Not in your face Interface, it leads to huzzahs.

So for this topic of interface, I feel I must do this report-like thing on Guild Wars, as it is an incredible, in-depth interface that can put anything to shame. And what the hey, I’ll even include Killzone with this as well.

Guild Wars-
The keyboard and mouse are the manual interfaces for this Game, as with the majority of PC games.
There is also a rich visual interface controlled by the manual interface. All of the things in this list below have some form of representation on the screen, from small to large boxes of menus and lists to animations and displays of text.

The buttons… default settings:
1-8, use skills (can also click the icons)
C, target closest
T, target called target
Space bar, perform action
Enter, open chat-send message
Tab- tab through targets
K, open skills panel
L, open quest log
H, open your hero panel-3tabs
I, open/close inventory
B, observe PvP matches
N, open friends list
M, open world map
P, open/close party box
U, open/close mini map
R, auto-run
J, open PvP armor creation box
G, open guild box
F, target self
; , target closest item
O, open score chart (last PvP match you were in’s statistics.)
Backspace, reply to personal message (pm, whisper)
Q, W, A, S, D – movement controls
Arrow buttons- movement controls
Z, reverse camera
X, turn around
Left mouse click, move to position/target foe/ally/item
Right mouse, control camera

Chat options: (all have different colors) Controlled in one box, generally at the bottom of the screen. You can only use one chat at once, and the one you are in is clearly represented by the system of tabs. You can also tell the box to go away- it becomes opaque and only the most recent of chat will be seen (around the last 10 seconds)
This area is also where ANet sends in game news/announcements to players, such as there being a new build and everyone should log off and restart the game client to get the latest nerf, er I mean patch, to get the latest patch. At any rate, these are the chat options:

All – public to everyone in the district or explorable instance
Guild- viewable to all guild members
Party- visible to party members
Trade- like all chat, but for trading purposes
Alliance- alliance wide chat channel
Whisper- personal 1 on 1 chat that can not be seen by others. A noise notifies you of a new pm.

In the inventory box is a small part labeled weapon sets, this lets you have 0 to 4 weapon sets show up on your screen for easy changing of weapons, either by clicking on them, or hitting F1 to F4.

Pressing the control button while hitting another key sends a message to party chat letting all know what you are doing / who you are calling.

Crtl + shift + h turns off the interface entirely
Crtl + shift + print screen takes a screen shot without the interface/HUD

F11 – options, for – General, Graphics, Sound, Interface
From the interface tab you can change almost everything. Move any HUD item to any spot on the screen, change the size, or get rid of it.
Default keys can be changed to do any other of something around 100 or so actions. Create hot buttons for more complex/ longer taking things.


The basic HUD:
Compass
Experience bar
Skill bar
Health and energy bars
Chat box
Mini map (optional)
Party box (optional)
Weapon sets (optional)
Selected object (foe, ally, item)(temporary)
Your skill warm up (temporary)
Target skill warm up (temporary)
Recent skills used against you. (temporary)
Effects on you (stances, signets, enchantments, hexes, morale boost/ death penalty)

Health gain appears in blue text
Health loss you take appears in red text
Damage you do appears in yellow text
Experience you gain appears in green text
Energy gain and energy lost appears in purple text, with a + or – symbol to differentiate

Enchantments appear as a yellow up arrow/triangle on your health bar
Hexes appear as a downwards purple arrow/triangle
Conditions generally appear as downwards gray arrow/triangles, with a few exceptions:
Deep wound causes ¼ your health bar to be grayed out, bleeding causes your health bar to turn a light red, and poison and disease cause the life bar to turn green.
Additionally, hexes that cause health degeneration will cause the life bar to turn purple/pink
All of these are crucial to know/understand when playing the game.

On the compass, enemies appear as red dots, you, and your allies appear as green dots, with your green dot a darker color than the others, and other peoples’ dots slightly darker than friendly NPC dots. There is a semi-transparent, semi-white circle that surrounds your green dot; this is your agro bubble. If a red dot gets in range of this (borders collide, or red dot(s) in the circle) they will attack you.
Foes that you target and/or damage will have their health bar appear over there head to show you where your target is and how much health it has left.



It takes a little while to get used to the interface, and some will acclimate to it much, much faster than others, but once you are at … I suppose, a near-intimate relationship with it, playing the game becomes seamless. You don’t have to think, you just do. Your mind is free to go about other things, and if you know how to position hand(s), how to watch and manage agro, and other aspects, you can play in some of the harder ~leet~ areas while watching a movie, playing with one hand, while the other grasps a sandwich recently acquired from Sub Connection. I have caught myself countless times not paying attention to the game but still owning it up. The game and I have become one, and this is because of the interface. In HCI, they say the less interface, the better, and I have played this game with the interface turned off – its slightly harder but still doable (harder because you don’t know where your health and energy are at, nor do you know where foes are in relation to your agro bubble.

The HUD was brilliantly designed, taking up little space, and the space it does off in the far corners of the screen (by default, and if that does not please you, move it wherever the hell you want or remove it completely, or just certain parts. It really is interactive and marvelous.

At the top most right most part is the standard windows program buttons – minimize, restore and close. GW can be played in a window, at whatever size, though obviously, if it gets too small, you won’t be able to see what is going on but, hey, if that’s how you want to play, you can.



Killzone:

It uses the PS2 controller as its manual interface.
The left analog stick controls movement
Clicking in the left analog stick will cause you to run faster, temporarily
Clicking the right analog stick causes your weapon to zoom (if it has the feature)
The up and down arrow keys will control the zoom of the sniper rifle (the other weapons with a zoom feature simply have one ..or two options- to zoom or not to zoom.
R1 and R2 control weapon fire
L1 will cause you to activate and then throw a grenade
L2 is the crouch key
Triangle will cause you to reload your weapon
X is the action button, used for such things as climbing ladders.
Left and right arrow keys are used to go through your weapons
O selects the weapon

One thing I do not like is that, when you pause the game, the screen just freezes. After a little bit a menu screen comes up… it should come up faster as, well, I’m not sure how to describe it, but the frozen screen thing kinda bugs me.. its like.. for a split second you don’t know if you paused it or not, and I’m a very intense game player, when something disturbs me enough to have to pause the game, I want to know its paused right then and there so I can leave. When you unpause the game, it takes a little longer than most games to get back to resumed play, so this combo can be deadly when you accidently hit the pause button and then try to unapause it instantly.

There are several options to go through and can be changed, but those seem to be more suitable for another topic, such as Gameplay, or maybe even a few other things.

Its HUD consists of your hand with the weapon you are using and stats related to that (ammo remaining, heat level, weapon crosshairs)
Grenades remaining
Health bar
Stamina bar (related to sprinting)

Both of these games have very usable interfaces, they are not cluttered and very efficient. Though, you could clutter GW’s interface up if you wanted to / needed to for some particular reason. They are consistent, in function as well as style (that also fits the game/game genre/setting, and for Guild Wars, you can make all sorts of shortcuts for many many things, while in Killzone, shortcuts aren’t entirely necessary, but you can change the controls if you so desire.

Guild Wars also has some nice features with tips, relating to things such as skills and other aspects of the game (I’m not entirely sure which aspects as I don’t use them, me being a Grand Master Guild Wars Player that I am.) You can also choose between full and concise descriptions for skills, and toggle them off/on as wanted. Concise descriptions make them a shorter read for people who know what the skills do, but just need a tiny reminder. At first I thought this feature (which was recently implemented, relative to how long I’ve had the game) was rather useless, but it means having less text on the screen and that is better.

There is no saving in Guild Wars, it is an MMORPG with servers on around the clock, if something happens, it’s happened, and the only way to undo that is for the developers to go in and change it manually, which rarely happens, but does, when jackasses decide to duplicate expensive items over and over again and get themselves banned.

In Killzone, you can pretty much save whenever your little heart desires. It also makes use of the regenerative health feature (as does GW), but unlike some of the games that have started using this, the health bar in Killzone has levels, about 3 – Your health will be silver at max health – a lot. When you take some damage, the health bar goes down, eventually turning green. More damage causes it to become yellow, and after a lot of damage it becomes red. When you’ve taken too much damage, its not there- you’re dead. The regening health tends to only work in one level, that is, if you take, lets say 20 damage, and that gets you to be at the border of the silver/green health bar, but still silver, you will get back to max health if you wait long enough. If you were to take 30 damage (the numbers are made up), that would put you in the middle of the green zone, and your health can only regen back up to the top of the green level. The same goes for each level of health. To add to this, there are health pickups on pretty much every level of the game, though they are rarer than in games with no health regen- I guess they tried to find a nice balance in Killzone, and I am happy with it.

For the most part, game play is fast and seamless with these two games, because the interface stays the **** out of your business.