HUD
In Video games, the HUD (Head Up Display) is the part of the screen where games informations are displayed.
Most often, we can see the score, number of lives availlable, ammunitions, and many game's related usefull informations.
In Amstrad CPC games, the HUD is often quite large and covers a large part of the screen, yet some games preferred minimalist HUD, as a large and graphical HUD is also a waste of CPU and graphic ressource.
A Logo of the game is Sometimes displayed too (often in poor production).
Also the real Games window (where the action is) can be displayed inside a Frame (Shadow of the Beast).
Heavy graphical HUD are often a mean to "hide" the fact that the game is poorly developped, Slow, and directly ported from a Speccy. The Big HUD then complete the small and tiny games wiindows to make illusion the screen is big and finely developped.
Ironically, Games in Full Screen (sometimes mis-dubbed as "Overscan mode") often display very minimalist HUD...while extremly reduced screens (Speccy standards, even less) display an almost huge 1/3 of the screen massive HUD.
Also, a HUD can be Vertical, Horizontal or Diagonal, or include some kind of GUI.
It can be Simple or Double.
With double HUD the Game's window is then often "sandwiched" by 2 HUD.
The HUD is sometimes an excuse to display more colours than theorically possible in Native Mode, by mean of Rasters.
Notable Speccy Ports do this. Ironically, in those (often) scrappy Speccy Ports the screen then display 5 or even more colours in Mode1... Yet the game's windows may remains monocolour (PacMania and Black Tiger...)
Also some Games Producers sometimes displayed the HUD in another Graphic Mode, this allows to display a good 16 colours in the Game's window while the HUD use the highest resolution of Mode 1 to ease the display of informations.
Contents
- 1 Horizontal HUD
- 2 Double Horizontal HUD
- 3 Vertical HUD
- 4 Double Vertical HUD
- 5 Diagonal HUD or Crossed Diagonal HUD
- 6 Frame around the Game's window
- 7 HUD with GUI
- 8 HUD with different Graphic Mode than the Game windows
- 9 HUD with a big logo of the game's name
- 10 Minimalist HUD
- 11 HUD displaying extra colours
- 12 Animated HUD
- 13 Mixed HUD technics
- 14 Internal Links
- 15 External Links
Horizontal HUD
Double Horizontal HUD
Vertical HUD
Double Vertical HUD
Diagonal HUD or Crossed Diagonal HUD
Frame around the Game's window
HUD with GUI
- Hero Quest
HUD with different Graphic Mode than the Game windows
HUD with a big logo of the game's name
- Flying shark
- Barbarian 2 ( Cartridge )
Minimalist HUD
- Ghouls 'n' Ghost : even more notable as this game is in Full screen...
- Arkanoid : Also notable because of the Full screen.
HUD displaying extra colours
Animated HUD
- Sacred Armour of Antiriad : a sweet "animation" (with sounds) while activating the armour.
Mixed HUD technics
- Barbarian (palace software) : Games information are diplayed Upside and Downside (game's mode...minimalist yet). The snakes heads (in fact upper horizontal HUD) scream when Damage are done, and a Frame is displayed all around the Game's window (snakes bodies)
Internal Links
