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Hello TeamLiquid!
EDIT:
You guys brought up good arguments and have confinced me that it would not be an improvement. While we are on the discussion about the current HUD. Please feel free to place your idea's here and discuss them :D
What is left of the idea is that we can have a cleaner HUD, like removing the rank.
End of edit 
I was busy doing a small HUD analysis today for my GameDesign course when I got an idea for a small improvement in the HUD of Starcraft 2. It is just a small change, so before you continue reading keep that in mind
Like I said, I had to make a HUD analysis. I choose SC2's selection panel. The power of the selection panel is the use of iconic language rather then text, while still giving newer players the option to read more information by the use of tooltips.
The idea behind all this is to let pro players read the information as soon as possible, so we need a clean display of usefull information. Why do we still have a kill counter and a rank displayed when we are selecting a single unit? The HUD is trying to hide information that is useless for pro players, but we still have this useless information in the middle of our selection panel.
My suggestion is to continue the trend from Blizzard Entertainment to use icons and tooltips. Let's remove the kill counter and rank and create a small icon for it. This gives us the opportunity to increase the size of the upgarde icons, which is very usefull and important information that pro players wanna read. If they only have a split second to click on a unit of his opponent to check his upgrades before the unit disappears, then it would benefit the player to have a larger icon for the upgrades.
Here is what I suggest, Lets turn this:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/QEuXO.jpg)
Into this:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/A7y1O.jpg)
This gives a much cleaner look to the selection panel. The icons for the upgardes could be increase a little bit extra, but that would be up to Blizzard. The icon for the rank could change for every rank.
Notes:
I know this is not the place for suggestions, but I wanna hear TL opinion 
I played that game purely for screenshots, please dont talk amount my resource management
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I agree. THe UI is very intrusive at the moment, and i would like an option to hide it entirely or at the very least reduce it.
Play by hotkeys and touch typing, that's me.
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i don't think that would be improvement
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I don't see a difference...
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Sometimes you need to be able to read a units kill count on the fly too. I would personally be against the change. I've never had a problem with the size of the upgrade icons. Therefore this would only make important game information less accessible to me.
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How is that an improvement? It looks like it is making it more intrusive to me.
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Kills isnt useless info. Why move it away from there?
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I don't see a difference...
Like I said, it is a small change
Sometimes you need to be able to read a units kill count on the fly too. I would personally be against the change. I've never had a problem with the size of the upgrade icons. Therefore this would only make important game information less accessible to me.
When do you want to do that, if I may ask? It could also be an option or some sort.
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Seems kind of insignificant for SC2. But I do like neat and systematic\clean HUD's, so I sorta like your suggestion.
I think the thing with the SC2 one is that it is very similar to the SC1, which many people probably prefer.
EDIT: Kills are important when you want to see i.e how much dmg you did to your opponent with harass units. Sometimes you only get a glance before they are killed off.
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it's so small small small diffrence that it's the same lol
just joking i'm into everything that makes UI more readable or "ergonomic"
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Hmm, the idea has merit. Not sure about the implementation. The icon looks really out of place visually.
My personal philosophy is that if the rank and number of kills doesn't have a meaningful game mechanic tied to it, it shouldn't be in the game at all. I think a much cleaner solution would be to just get rid of it.
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On April 04 2012 22:53 JellowLight wrote:Like I said, it is a small change Show nested quote +
Sometimes you need to be able to read a units kill count on the fly too. I would personally be against the change. I've never had a problem with the size of the upgrade icons. Therefore this would only make important game information less accessible to me.
When do you want to do that, if I may ask? It could also be an option or some sort.
An example would be checking your DT to see how many worker kills it made before it dies. This is vital information to deduce whether the DT's put you ahead/behind/even.
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On April 04 2012 22:55 PandaTank wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2012 22:53 JellowLight wrote:I don't see a difference... Like I said, it is a small change
Sometimes you need to be able to read a units kill count on the fly too. I would personally be against the change. I've never had a problem with the size of the upgrade icons. Therefore this would only make important game information less accessible to me.
When do you want to do that, if I may ask? It could also be an option or some sort. An example would be checking your DT to see how many worker kills it made before it dies. This is vital information to deduce whether the DT's put you ahead/behind/even.
Observer tab -> workers killed.
Ah, I see you meant the player checking himself. In which case it's true, although I'm not really sure looking at that number is very intuitive or that many people do it at all.
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Another example is if say, someone kills a few workers of yours early on with a banshee, and gets away with it, then comes back. You can look at the kills to see if it is the same banshee, or if they have more than one.
It's little things, that say so much.
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On April 04 2012 22:56 Talin wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2012 22:55 PandaTank wrote:On April 04 2012 22:53 JellowLight wrote:I don't see a difference... Like I said, it is a small change
Sometimes you need to be able to read a units kill count on the fly too. I would personally be against the change. I've never had a problem with the size of the upgrade icons. Therefore this would only make important game information less accessible to me.
When do you want to do that, if I may ask? It could also be an option or some sort. An example would be checking your DT to see how many worker kills it made before it dies. This is vital information to deduce whether the DT's put you ahead/behind/even. Observer tab -> workers killed.
Lol, are you serious? We are talking about playing the game. Not watching replays smarty pants.
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I'd rather have it vertical next to the upgrades and roach icon rather than a pop-up.. A pop-up as such might become an annoyance or a hindrance to actual gameplay..
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I don't like it. Sometimes I need to know quickly whether my marines killed a scouting worker without me knowing or if there's a lucky probe that got away making proxy pylons.
I will say one change I want is for the Green Terran cursor to be used for all races. The brown and yellow crayon smudges make me laugh everytime I offrace.
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You guys bring up some valid points, I am not a good player or anything so I didn't think of these little things What might be an idea it to just get rid of the ranks.
I'd rather have it vertical next to the upgrades
This is also true, why do we have so much unused black space on the panel? We could use that space for example, but it should stay clean ofcourse.
A pop-up as such might become an annoyance or a hindrance to actual gameplay..
It is mend as a mouse over pop up, just like a mouse over the upgrades
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I don't think this helps. The upgrade icons are already large enough, and color coded to boot. Even a quick glance will tell you the level just from the color that you see on it. And as others have pointed out, seeing the kills is quite useful on units, knowing how many kills your banshee or dts achieved is important to know in an instant glance too, or just how efficiently your army has performed overall with an instant glance, not one you have to mouse over to find out.
Does this help? No. You can see upgrades just fine before the change at an instant glance because of the color coding.
Does this detract? Yes. You can't see the important information of kills(rank not so much, but it's cool) at a glance anymore.
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Okay, this is a small thing. But, I do like where you are going.
If you can maybe combine a few more improvements. I suggest you modify your OP to ask the community for more improvements. Thereafter, since you are studying user interfaces, you can make proof of concepts applying what you know.
Maybe then it you will have something.
My 2 cents, the kill count should be visible. Maybe even more visible than before because it is useful when watching replay/casts. That rank thing is useless.
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On April 04 2012 23:03 JellowLight wrote:You guys bring up some valid points, I am not a good player or anything so I didn't think of these little things What might be an idea it to just get rid of the ranks. This is also true, why do we have so much unused black space on the panel? We could use that space for example, but it should stay clean ofcourse. Show nested quote + A pop-up as such might become an annoyance or a hindrance to actual gameplay.. It is mend as a mouse over pop up, just like a mouse over the upgrades
The black space is actually kind of a good thing. It keeps the bottom bar from being to cluttered and makes the information on it easy to see. The human eye is naturally drawn to empty spaces, having the black space helps us focus on the actual information contained within.
That's why very long sections of unformatted writing are hard to read, while a few sentences at a time surrounded by empty space are much easier to focus on for example.
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As some pointed sometimes you need to check if a Marine/Zergling killed a pesky probe for instance, if you have to hover over the little icon just to read the number you lose time and precious APM.
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Okay, this is a small thing. But, I do like where you are going.
If you can maybe combine a few more improvements. I suggest you modify your OP to ask the community for more improvements. Thereafter, since you are studying user interfaces, you can make proof of concepts applying what you know.
Maybe then it you will have something.
My 2 cents, the kill count should be visible. Maybe even more visible than before because it is useful when watching replay/casts. That rank thing is useless.
I am actually studying Game Programming, but this is a sidetrack subject for everyone to improve the overall knowledge of gamedesign for programmers. I am still busy with designing HUD's for the comming year, so I could still apply ideas
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Seeing how hard it is for things done by the community to reach back to blizzard (UI improvement threads, better units colours thread, etc), i would doubt this would go far, even though it definitely looks better.
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Your resources are way too high! jk
What I like for the middle panel to have is drag selection. You can only do one-at-a-time selection on the units in the middle panel. If we could do a drag selection, I think that would be useful.
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On April 04 2012 22:55 PandaTank wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2012 22:53 JellowLight wrote:I don't see a difference... Like I said, it is a small change
Sometimes you need to be able to read a units kill count on the fly too. I would personally be against the change. I've never had a problem with the size of the upgrade icons. Therefore this would only make important game information less accessible to me.
When do you want to do that, if I may ask? It could also be an option or some sort. An example would be checking your DT to see how many worker kills it made before it dies. This is vital information to deduce whether the DT's put you ahead/behind/even.
Agree with this. Also, with casting. When you talk about hero units (colossi, immortal, dt... and those are just the Protoss ones), you want it to be easily seen by everyone.
I disagree with the change, OP. Sorry! 
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^^ thats what the different upgrade icons are already for. The actual size of upgrade icons would change nothing, in making them easier to spot. (protoss ground could use some work, but maybe its ebil balancing who knows)
The kill count is something for viewers and replay analysis(you don't check the icons as a spectator, so the data has to be there or could be gone completely), its kept ingame in the same manner, because it keeps the program simpler and that is often a key aspect of a good game, a hud that is easy to understand and use and that doesn't change depending on the situation.
And i won't forget those 30 kill firebat or dragoon, simple because of the kill count. Or the 250 kill colossus that even survived the war till the end. Without it those games would have lost some epic factor, so Blizzard did really well of keeping this in. (especially since kill counts are important for harassment)
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took like 5 mintues to see what you changed, and personally I wouldnt care if ti changed, but i never had problems seeing what upgrades i was at + i generally know what upgrades I am on.
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Oh mother of god this is INCREDIBLE! I can't believe how BIG of a difference this makes. That pesky kill count was always in the way of my macro, or in intensive micro battles, or just as a spectator watching games I hated seeing that, made no sense to me. I really hope blizzard listens to this and get's on it ASAP because this is seriously more detrimental to the game than anything else currently.
Fellow TL'er thank you for bringing this to public attention.
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On April 04 2012 22:49 Praetorial wrote:
I agree. THe UI is very intrusive at the moment, and i would like an option to hide it entirely or at the very least reduce it.
Play by hotkeys and touch typing, that's me.
I agree. The UI is overloaded. I tried to minimize it with my superior Paint skills. The right side shows all active orders and available skills. I increased the units in one row vom 8 to 12. But this is just a 10 minute try, so don't be too hard (;
Edit: picture link
Note that I do have not as much space at the bottom as the OP has, because I don't have a widescreen LCD.
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this adds nothing to the game. as such, i dont see it being implemented.
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It takes away from the actual screen.
Plus I don't like the total removability some are talking about - sometimes it's vital to see if a marine or whatever got a kill if you weren't watching.
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- I'd rather see the kills
- I never look at the units for the upgrades - I look at my ebay/armory/evo/spire/forge/core/etc when I want to look at the upgrades
- If I have to look at my opponent's units, I can usually tell by the color of the upgrade in the first place how upgraded his units are
- using your mouse to scroll over a location to check something that can already be on the screen is a waste of effort when you can be using your mouse to be doing something ultimately more useful than scrolling over the UI.
thus I don't think I agree with this change
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EPT![[image loading]](http://www.abload.de/image.php?img=minimizeduibyblueslobs7lhs.jpg)
