HUD Suggestion

[ssuser]

At the risk of sounding like a locked-in-the-past BZ1 heretic, I would like to make a suggestion about modding the HUD, though this has probably been made before.

What about stripping out the larger row icons for the navs and recycler, and replacing this with a series of small strip icons that descend down the screen like the BZ1 menu? I am not talking about kludgy text menus but a series of stylized silver strip icons that would represent Navs, Recycler, Factory, Armory, Satellite, and whatever else new slots are needed for that are not unit groups. The reason I suggest this is not so the game is more like BZ1, but instead to make ROOM - this would free up two F-key slots on top, and given the amount of different units there are these days, I think it is needed - in my personal factory, I already have 8 additional unit types in a new build group. I know that new building slots go into a new row under the first row in some mods, but this really clutters the screen, and it does not solve the F-key slot space problem.

[DarkCobra262]

At the risk of sounding like a locked-in-the-past BZ1 heretic, I would like to make a suggestion about modding the HUD, though this has probably been made before.

What about stripping out the larger row icons for the navs and recycler, and replacing this with a series of small strip icons that descend down the screen like the BZ1 menu? I am not talking about kludgy text menus but a series of stylized silver strip icons that would represent Navs, Recycler, Factory, Armory, Satellite, and whatever else new slots are needed for that are not unit groups. The reason I suggest this is not so the game is more like BZ1, but instead to make ROOM - this would free up two F-key slots on top, and given the amount of different units there are these days, I think it is needed - in my personal factory, I already have 8 additional unit types in a new build group. I know that new building slots go into a new row under the first row in some mods, but this really clutters the screen, and it does not solve the F-key slot space problem.

BZC does this, it's possible, but I'm not sure who all likes menus like that

[TwinShadow]

I like the HUD as it is now since I see plenty of action on a 720p resolution. But of course, if someone likes the older interface or wants something different, there's no problem with that since shell edits don't cause bad assets. Good thing for that actually.

The BZC shell takes from the original menu system of the game, minus the 1-4 keys. Other than that, I don't know if its possible for additional "F slots" since I think its hard-coded to 10 for units since F11 and F12 aren't even used far as I'm aware.

[MrTwosheds]

there's no problem with that since shell edits don't cause bad assets.

The only problem with shell edits is that further development of 1.3 patches and the stock shell screens may cause the edited versions to become a malfunction in later versions. Shell edits potentially limit a mods functional life expectancy.

[General BlackDragon]

Yea, there's only F1-F10, addition of groups F11-F12 + would not be possible without GSH adding support, and I believe it's been brought up and show down before.

[Zero Angel]

there's no problem with that since shell edits don't cause bad assets.

The only problem with shell edits is that further development of 1.3 patches and the stock shell screens may cause the edited versions to become a malfunction in later versions. Shell edits potentially limit a mods functional life expectancy.

Anything can break a mod's compatibility with a future 1.3, in fact many of the things that have made mods incompatible or not work as expected have come completely out of 'left field' as it were, be it textures needing to be converted or some change to the mission API or animations that worked in a previous version causing glitching in the new version due to stricter handling of the MSH format, or spraybombs/tag not working, modders needing to add maps13 as a directory to parse through, or some other unexpected thing. Nobody can really predict what will happen in future 1.3's so it's important to get something to work as well as possible in a current 1.3 rather than avoiding it 'for fear of a potential problem in a future 1.3'. It's pretty much standard practice now for modders to update their mods and users to wait for said mods to be updated to work 100% with a new 1.3.

When it comes to shell changes, they can be removed without causing bad assets and it's still up to the modder to update said assets to make them compatible with the latest version if he expects his mod to be installed and played.

[Nielk1]

Welcome to modding a game.
You wouldn't believe how fast Minecraft and Garrysmod addons/mods break.

[General BlackDragon]

over 9000 fast

[ssuser]

Yes, my original post was meant to suggest core code changes would be needed to do this. Aside from activating support for the F11 and F12 keys, you would have to code in how the units under these keys would show on the radar/minimap too - I was going to suggest hex notation, "A" and "B" for these groups. However, in light of what has been said about mod breaking, I doubt this will ever be implemented, as plenty of maps and mods have been broken by the 1.3xx changes anyway.

I bet, though, if UltraKen and GSH could have foreseen how many more units would have been built for BZ2 back in 1999, they would have tried to leave this option open, and left room for easier modding of slots as well.

[Ded10c]

Hex notation is a good idea, but we already use 0 for group 10 so that would have to change.

[TwinShadow]

If I'm right, BZC actually uses additional letters for the recycler, factory, etc.. Like R for the recycler, F for factory, A for Armory, etc... So those aren't hard to code in I would think. Just the additional F slots require code changes that I doubt Nathan will ever do. Ken I believe is more busy with the BZ1 coding right now, so I don't know how much he works on the BZ2 code and all that.

[Red Spot]

GSH already included some magic in regard to baseslots & F-keys.
BZC's recy/fact/armo dont get assigned to an F-slot when in vehicle mode.

[General BlackDragon]

BZC uses CategoryTypeOverrride = #, and the colorize.tga is modified to make Rec/Fact/Armo/Cosnt R F A C on radar.