The "border texture" around status bars

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NGX
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The "border texture" around status bars

Post by NGX »

Has there been any thoughts and ideas on improvements to the frame or border texture that shows up on the sides (and beyond) of the status bar?

I think it's been like this since ZDoom's beginning around the turn of the millennium. I've honestly always hated it.

In ol' vanilla Doom the border or frame texture was the same as the status bar texture so it all felt like one.

I was wondering if you developers felt the same way with regard to this bit needing some brushing up.

Personally I'd prefer just black I think, however if there's a possibility of a more elegant improvement then I think more of us would welcome it. When I made a ZDoom mod I modded the default border texture to match with the status bar.
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Re: The "border texture" around status bars

Post by Enjay »

NGX wrote:In ol' vanilla Doom the border or frame texture was the same as the status bar texture so it all felt like one.
Image

Image

:?:
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NGX
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Re: The "border texture" around status bars

Post by NGX »

Really? Well, my mistake. Didn't intend to be misleading about it :(
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Re: The "border texture" around status bars

Post by Enjay »

Perhaps the confusion is because the original resolution of Doom was 320x200 and the status bar is 320 pixels wide. i.e. it is not set up to expect a wide screen ratio (because no one had them in 1993).

If you make the view window smaller than full screen in Vanilla Doom, you can see the border textures (as per my screen shots). However, if you use a widescreen ratio in GZDoom, the status bar isn't as wide as the window, so you can see the underlying flats at the sides of the bar.

For what it's worth, it is possible to specify the background flat in MAPINFO and I'm pretty sure there are a couple of widescreen status bar mods too.

Personally, these days I just tend to use the fullscreen HUD (partly because of this situation).
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NGX
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Re: The "border texture" around status bars

Post by NGX »

Yeah I guess I remember the marble texture since you pointed it out. I thought I remembered the gray stone being there :3:

While there are certainly options to download a fullscreen hud and whatnot, ZDoom would just be better out of the box if this was addressed. For example it could be coded to use the x-coordinates across the Health field and duplicate that to cover the screen on the left-hand side and the x-coordinates across the Armor field to cover the right-hand side, or something like that.
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Re: The "border texture" around status bars

Post by Rachael »

NGX wrote:While there are certainly options to download a fullscreen hud and whatnot, ZDoom would just be better out of the box if this was addressed. For example it could be coded to use the x-coordinates across the Health field and duplicate that to cover the screen on the left-hand side and the x-coordinates across the Armor field to cover the right-hand side, or something like that.
That's VERY subjective, and generally a more minimalist approach is better with an engine that supports mods. The idea being - if you want something, you can create it, yourself, and perhaps even share it with others.

It might be better to think of ZDoom as a way to open the door for you to the nearly infinite possibilities, rather than something that thinks of your every whim before you do.
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NGX
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Re: The "border texture" around status bars

Post by NGX »

Rachael wrote:
NGX wrote:While there are certainly options to download a fullscreen hud and whatnot, ZDoom would just be better out of the box if this was addressed. For example it could be coded to use the x-coordinates across the Health field and duplicate that to cover the screen on the left-hand side and the x-coordinates across the Armor field to cover the right-hand side, or something like that.
It might be better to think of ZDoom as a way to open the door for you to the nearly infinite possibilities, rather than something that thinks of your every whim before you do.
To be fair I didn't bring it up for 10 years :lol:

I don't mean to ask for it to be tailored to my preferences but rather point out that this bit of ZDoom hasn't received any changes since like '98? It's something that in my opinion just looks odd, and everything else about [G]ZDoom has reached a high quality level, with regard to mouse response feel unlike early versions of ZDoom, proper collision detection unlike Boom, all the bang with new features one could ask for, and so on.

I'm sorry if my tone comes off weird, it's a thing of circumstance outside of ZDoom perhaps :lol:
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Re: The "border texture" around status bars

Post by Graf Zahl »

It all boils down to "not needed" anyway. There's mods around that provide wide status bars. You can write your own mod that redefines the border texture if you do not like it.
The engine's own job here is to provide reasonable defaults, and by sticking to the textures used originally for this purposes, I think it's doing that.
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