Simple HUD Add-ons [Updated September 22, 2024]

[Tekish]

I'm afraid LevelInfo doesn't dynamically detect power-ups, and everything displayed must be predefined in the mod. This means that doing what you want would require the editing and recompilation of levelassign.acs, found in the source folder inside the LevelInfo archive. The changes would need to include the player class name for mod detection, as well as all of the power-ups you want shown (even if they already exist in other mods or Doom proper). It will also allow you to specify custom names for every power-up, including different types of invulnerability.

[Doomniel]

Hello Tekish, love your HUD add-ons, I just can't play without them. Do you know if it's possible to show (and hopefully add in the future!) the skill difficulty selected to play, on the LevelInfo options?
Thank you for your work!

[Tekish]

Glad you like the add-ons. It is definitely possible to do, but I feel there are two issues with this request. The first is that I'm not sure of the use case for having this information displayed on the screen at all times, as surely one would know the difficulty they chose. Secondly, and probably more importantly, this would then become the only data that is text-based in an add-on that outputs numbers. That means this will negatively impact the way information is displayed, and would potentially waste a lot of screen space. The solution there would be to make it work as its own add-on that you could place anywhere, with maybe its own custom abbreviations. But I feel compelled to ask the question again: why is this needed? What am I not seeing?

[Doomniel]

Yes, I agree with you, one would know the difficulty he's playing. The main purpose of the info would not be for the player himself, but for someone who would be, for instance, watching a recorded game, and might be doubtful about the level of difficulty being played.
But that's ok, things are already pretty nice as they are, thank you anyway!

[Tekish]

I've just finished moving these add-ons to a more stable file host: GitHub. This means that downloading will require an additional click and changelogs will no longer be embedded in the thread. The add-ons themselves, however, have not been changed since the dates indicated in the original post.

[yum13241]

These'd be in my autoload if AmmoInfo enumerated all ammo types instead of using a hard coded list.

[Delfino Furioso]

These'd be in my autoload if AmmoInfo enumerated all ammo types instead of using a hard coded list.

seconded

[Tekish]

This isn't really feasible given how a lot of mod ammo types are used. I experimented with this kind of automation before (also with LevelInfo and its power-ups) and the problem was that it often picked up garbage or information that required further formatting. Without the context of how ammo is used, there's no way to algorithmically filter that all out. This means that exceptions need to be hard coded anyway, defeating the purpose of the whole endeavor.

I'll give you an example: during this process, I ran into a mod that prefixed the names of their ammo types. AmmoInfo would automatically read and combine that information to be displayed on-screen. The problem was that if you turned on abbreviations, you could wind up with a list of identical ammo types. If you didn't use abbreviations, you'd have extremely long names that spanned to nearly the center of the screen. There was no real solution here other than to write custom code for this set of data.

Many mods have quirks like this, and it's why I don't think automation is viable.

[yum13241]

Use the Tag property.

I say use a mix of automation and hardcodedness.

I believe the ZScript is just a wrapper around some ACS anyway.

[Tekish]

Outside of ammo types that inherit from base Doom, I'm not sure I've ever seen them assigned tags in the mods I've looked at.

I also still don't see a reason to add the bloat and overhead of automation when it's still going to require just as much maintenance as it does without it. I would rather deal with adding everything manually than address the issues that will arise when someone tries to use an automated AmmoInfo with whatever I didn't test it with.

That said, this has got me thinking about how much of a hassle it could be for people to update AmmoInfo themselves. I'll look into a way to simplify that process. At the very least, I'll try and make it so changing the ammo configuration doesn't require the recompilation of ACS.

[stainedofmind]

That said, this has got me thinking about how much of a hassle it could be for people to update AmmoInfo themselves. I'll look into a way to simplify that process. At the very least, I'll try and make it so changing the ammo configuration doesn't require the recompilation of ACS.

I would suggest maybe ditching most, if not all the ACS and switch it over to zscript, then you can set up a specialized lump reader similar to mods like Gun Bonsai and Corruption Cards, then all people would need is a single textfile to mod in the correct info for non-doom standard ammo types.

[yum13241]

I agree.

then you can set up a specialized lump reader similar to mods like Gun Bonsai and Corruption Cards,

You could just borrow it from them, but then customize it.

[Tekish]

Per your feedback, I made some changes to AmmoInfo (and LevelInfo) to allow for easier customization.

All internal ammo/power-up assignment is now handled via ZScript, which means ACS recompilation will no longer be necessary for mod compatibility updates. This ideally means less save game breakage for small updates.

AmmoInfo and LevelInfo also now support custom lumps for configuration. Sample lumps containing instructions and examples can be found in the source directories of their respective archives, or via Github (AmmoInfo, LevelInfo).

Additionally, I added a command to use when AmmoInfo is loaded to obtain some of the information needed for its configuration. Entering "event ammoinspect" (without quotes) in the console will spit out the active player class and ammo class names for the currently held weapon (if applicable). When used in conjunction with logfile, you can copy and paste the relevant data into an AmmoInfo lump.

While I tested these modifications pretty extensively, there's a good chance I missed something. If something doesn't work as it should, please don't hesitate to bring it to my attention.

[yum13241]

liassign and aiassign aren't working for me. I want to add compatibility for my mods. I tried naming the file LIASSIGN and liassign.txt, and none worked.

[Tekish]

Did you place them in the root of your archive(s)? They won't be read otherwise. If you're putting it in a WAD, the equivalent would be to assign no markers to it.