Chapter 11: User Interface Design

Everything that is shown on the screen and transmits through the speakers of a computer is forms of communication. In previous chapters, we used three-dimensional models to let the user know that they are in a base in the middle of the mountains, and we reinforced that idea with the appropriate sound and music. But for our game, we need to communicate other information, such as the amount of life the user has left, the current score, and so on, and sometimes, it is difficult to express these things using the in-game graphics (there are some successful cases that manage to do this, such as Dead Space, but let's keep things simple). In order to transmit this information, we will add another layer of graphics on top of our scene, which is usually called the User Interface (UI) or Heads-Up Display (HUD).

This will contain different visual elements, such as text fields, bars, and buttons, to prepare the user to take an informed decision based on...