The Head Up Display (HUD) is a UI screen that contains all indicators player needs, such as energy bar, selected weapon, weapon bullets, armor, etc...
HOW IT WORKS?
As said, the Player has the control of the HUD elements. That means, for example, that if player receives a damage and his health value decreases, he directly updates the corresponding health progress bar and textual label on the HUD. But how the player can recognize what HUD element to update? He uses element names, in other words every element in the HUD controlled by the player must have a pre-defined name to make player to recognize it when he must update it.
If player doesn't find an element simply he doesn't update it.
In this way you can configure the HUD as you want, keeping certain elements and erasing others, the player will control only what he finds.
A good erxample of this mechanism are Templates provided with Easy Game pack installation, they offer different HUDs for different game types.
Following is a hypothetical full-featured HUD (in real applications usually only a subset of all elements is used), showed for exaplining all elements controlled by player, they are listed using names that they must have to be recognized by player.
There are other "decorative" elements and elements that contain other ones, they have been used for decorating or organizing the interface but they aren't managed by the player, you can organize the interface as you want by adding other container elements or decorative ones without affecting the HUD behaviour.