ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the parts of games impacting directly on players: user interface and interaction with the game environment. Players require feedback from the game in order to determine their status and progress. This could be in the form of a heads-up display (HUD) that informs them of their health, money, enemy location, and much more. The player's status bar can be as simple as a health bar or more complex such as the dials used in Crysis and Halo. It is common in software development to design flowcharts that outline the structure of software. Flowcharts can be created at many differing levels depending on the level of detail required. For the most part, HUDs are displayed as two-dimensional (2D) screen overlays whether the game is 2D or three-dimensional (3D). Learning keyboard shortcuts is synonymous with learning what the buttons on a game controller control.
