Playing with no HUD

As I've been playing Doom more and more, I've grown accustomed to playing with no HUD at all. I just play pretending as if I always have 1% health and always infinite ammo, and just collect items as I see them, regardless of whether I really need them or not. I've pretty much memorized the damage ranges of all the projectiles and can usually make a good estimate of how much health I have given how many of what projectiles have hit me already and how red my screen gets. I've gotten more accustomed to punching and chainsawing monsters often to conserve ammo purely out of habitually playing Doom 2 from pistol start, so ammo is rarely a factor even in ammo tight maps.

I've just gotten into the habit of playing doom to the best of my ability every time I play and treating every level I play like it has the potential to be unusually difficult at any given time. With that, my eyes are always peeled on every part of the screen, and the status bar almost feels as if its blocking my view. The numbers concerning my health and ammo are distracting, as they change I always want to glance down and read them when I should be locking my eyes onto projectiles and the attack frames of all the monsters in front of me.

Am I the only one who plays this way?

Viet Cong had a mode like this. it felt realistic, yes, but since you can't feel pain in a game, it was like hell trying to play. I couldnt' count bullets, I couldn't tell when I was going to die. no, I don't like it.




But kudos for figuring out you can press = a lot.

I should really give this a try sometime...I like HUD-less games.

Long ago I often played without the hud, to at least get to see more of the gun, and it still gives a unobstructed feel.

I wonder what way the health and Doomguy face expressions could be communicated to the the player without the status bar (aside from those weird "electro-shock feedback devices" of decades ago). I'd rather feel the face look right/left rather than have to look directly at it (though I guess longtime players may subliminally notice the look direction when taking damage).

A HUD option to just show the doomguy face would interest me.

This is something I should look into.

Khorus said:

A HUD option to just show the doomguy face would interest me.

Holy shit, that'd be awesome.

Khorus said:

A HUD option to just show the doomguy face would interest me.

Done: http://ionline.vectec.net/doom/faceonly.wad

It's only for ZDoom (and derivatives), but I went and threw in two different positioning options (center and left) for the face, in case you don't want the mug obscuring the weapon. A bit of an interesting experiment, this is... ;)

Khorus said:

A HUD option to just show the doomguy face would interest me.

In Doomsday you just need to open the HUD menu and play with the options.

Xaser said:

Done: http://ionline.vectec.net/doom/faceonly.wad

It's only for ZDoom (and derivatives), but I went and threw in two different positioning options (center and left) for the face, in case you don't want the mug obscuring the weapon. A bit of an interesting experiment, this is... ;)

Played a few maps with this, I definitely enjoyed it. Thanks! :)

DaniJ said:

In Doomsday you just need to open the HUD menu and play with the options.

Great, I'll go about setting that up now.

DaniJ said:

In Doomsday you just need to open the HUD menu and play with the options.

Yeah when I played the Doomsday I'd play with just the health/ammo numbers and the face. It was great.

Playing with no HUD sucks because 'full versions' of weapon sprites looks ugly in my opinion.

Just played a few maps of E1 on ultra-violence using no HUD whatsoever (no sourceport crosshair, no health/ammo display, no doomguy face, no messages, the whole works). Gave it an added challenge, as the only indication of health and ammo I had was if I walked over a medikit or ammo box and I didnt take it. Also made that game that much more immersive, but I don't think I could handle without the HUD for most WADS.

Also I never use sourceport HUDS, I always set it to the classic HUD, even if it looks rather stretched on my 1440x900 screen.

Unfortunately as soon as I look in the automap the Statusbar is visible. It means that I can cheat through this loophole by pressing TAB each time I need to check up my health.

Then again, automaps are pretty much an emerging technology as we speak and during Doom's time it was just as unrealistic as seeing numbers representing your health and armor percentage.

In Doomsday you change that in the Automap menu; set the HUD display to "current" and the HUD won't change when you open the automap.

Playing with no HUD

Equals doubtless suicide

Xaser said:

Done: http://ionline.vectec.net/doom/faceonly.wad

It's only for ZDoom (and derivatives), but I went and threw in two different positioning options (center and left) for the face, in case you don't want the mug obscuring the weapon. A bit of an interesting experiment, this is... ;)

I'm definitely testing this when I get home.
Though I have to say, I quite like the status bar in Doom. It has a certain charm to it.
Though the best thing about the HUD is definitely the mugshot, imo.

sounds like fun, I want to try

This would really be complete if you could program in an "ammo check" button. Press it, and it would print a message:

"You have [a lot of/a few/hardly any] [bullets/shells/rockets/cells]."

Just vague estimations, like the DOOMGuy is quickly looking at his supplies and saying, "Yep, I've got a lot of shotgun shells left." The amount stated would depend on the percentage you're carrying of the current maximum ammo, and the ammo type stated would be based on the currently equipped weapon. Naturally, this would have to be tweaked to print nothing when you have a melee weapon equipped.

Of course, I have no idea how to actually do any of this stuff myself, nor if it's even possible to program.

I say also a wristband with spring loaded needles that stab you whenever you get hit. This would eliminate the need to look at health.

Csonicgo said:

Viet Cong had a mode like this. it felt realistic, yes, but since you can't feel pain in a game, it was like hell trying to play. I couldnt' count bullets, I couldn't tell when I was going to die. no, I don't like it.




But kudos for figuring out you can press = a lot.

actually = brings up HUD, - reduces it ;D

Megamur said:

"You have [a lot of/a few/hardly any] [bullets/shells/rockets/cells]."

In Doomsday (ver >= 1.9.0-beta4*) you can accomplish this pretty easily using a combination of control bindings, aliases and read-only cvar evaluation. For example:

bindevent "game:key-b-down" "checkstatus player-ammo-bullets bullets"
alias "statusmessage" "message {%1 %2.}"
alias "checkstatus" "if %1 < 20 {statusmessage {Running low on} {%2}}"

Add that to your jdoom-bindings.cfg and every time you press "b" on the keyboard and you have less than 20 bullets you will see the message

DOOM message log said:

Running low on bullets.

You can re-use the same alias for all the ammo types. To do the same for shotgun shells when pressing "s" for example, add the following:

bindevent "game:key-s-down" "checkstatus player-ammo-shells shells"

I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to extend the above to give different messages depending on the value (hint: think Quake weapon cycling "scripts").

* You can accomplish the same in earlier versions but the control binding syntax is a bit different.

I think the status bar data improves the game although I kind of do this in ZDaemon, but it's because I don't like HUDs (as opposed to the status bar) and the status bar looks horrible in that engine, using a bright green background for the face. In any case, the data provided by the status bar is less relevant in public multiplayer, especially CTF, that I play most, as it more or less clutters the screen and you're not alive for long stretches, and all you need to know is evident enough from the red haze when you get hit and the HUD messages at the top.

That glitch makes one think ZDaemon coders are either retarded, being unable to fix a simple bug, or else asshats shitting on a feature in the original game.

printz said:
Then again, automaps are pretty much an emerging technology as we speak and during Doom's time it was just as unrealistic as seeing numbers representing your health and armor percentage.

"DOOM's time" is the time of a fantasy science fiction game, probably in the fictional future. More importantly, not having any data is more unrealistic than the stats because they supply information you would normally have in some way by the sense of touch, pain and the view of one's own body.