Stance/Movement Crosshair

[machineabuse 11]

I turn this to the eyes of the community for development and criticism as the idea is not precious to me but I do believe it may have some merit worth considering. This is not to discount what others have done such as the excellent and useful [HMM]Stance Indicator by JamesF1 but to streamline those ideas into a holistic method with a "player eyes forward" approach to UI design. Also I am aware that others have had ideas along the same vein, forgive me if I haven't acknowledged you and feel free to link to this topic for discussion :)

The Stance and Movement crosshair consists of two components;

Stance

The objective of a the stance indicator is to let players easily know what stance they are in.

This works by adding a vertical line on the inside of the horizontal crosshair lines that orient down to indicate positives above center and down for negatives below center. The length of the line is indicative of what level of stance adjustment is currently being employed.

As you may have noticed, the indicator for standing is somewhat reminiscent of the old reticule of OFP heritage ;) The thing I am not sure about this is how to indicate "stepping out" stances; initial attempts to add those to the vertical lines resulted in a rather messy looking result. I figure leaning doesn't need indication though, the tactility of most people's control setups (Holding a key, stepping on a pedal) obviates this.

Movement

The objective of a the movement indicator is to ensure the player knows how they are going to move before they move.

This works by adding diagonal dashes above and below crosshair when the mode is either activated momentarily or toggled. Combat mode is indicated by diagonal dashes below, walk(crawl) mode is indicated by diagonal dashes above and below.The visual inspiration is based on fighter HUD reticules. This design I am less sure of as it's more cluttered than I would like.

The other concern is that this does not help those who play with crosshair off. Ideally these things would be indicated diegetically in the game rather than drawn on the UI but there is no easy way to do that so UI it must be. Of course if you play without crosshair then your level of control internalization is probably already super high.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Flying fecal matter?

Original image http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/6366/stancef.jpg

Edited April 11, 2013 by Machineabuse
update image

[nodunit 397]

Never thought of using the crosshair as the guide to what stance you are in or how high you are the center, really like that technique.

[kremator 1065]

Now THAT is a good idea !!!! DO IT !

[Mattar_Tharkari 10]

Excellent idea but not sure it looks good - can the vertical bars be moved to the outer edge / outside the crosshair? It may make it harder to aim as it is?

[machineabuse 11]

Mattar_Tharkari: Aesthetics are subjective but yes they can be outside :)

[afp 1]

Nice ideea but people remove crosshair on lot of servers, someone already made an intuitive stance indicator. Its a column of 3 groups of 3 lines, the highlight ones indicating current stance.

[Basxt 1]

That's great! Should definitely be added!

[EDcase 87]

Nice idea but I don't use the crosshair so it would also need a small indicator on the side like the ladder that afp mentioned.

[hekuball 10]

It's good that you are thinking of ways to get some indication of stance but to be honest, I'm not sure that this would appeal to me. I find the crosshairs difficult to see in certain conditions as they are, I think having to decipher small nuances in how they are shaped might be beyond me or the average user over the age of 40.:D

Personally I'd prefer something similar to red orchestra, an avatar at the edge of screen which can be toggled on/off (some people dont like HUD style stuff forced upon them). There could be the 4 basic shapes - prone, sit, crouch and stand. Arrows could be used to indicate raised posture, e.g. image of standing figure plus an up-arrow alongside for the maxium height posture.

Just a thought.

The movement ones look a bit more understandable but again, if you dont use crosshairs or the server turns em off, what then?

[kremator 1065]

hekuball, DeadFast released a UI improvement that makes the crosshair more visible. I recommend it mate.

OP: OK so is this something that you are able to code Machineabuse?

[Mattar_Tharkari 10]

Mattar_Tharkari: Aesthetics are subjective but yes they can be outside :)

That look great!

[machineabuse 11]

Some great feedback here :)

afp, EDcase: Yup, you're right. As I mentioned in the original post this doesn't do anything for people who play without the crosshairs and 3rd party solutions already exist. The group I play with uses FA_Stance. The problem I find with those solutions is that I find myself not looking at them even when they are there (being so far off where my normal focul point is) and they also tend to take up a lot of screen real estate. The servers I play on more often than not have crosshairs, I was looking to build a better mousetrap for that.

hekuball: the thought did occur when I was making the sprites that they are pretty hard to see (especially for dudes with vision issues). These are based directly 1:1 in size with the crosshairs that are in the game at 1080p with the accents in the same style. They can be improved on for readability I think, drawn using solid shapes as shown here and also using more distinct shape language to show the stance. The idea behind the visual language is to indicate the displacement of body mass biased in a direction so players at a glance have a fuzzy idea of their stance or focus know exactly the deal. Probably could improve more than what I have here.

Definitely agree that this would be best if it could scale to the user's needs. :) As far as the crosshair turned off I think mods like FA_Stance do a pretty good job of supplementing that need, but personally I find myself not looking at it when it's there. Like I said; too far detached from where my attention gets focused.

Kremator: I wasn't thinking of modding this, more to contribute an idea to the discussion that some sort of stance indicator is needed in the game itself, seeing as that it's something quite frequently requested. Develop the idea with the community and then submit it as a ticket.

As far as ability, my coding skills are not dangerous enough to practically add a new UI element from scratch, I might be able to bodge the stance crosshairs but I suspect that the crosshair in ArmA 3 is probably hard coded in a way that might make it difficult to change. I could certainly produce the art needed for it though. :) If any smart programmer dudes here want to have a go give me a holla!

[seamusgod 1]

if it's possible for people to play without hud on, as in no indication of stance, movement speed, etc, then it's not a problem i should think.

Nice ideea but people remove crosshair on lot of servers, someone already made an intuitive stance indicator. Its a column of 3 groups of 3 lines, the highlight ones indicating current stance.

nice, always like clean elegant solutions like that. the opposite of "tacticool" shove as much techno trimmed ui into the player's face as possible method.

[kremator 1065]

Do we have an idea of where the crosshairs are kept in the game?

[Greenfist 1863]

Do we have an idea of where the crosshairs are kept in the game?

Mostly in the center?

Really, good idea but personally I never would notice the crosshair changing. It's mostly a subconscious extension to the mouse and eye, so I just look "past" it. There could be a pink elephant there but I wouldn't notice it if my life depended on it. I just quickly look down to see how far from ground I am.

[Sneakson 1]

Pretty messy I'm afraid...

If stances were indicated by dots that would be a lot better because determining the exact pixel length of those sticks isn't gonna cut it.

Even so I think a simple stance/movement indicator (separate) would do this a lot better without cluttering up your view.

A soldierly outline like in Ghost Recon does a good job of demonstrating both stance and movement speed very effectively.

Imagine three outlines - one of a standing guy, one of a crouching guy and one of a proning guy and then a dot at the top right if you're in the high stance and dot at the bottom right if you're in low stance and three-four chevrons on the left incidating speed.

Or you could have a ton of outlines naturally and outlines only depciting all of the stances as well as stances combined with movement, or just stances and have chevrons show movement.

I think dots and chevrons would be a much better way to show speed on the crosshairs too instead of just a ton of meaningless lines if you insist on keeping crosshair clutter.

Edit: and hey, I don't even play with a crosshair!

Edit:

Here's another thread on stances:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?152431-Discussion-about-stances

Edited April 12, 2013 by Sneakson

[kremator 1065]

Mostly in the center?

Funny!

I obviously meant where in the directory structure?

[SmallBlackSheep 0]

D:

brilliant! simple but effective

[machineabuse 11]

All: I agree that this particular design as it stands needs work as far as readability of the design. As far as using an icon in the side of the screen; my group has been using FA_Stance for some time and what we are finding is that in the heat of battle nobody looks at it because it's so far off where your eyes want to focus. Your mileage may vary, but I believe the best place for this information is somewhere central to the point of aim.

If you play without crosshairs and don't need this information; power to you! :) I don't like using crosshairs myself but the way that ArmA is I'm of the same mindset as Dslyexci that crosshairs are better at projecting my intent as a player as to the direction my weapon is pointing. Stance indication as a HUD element is the same way. IRL you feel what your body is doing. In ArmA 3 yes you can look down to check but first of all looking down to see what you should be feeling is in itself not realistic, the second is the moment your visibility is limited this is no longer viable (darkness, smoke, what have you.).

Sneakson: Some of the first designs I tried used dots and chevrons. The results were too noisy by comparison. This crosshair is 1:1 in scale with ArmA's existing crosshair, the more shapes you put into it the harder it is to read. My lines are certainly not ideal but dots were worse.

Edited April 13, 2013 by Machineabuse

[Flash Thunder 10]

I would just like a stance indicator in the game without downloading mods its hard to tell in a virtual world what stance you're in.

[viper[cww] 14]

Xeno designed a nice one that comes with his domination, it doesn't incorporate into the crosshair (rather to the side of weapon info) but it also adds speed warnings via colour, as seen in the top right of this picture.

[machineabuse 11]

;2374769']Xeno designed a nice one that comes with his domination' date=' it doesn't incorporate into the crosshair (rather to the side of weapon info) but it also adds speed warnings via colour, as seen in the top right of this picture.

Now that one I like, the icon design I was working on is 90% similar to that. The main thing I would change is to make it smaller and put it in the top center of the screen. :)

[viper[cww] 14]

Now that one I like, the icon design I was working on is 90% similar to that. The main thing I would change is to make it smaller and put it in the top center of the screen. :)

Not sure top centre would be a good idea, since I and many others use shacktac hud which is centre bottom, having different GUI's all over the screen would get cluttered and crazy looking :D

[machineabuse 11]

I use STHUD too :) My initial paintovers with top center work fine, will post them over the weekend. Keeping the element small and simple is the key. The hard part is making sure that it can be understood at a glance.

I was going to post findings yesterday but I had an epiphany that the top icon should encompass swimming modes too.

[Bi5h0p 10]

After the last patch, the crosshair is always visible?