Fullscreen Statusbar Mod (UPDATE: v5.2.1)

[NightFright]

OK, didn't know the Heretic statusbar was that special. It's not like that in Hexen, right? Anyway, when it's not Doom, things can get weird. Anyway, thanks for the fast clearification!

[Delfino Furioso]

hey, just a heads up about what's cooking over at gzdoom's github repo

recent commits have backported the hud scaling logic from raze
in doing so, the con_scale cvar has been removed

this causes the mod to crash at startup, due 'zscript/stats/stats.zsc' trying to evaluate the CVAR at line 464

[NightFright]

We will wait with an update until there is a new official GZDoom release, but thanks for the heads-up.
Does this mean there won't be any way to resize the HUD manually any longer, then? That would actually be kinda inconvenient. I am actually thinking about hud_scale right now, though. Looks like that one's gone, too. That con_scale thing might only be used for stats.

This looks like a more complex change than I initially expected since all vid_fps offsets have also been removed. 3saster might need to take care of that.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

Do you think this mod will work with Hands of Necromancy?

I wanted to check using the recently released demo, but alas, since it is a shareware, custom pk3 files are disabled.

[NightFright]

The Hands of Necromancy HUD looks nothing like any statusbar that's in this project, so you'll have to be content with what that game will have to offer. Might as well come with its own fullscreen solution, anyway, if you are lucky.

[NightFright]

And by pure chance, GZDoom 4.8.0 gets released just on the next day - call it fate. This kinda forced my hand to release a new version on short notice, so don't expect fundamental changes. However, I was still able to squeeze in a small new option for level stats.

CHANGELOG v5.1.11
[ALL] Compatibility fix for stats.zs to support GZDoom v4.8.0+
[ALL] Stats: Added option to abbreviate stats names (e.g. 'S' instead of 'Secrets')
[DOOM] Automatic Compatibility: 'Avactor' statusbar improved ('Ammo'/'Health'/'Armor' labels centered)

[Delfino Furioso]

ooh abbreviated strings, nice!

thank you!

[NightFright]

For this feature I got inspired by other ports like Woof or Crispy which also have those stats abbreviated. Figured it might come in handy if you want to save a bit of screen space even with stats activated.

[Delfino Furioso]

do you plan to apply it also to powerups?

[NightFright]

I was considering it, but it can't be done without losing the meaning, even if you keep 3-4 chars instead of just one or two (which is definitely too little). After all, this feature is about the stuff that stays on screen all the time, while powerups disappear again after a short time, so it's not that bothersome.

Here is a list with all powerups and possible 3-/4-char abbreviations. As you can see, many words are already quite short, so you won't gain much. Especially with three chars, several powerup names look very similar to each other. Also, it's not always that easy to find short versions that make sense. I think before you have to start guessing what it actually means, it's better to leave it unchanged.

---

9 chars:
Revenant --> REV / REVN

8 chars:
Berserk --> BRS / BRSK
Chicken --> CHK / CHIK

7 chars:
Hidden --> HID / HIDN
Shadow --> SDW / SHAD
Target --> TRG / TRGT
Immune --> IMN / IMUN
Flight --> FLY / FLGT
Damage --> DMG / DAMG

6 chars:
Light --> LIT / LITE
Ghost --> GHO / GHST
Power --> PWR / POWR
Speed --> SPD / SPED
Torch --> TOR / TRCH
Regen --> REG / REGN
Baron --> BAR / BARN
Morph --> MOR / MORP

4 chars:
Suit --> BIO / (SUIT)
Ally --> ALY / (ALLY)
Scan --> SCN / (SCAN)
Quad --> QUD / (QUAD)
Rage --> RAG / (RAGE)
Time --> TIM / (TIME)

3 chars:
Pig --> PIG / ----

[mdvhimself]

can you add support for Hands of Necromancy? thx in advance!

[NightFright]

Please see what I wrote just a few posts above yours, just one month ago. Someone else had already asked that. We will not support it.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

This reminds me: when you said that "the Hands of Necromancy HUD looks nothing like any statusbar that's in this project", did you mean visually or in terms of scripting?

[NightFright]

That statusbar is a lot like Heretic. You can't just split that like in Doom, one would have to create new graphics. I neither have the time nor motivation to do that at this point, frankly. Also, it's not exactly a widespread game, brandnew in fact, so we don't even know how big the need for this would be. Until now, two people have asked for this.

But again, even if there were hundreds of posts about it, at this point we are running this project in pure maintenance mode, you can't expect any major new features. If it breaks with new GZDoom versions, I'll see to it that it keeps working. Other than that, I am afraid it's out of scope. Not even Strife support (which was one of the few features we still wanted to implement) is realistic right now.

I know that must be disappointing to read, but there are many things I cannot do on my own since my ZScript knowledge is very limited. ZScript conversion was done almost single-handedly by 3saster and the code is quite complex, at least from my point of view. Plus not easy to learn - or have you seen many (or any) other ZScript-based statusbars that have popped up since its introduction? Right, everyone is still doing it in SBARINFO. So yeah, that's not exactly helping, either, sadly.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

Nah, it is cool. I was just curious. Thanks for letting me know!