[ZScript] [BaseStatusBar] - Vertical-Center with DrawString?

[violgamba]

Hi. I'm struggling to find a way to have BaseStatusBar.DrawString() draw some text to the center of the screen when that text is large enough to wrap multiple times. When I use the flag DI_SCREEN_VCENTER, the origin is at screen center, but then the lines of text are drawn below that. It seems like BaseStatusBar.DrawString() is a lower level function than HudMessage(), so perhaps it doesn't provide a way to calculate the height of the text and center based on it?

I tried reviewing hudmessages.cpp, but I don't think it relies on BaseStatusBar.DrawString(). Not 100% sure about that, though, as it was hard to follow.

Does anyone know how this could be done?

[Jarewill]

You should also use item-relative positioning flags such as DI_ITEM_VCENTER alongside the screen-relative one.

[violgamba]

I should have mentioned that I did try DI_ITEM_VCENTER. It didn't seem to have any effect on the text positioning. Perhaps it needs to be used in conjunction with some other setting? Here's my code, in case it helps:

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myHud.DrawString(MyFont, MessageText, (scaledScreenSize.x * .025, scaledScreenSize.y * .025), myHud.DI_SCREEN_VCENTER | myHud.DI_ITEM_VCENTER, Font.CR_UNTRANSLATED, 1, scaledScreenSize.x * .95, -5);

(There's a bit of indirection with my code design, thus the "myHud" prefixes.)

[violgamba]

I'm attaching a demo PK3 showing the effect of vertical alignment of the screen, and vertical alignment of the item when using StringDraw. Perhaps this will help clarify the issue. Note, in the attached mod, that the vertical alignment of the item doesn't seem to affect on how StringDraw renders.

[metalx1000]

Thank you for sharing the pk3, I wish more people did that. It makes things much easier to trouble shoot.
I've played around with it some, and I'm not 100% sure what you are going for, but I think this might get you close.

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DrawString(MyFont, CurrentMessage, (0,-scaledScreenSize.y*.5), DI_SCREEN_CENTER|DI_TEXT_ALIGN_CENTER , Font.CR_UNTRANSLATED, 1, scaledScreenSize.x * .95);

DI_SCREEN_CENTER|DI_TEXT_ALIGN_CENTER might be part of what you need and then I played with the y position a bit "-scaledScreenSize.y*.5"

I have sound this site useful.
https://jekyllgrim.github.io/ZScript_Ba ... usbar.html

[violgamba]

Thanks for the reply @metalx1000! The thing I'm going for is to vertically center text on the screen. You addressed my problem when you said that you played with the y position a bit "-scaledScreenSize.y*.5". Unfortunately, manually determining the vertical position like this is unfeasable for two reasons, (1) I have quite a few texts throughout my work, so manually positioning each is cumbersome (2) when the screen size changes, it affects the relative size of text, causing it to wrap at different positions and take up different amounts of vertical space. The attached pictures show this (note: I had to scale down to meet the file-size limit).

Ideally, it'd be possible to dynamically calculate the height of a text and vertically position it based on that. But given the dearth of solutions, this may not be possible. I'll keep looking, though. If I find a solution I'll post it here.