Oolite Bulletins

Back to the topic: Hud problems.

For some reason there was never a hud page in the wiki. I now added one: [wiki]hud.plist[/wiki]

I am not an hud expert so experienced hud designers can probably correct any mistakes I made on that page.

That's great news, Eric. Well done and thanks.

Yes... thanks Eric, very useful.

Thank you Eric Walch!

You did great! 3 things I didn't know and haven't seen before:

1) n_banks or n_bars for the energy gauge.(This could be really helpful for ships with large energy banks)

2)title for comms log

3)background rgb color for comms log

Some guys were looking for the comms log info in another thread and they'll be very happy for this. Thanx Eric!!!

Eric Walch wrote:

Back to the topic: Hud problems.

For some reason there was never a hud page in the wiki. I now added one: [wiki]hud.plist[/wiki]

I am not an hud expert so experienced hud designers can probably correct any mistakes I made on that page.

I think that proves, 'Every cloud has a silver lining', thanks Eric

CommonSenseOTB wrote:

You did great! 3 things I didn't know and haven't seen before:

1) n_banks or n_bars for the energy gauge.(This could be really helpful for ships with large energy banks)

That one was new to me too. I just noticed this option while writing the page. I thought is was hardcoded to 64 units as maximum per bank, but testing it, the key seems to work correctly as advertised.

I think that for a generic hud it would be bad practice to use that key, but for specific ship-huds with much energy, you can avoid having 20 small banks but create just 5 big banks. (Or an adder with 20 banks with almost no energy per bank)

Eric Walch wrote:

Back to the topic: Hud problems.

For some reason there was never a hud page in the wiki. I now added one: [wiki]hud.plist[/wiki]

I am not an hud expert so experienced hud designers can probably correct any mistakes I made on that page.

Thanks for putting that up Eric, any chance of getting some info on selectors:

"The selector is a hardcode name." is a little, er, enigmatic

Eric did a great job. I don't know how much more information could be included. The way to learn about how the huds work is to do what I did at the beginning of the year. Take a copy of the hud from the config file of the game and place it in the AddOns folder. You can then mess around with it. Make a change. See what it does. Do that a couple hundred times with all the different adjustments you can make and you will KNOW how it works. It is that simple. Next step is to make your own basic hud to your own specifications. After that it is all downhill from there and gets much easier to the point where instead of making 5 or 10 adjustments to get it right it only takes 2 or 3. Familiarity is the real hurdle. Names of selectors are mostly self explanatory. Mind you, this list is for developers and tinkerers, those who usually read between the lines. Not for the casual user. I don't think the casual user should or even would want to mess around with the hud.plist anyway. Like scripting, it is good to see working examples with all the syntax. Copy what works and make small changes and you really can't go wrong. Just takes a little time and trial and error and you will make huds better than mine.

CommonSenseOTB wrote:

3 things I didn't know and haven't seen before:

2)title for comms log

I removed that one from the documentation. The other two I had tested and worked okay. I just tested title. It does not work correct. It pushes the whole text one line lower but does not print the title, and now the text also does not fit any used background rectangle.
So, forget this feature.

CommonSenseOTB wrote:

Eric did a great job. I don't know how much more information could be included. ......
Take a copy of the hud from the config file of the game and place it in the AddOns folder. You can then mess around with it. .....

Thanks CommonSenseOTB and others.
Starting with the default hud is the most sensible approach to do the huds. And that is probably the reason why nobody bothered making a hud page.
There was only the problem of some new features that are not in the default hud, so you might miss them. And also the x_origin etc is not very self explanatory.

Cheers bud, that'll be very useful.
i notice the Y values for the GUIs are in quotes, i take it that's a typo.

Killer Wolf wrote:

i notice the Y values for the GUIs are in quotes, i take it that's a typo.

I just copied them from an existing hud. Using quotes is always good, but not always needed. Quotes become only necessary when the text contains spaces. In this case you can use it both ways.
But, I agree, it is not consistent. Probably because I copied it from different sources.