contains a lot of numbers or words. This explains the superiority of the health bar over a
health number or percentage. The artists will like a graphical HUD as well, since a
health bar can look a lot more attractive than a big, ugly number. Though some amount
of fine precision will be lost with a less precise health bar, players are willing to sacrifice
this because the bar is so much easier to read quickly.
A game element that is particularly well designed is the “head” used inDoomand
Quake. This face, which appears at the center of the bottom of the screen, represents
the players’ approximate health completely visually. The face starts out healthy and
snarling, ready to take on the world. As the players progress and they lose health, the
head starts to look bruised and bloodied, eventually looking all but dead when players
have almost run out of health. At any point during the game players are able to glance
down at the head and instantly get a sense of how much health they have remaining. If
the health had been represented instead by a number, it would have been much more
difficult for players to comprehend their current health level just by glancing at it. The
difference in time may be milliseconds, but in a fast-action game, that may be the differ-
ence between life and death.
Of course, the visual representation of data can also have a negative side effect if
that representation is too obtuse for players to easily understand. For instance, in
WarCraft, the buttons for the different actions that a unit can perform are all repre-
sented by icons, which I would generally encourage. However, some of the buttons can
be a little difficult to figure out at first. Fortunately, the game also displays text at the
bottom of the screen when the players’ mouse cursor hovers over a particular button,
communicating what that button will do if clicked. What would have been even better is
if the icons on the buttons were just a bit more obvious. Admittedly, representing a
real-world action such as “guard” through a 32 x 32 icon can be quite a challenge. The
GUI for your game needs to balance the superiority of visual representation with the
clarity of text, possibly using a combination of both as needed.
Audio output as a communication device to players is something that is often
underused in games. Not all of the information about the game-world needs to be com-
municated to players through visual stimuli. For instance, inThe Sims, players gain a
good sense of whether their character is enjoying a particular conversation based on
Chapter 7: The Elements of Gameplay 139
The head at the bottom
of the screen inDoom
is a well-designed
interface element
because it communi-
cates the player’s
current health visually.