is very close to this video.
CUSTOMIZATION
Going in this section brings the player in a 3D environment. In these cases we would drop the metal bars to have it feel more roomy and be more of a showroom kind of place.
HUD
This is pretty much what is in the game right now. We tried the best we could to limit the amount of information and "Late Features" popping in the hud. At the end, it got pretty messy and crowded... can't win them all :-)
HUD ANIMATIC
We did several hud animatics to show component interactions and mechanics. This is the one we wanted the most : very subtle and discreet. Items would fade in depending on usage, and a hot button would have the whole hud pop in. Also, the hud would be camera independant, so it could react to whatever action was going on. Helas, tech and continually adding all sorts of last minute hud items kept this from happening.
HUD - FIRST STEPS
The first hud mockups were closely based to what the AD had come up with and animated. We didn't stick too long with it though because the color scheme was way too sci-fi and everything was huge onscreen. Also, there were still a lot of things to figure out on the game design side, so components would change alot, or totally disappear.
ALTERNATE DESIGNS
These were part of the research that lead to what's in the game now. Pretty much the same theme with different layouts and effects.
ICONS
These had to be simple, easy to read at small sizes and have that military-ish flavor to them.
CANNED CONTENT
A lot of content-heavy screens full of stats and options were finally cut due to budget concerns. These were ready to go design-wise.
