Major Project - HUD

For the HUD, I experimented with a few different styles. As a rhythm-based top down shooter, I needed something that would display the notes of the song that the player has to follow along to, and made that the central point of the HUD. Unlike the other displays, I wanted this one to be as unobtrusive as possible.

I eventually settled on the below design, due to it occupying the least space, all the while being clear and concise.

Upon bringing this over to Unreal, I then gave it animations to help indicate to the player when they are meant to hit the beat, aligning with the centre at that very point.

Then, to have the HUD work successfully, I have the Top Down Player Class call for it within its interface. This is everything it wants to add a beat, something that comes from the level sequencer, which is in charge of dispersing the beat.

After this, when the player makes an input classed as a beat, it checks which animation to play; the successful one, or the failed one.

Within this HUD is also the games timer, that sets the clock on screen to match the Delta Seconds of the level through an event tick, ensuring it is continually updating.

When making an updated palette from the Style Guide, I made some slight changes to the interface, most notably that it now matches the colour scheming of the rest of the game; with blue changed to green, and pink changed to orange.

And, once I made artwork for the other characters of this game, I then made it so the HUD face changes dependant on your active character. This is through a simple event tick, determining who should be the face in linkage to the player's character ID.

The result can be seen below.