Oolite Bulletins

And I was the other one!

I'm really liking this HUD! At some point I might do a bit of editing to create my ideal HUD, which at the moment is a crossbreed between this one and MilHud, but that requires first finding enough time and energy, and learning how to create a HUD! While there are available tutorials/reference pages for textures, shipdata.plists and such, I've never managed to find any for HUDs.

Until then, I think I might use this one!

Deleted the old ZIP, uploaded a new ZIP, with a corrected javascript (header), and a readme. Put "Creative Common License" language in the readme (JBHUD.txt).

The readme includes some advice on adjusting to other resolutions, making the "red and blue glows thicker/thinner", Credits etc.

I've arbitrarily assigned the version number 1.02 to the script, as the version number progressed from Killer Wolf's Dynamic Hud through Wyvern (MilSpec = 1.01) to 1.02 for this series-of-derived dynamic hud scripts. I GUESS that's OK.

JBHUD:
http://www.box.net/shared/zq6hgs9ocl

Mauiby de Fug wrote:

... At some point I might do a bit of editing to create my ideal HUD ...

My ideal HUD would fix gourmet coffee for me. But Javascript doesn't seem to be working.

JeffBTX wrote:

My ideal HUD would fix gourmet coffee for me. But Javascript doesn't seem to be working.

You need blue mountain script for that, Jeff.

Ah... Jamaican Blue Mountain Script (.jbms) (I prefer Papau New Guinea. Sometimes people refer to it as "PNG" when talking coffee. JBM is kind of overpriced, and the original JBM strain has been ruined from over production).

Mauiby de Fug wrote:

...but that requires first finding enough time and energy, and learning how to create a HUD! While there are available tutorials/reference pages for textures, shipdata.plists and such, I've never managed to find any for HUDs....

Does one of the current hud creators takes this challenge and creates such a wiki page?
There are a lot of hud features that are not used in the standard hud, so nobody will learn them by looking at existing stuff. If someone starts with a basic page, I am sure more expert users will fill in the blanks.

Some stuff is very cryptic without a manual. e.g the internal hud uses y_origin. Certainly not self explaining. It must have been added shortly after this suggestion to align the huds to the screen.

Achh... ! y_origin! When I got back into Oolite recently, that confused me. Nothing I did when working with HUDs made sense. So I took that key out, and the universe was "right again". Now I understand.

Smivs is a pretty good writer (in my opinion). I don't know if he has worked w/ HUDs.

I'm "too wordy". It's like that Austrian King when he was lecturing Mozart in the movie "Amadeus": "Too many notes! There are only so many notes that an ear can hear in an evening. Just cut a few!". And I used to be a tech writer, on occasion (in the US Army).

JeffBTX wrote:

Smivs is a pretty good writer (in my opinion). I don't know if he has worked w/ HUDs.

Thanks. Unfortunately I've never done a HUD, so can't really help much here. To be honest, although there are some lovely HUDs out there, I actually like the standard one best...it does everything well in a muted sort of way, and I guess I'm just kinda used to it now.
[/being old and set in my ways]

I've now taken it out for a few test flights.

With regards to different resolutions: my resolution is 1440x900. When in full screen, the contraster and the critical glow are scaled with no obvious issues. When in windowed mode, however, there is a band on either side of the screen where the critical glow is not applied, which looks a little odd. (I would take some screenshots, but my computer just crashed - it seems to be recently having trouble with things running fullscreen for some reason...). The contraster also ends at the band, but that's not a problem for me. I might try scaling the image and seeing how that affects things. Presumably I'll need to do the same for the cloaking device when I eventually acquire one!

I do find the targeting disk a bit distracting - I can't see through it to see what I'm shooting at - so I'll either make it more transparent or remove it all together. I'm also having trouble adjusting to the placement of the indicators, but that happened when I switched HUDs from default to MilHud - in a couple of days I should be fine with that!

The HUD also integrates nicely with BGS, too, which makes me happy!

Anyways, many thanks for a useful oxp!

Mauiby de Fug wrote:

I've now taken it out for a few test flights.

With regards to different resolutions: my resolution is 1440x900. When in full screen, the contraster and the critical glow are scaled with no obvious issues. When in windowed mode, however, there is a band on either side of the screen where the critical glow is not applied, which looks a little odd. (I would take some screenshots, but my computer just crashed - it seems to be recently having trouble with things running fullscreen for some reason...). The contraster also ends at the band, but that's not a problem for me. I might try scaling the image and seeing how that affects things. Presumably I'll need to do the same for the cloaking device when I eventually acquire one!

I do find the targeting disk a bit distracting - I can't see through it to see what I'm shooting at - so I'll either make it more transparent or remove it all together. I'm also having trouble adjusting to the placement of the indicators, but that happened when I switched HUDs from default to MilHud - in a couple of days I should be fine with that!

The HUD also integrates nicely with BGS, too, which makes me happy!

Anyways, many thanks for a useful oxp!

Mauiby;

Our resolutions, 1440x900 and 1680x1050, have the same ratios... 1.6

That's good, you say that positions / heights / widths don't need to be adjusted (in full screen)... then APPARANTLY Oolite is using the same adjusted coordinate system for HUDs for both of us... 768x480. Good to know - I wasn't sure before. Thanks for this post.

(Windowed) Instead of scaling the image (in a graphics program) try changing the width in the plists. Instead of width = 768, try, heck, maybe 775, then 780, etc, until it works (hopefully this will). I KNOW that you can change widths and X-coordinates until something "falls off the edge of the screen", either partially or fully. It just seems to me that altering the PLIST is better than trying to alter the IMAGE... "safer"; otherwise you might lose the alpha channel, etc.

Sorry, I don't know much about playing games in windowed mode. I always go full screen.

Yes; try lowering the alpha value for the Targeting Disk (as I recall I set it to 0.60)... maybe 0.30 will work for you to make it more transparent, or even 0.20. If not, then taking it out might be better for you as you suggest. I altered the scale of the crosshair to make it tighter and smaller, so that should help. Trying to make it even smaller, however, doesn't work too good (experience); it starts losing its "shape".

There is a way to "cheat" to get the Cloaking Device.... TEMPORARILY for testing purposes. If you are interested, let me know and I will PM you. Otherwise.... whatever you do for the Critical Glow, will work for the Cloak Glow, if you duplicate what you did between the JBHUDCRT and JBHUDCLK plists.

Glad you like the OXP. In all fairness, its no big deal, I just built on the work of others. Kaks practically wrote the script for me... I just had to tweak it in a few spots.

EDIT:

BTW, in case people didn't know... you can simulate being in Critical Condition by engaging your ECM over-and-over-again until your energy is gone.

With this HUD, do this and observe the relationship of the "red fog", your "Warning Sound", and your status light. It's interesting.

JeffBTX wrote:

Good to know - I wasn't sure before. Thanks for this post.

Yeah, you put a few disclaimers in the readme, so I though it might be useful to give a bit of feedback!

(Windowed) Instead of scaling the image (in a graphics program) try changing the width in the plists. Instead of width = 768, try, heck, maybe 775, then 780, etc, until it works (hopefully this will). I KNOW that you can change widths and X-coordinates until something "falls off the edge of the screen", either partially or fully. It just seems to me that altering the PLIST is better than trying to alter the IMAGE... "safer"; otherwise you might lose the alpha channel, etc.

Sorry, I don't know much about playing games in windowed mode. I always go full screen.

Thanks for the tip! I play in a maximised window, so the full size I use is 1440x848. That way I can see my menu, and switch between other windows, as I often have other things happening on the computer as well.

There is a way to "cheat" to get the Cloaking Device.... TEMPORARILY for testing purposes. If you are interested, let me know and I will PM you. Otherwise.... whatever you do for the Critical Glow, will work for the Cloak Glow, if you duplicate what you did between the JBHUDCRT and JBHUDCLK plists.

I know of two ways off the top of my head to illegally acquire it. I could hack the save game, or make use of an oxp I made, which allows me to buy the cloaking device (and the naval energy unit as well) before I've completed the requisite mission. This wasn't the original purpose of the "oxp"; I was just playing about with plists and seeing what things did...

BTW, in case people didn't know... you can simulate being in Critical Condition by engaging your ECM over-and-over-again until your energy is gone.

I remember finding this out quite by accident in the middle of a firefight, when I managed to self-destruct by using my ECM. Needless to say, I pay a bit more attention to how much energy I have these days!