Submitted my survey. A couple of personal points, mostly to jot my thoughts down. For perspective, I've chosen Vanilla with an open mind to change, but not seeing the change I imagined from any of these options.
- Though subjective, I greatly prefer NES style bars to the alternatives shown. I have in the past (circa-v8b classes) used HUDShot, but since we adopted health numbers officially I haven't returned and prefer the simplicity and versatility of the current bars' looks. I'm willing to (reluctantly) play softball with the Genesis style bars, but would still greatly prefer not to use them. I think Health/Ammo numbers have reduced the number of situations where the black separations in the bar actually hide information (e.g. when you have one more Screw Crusher but you think you're empty). I understand the point mentioned in Genesis "Goals" but have more recently only come into contact with that during single player campaign bosses, where they live with a sliver of health. Even then, we custom bars for the final boss so something like Genesis would actually be fitting there. In every other situation I can, if need be, use the numbers.
- The MM8 style bars are very ugly in my opinion - the 8 bit style of this game does not suit them well and even in other huds like HUDBall I'd prefer anything else.
- Who is this bar change for anyways? The NES bars hit the nostalgia and coolness factor of "oh man that's cool, they got the health bars straight from the games in here?" and health/ammo numbers already fix the problems that the other bars will fix as well. You could argue that the health and ammo numbers are kinda tacked on, and yeah they are. I'm not gonna deny that at all. But it's not like the other bars fix that either - there will always be more precision in the numbers, and more novelty from the NES bars. Will the casual player (numbers don't matter so much) get that much more value from the other bars? And will the seasoned player (numbers matter more) ever want to turn numbers off?
- I use Vertical, and have always found discomfort with Horizontal bars. No matter which direction they deplete, it doesn't quite feel right. I respect people who do use them, and have never advocated for things to change to fit my standards (which I wouldn't have really), but they've never sat right. As a result, I really do just sorta need an option to have my bars to deplete from the top and end at the bottom.
- I think closer to my crosshair, as my eye travels away from my crosshair, what needs to hit me first in terms of "can I continue this fight I'm in?" is my health. Ammo is important as well, but I trust my periphery with weapon ammo % more than I would health, where each point can matter against certain weapons.
- I need some selling on the gap between bars present in compromise. I don't understand what use it serves, and it just clutters more of the screen.
- Anarchy looks clumsy aesthetically. The squared white boxes around everything don't do it for me, and a newcomer is going to have very little idea what any of the numbers on screen mean. Health/Ammo numbers are now mandatory, and are both buried in between visual information and tucked into the border of the screen. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 means less when a user rebinds keys to make using slots more ergonomic, and plenty of maps leave some numbers unlit. Possibly known, but switching from Buster to another weapon results in a short flicker in the ammo number Infinity (which I thought was 00 for a while) before the other number comes in. Not having items leaves multiple empty boxes on screen. etc. etc.
- Questions a newcomer are more likely to ask (as someone who's been introducing more of his friends to the game recently) are things like: "What weapons do I have?" "Do I have other items to switch to?" "Can I swap to a specific weapon (say, Hard Knuckle) quickly?" and so on. None of these are answered by the HUDs provided, and even Anarchy which tries to fill in the gaps some fails to answer questions more on a newcomer's mind than "do I have a slot 3 weapon to switch to?". This question itself becomes less relevant in modded play anyways. Vanilla play itself is all about understanding the inventory and item layout on the map, and a newcomer can become encumbered by all of that when they're unsure what tools they do or don't have. An improvement on the HUD then, could reduce the knowledge barrier required to dive deeper into vanilla MM8BDM, or mods where a number of weapons and inventory management are required.
- How much is the 8bdm dev team familiar with Zandronum's Alternative HUD? You can enable it in Options -> Advanced Options -> HUD Options -> Alternative HUD. While definitely not made for MM8BDM, there are some extremely cool parts of this HUD that it seems are 1) important to newcomers 2) useful even to seasoned players 3) relatively nonintrusive and able to be built around the current HUD. A screenshot included:
Note the inventory shown in relative detail on the bottom corners. I think if the HUD does develop, in an ideal world it should be trying to incorporate the existing HUD bars into this alternative HUD's inventory style. This could then still be an option (that could still be enabled by default!), or bound to a key similarly to how we add Map Cards to the HUD with MAPCARD command. Curious what could be done within the MM8BDM team's limits.
I like the transparency, and even though I disagree with the options provided here and would prefer to stick to v6a HUD over these options, I understand the plea and am interested in where this heads.
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