Fullscreen Statusbar Mod (UPDATE: v5.2.1)

[Scuba Steve]

@NightFright I actually DID convert the Doom status bar into ZScript, partially. It was designed for my own personal use, so features I didn't care about (item display, Boom HUD colors) were unimplemented. Below is a screenshot of what it looks like:

I like this... it's a lot cleaner to implement. I know there was a previous fix that allowed this to work with the neural upsacale project, but is there a way to easily tell these projects to scale down larger gfx to fit the status bar size so other mods with high resolution hud gfx will easily work?

[NightFright]

Compatibility with mods, highres projects in particular, is something to think about once the conversion of all existing assets has been completed and proven to be 100% functional.

[NightFright]

Fun fact: While working on the new version, 3saster found a few considerable flaws with the Heretic and Hexen statusbars:

- Heretic statusbar code has a typo in its GZD code for the health chain background ("CHAINCAC", correct: "CHAINBAC")
- There are some mistakes in the GZDoom code which prevent the Hexen statusbar to show any life chain other than the one for the Fighter class (one version is used for all classes), dating back to GZDoom 3.0 (that's two years with flawed code)
- ARMCLS alignments on the Hexen statusbar have been wrong since the game exists (you can see the hands of the Gargoyle, but the panel is shifted 1 pixel to the right and one down - an obvious misalignment). This was a mistake by Raven and copied over in ports, including GZD. It's probably authentic to replicate this mistake, but it doesn't mean it's meant to look like that

It's great that this project will contribute to iron out some port-related problems as well. All these mistakes will be fixed, either by GZD devs or in the upcoming version of this mod. Stay tuned!

[AL-97]

Very nice, clean yet quite informative HUD. Say, would displaying the type of currently equipped armour be within the scope of the project? Similar to how Final Doomer HUD does it.

[3saster]

Sort of, the Boom HUD colors will now display the armor value with a color based on which armor is equipped. So if you have blue armor, the text will be blue, etc.

BTW, as a status update, the ZScript status bars themselves are finished. Right now we are in the bugfixing and refinement state, so hopefully everything goes well and will be ready for release soon.

[NightFright]

@AL-97
I had actually experimented with this approach (transparent icons in the background), but I ultimately discarded it since these background images distract too much from the actual numbers and alter the general look of the statusbar too much. On top of it, icon dimensions vary a lot throughout all the Doom-based iwads, so it's difficult to make everything look right. We aim for max compatibility in this project.

3saster's approach works a lot better IMO, also because it's subtle.

[PhysixCat]

I am happy to report that Fullscreen Statusbar works great with the newly released D4V: Doom 4 Vanilla.
Thanks again for making such a cool mod, NightFright!

https://i.imgur.com/NascKVE.png

[3saster]

I am happy to report that Fullscreen Statusbar works great with the newly released D4V: Doom 4 Vanilla.
Thanks again for making such a cool mod, NightFright!

Wait a couple of days, we got something big coming

[NightFright]

D4V will get a small patch which will improve split mode (ARMS numbers and panel resizing) and fix Boom colors - basically the same patch as for Back to Saturn X since it's a very similar STBAR lump. Stay tuned!

[NightFright]

The time has come for the big change! Thanks to the amazing work of 3saster, the epic rewrite of the entire mod in Zscript has been completed. This is most likely the biggest revamp the project has ever seen, and it was important to do this to overcome some limitations imposed by the deprecated SBARINFO code.

Most parts of the mod should still behave the way they used to in v4.x. Among the most obvious visible differences are:
- Split mode is the new default setting
- Level stats can now be fully customized (show anything you want in any corner), have additional "Fractions" display (the most useful one) and use the GZDoom console font
- More transparency levels (11 instead of 4)
- Statusbar on automap can be turned on or off
- Hexen: Active inventory item in split mode is now next to the right statusbar panel
- Hexen: Minimized automap statusbar is now not a split bar any more, but icons for keys/armor which only show when you have the items
- And a LOT more! Check the changelog here to get the full picture.

It is recommended to delete all CVAR entries from earlier releases in your GZDoom ini before running this version. To do this, search for any lines starting with fullhud_ and remove them.

Compatibility fixes:
- These needed to be updated in most cases (only Alien Vendetta, Avactor and Simplicity stayed the same). Download the new fixes here.
- I have added Doom 4 Vanilla for the occasion (mostly visual fixes to make split bar ARMS numbers and Boom colors look nicer).
- Note that Rise of the Wool Ball and Shadow of the Wool Ball support will be added again at a later time since these will need adjusted ZScript files which takes a lot longer.

Moved to GitHub:
From now on, the project is hosted on GitHub which makes version tracking and publishing updates a lot easier. Besides downloading the release, you can report any bugs you find (hopefully there won't be any, though) or features you would like to be added, provided you have a GitHub account.

What's next?
We plan to add the long-awaited Strife support with v5.1. It's gonna take a bit since Strife is mostly unexplored territory regarding statusbar modding, and coming up with a split version is also not an easy task. It's gonna happen for sure, though. Stay tuned and enjoy the mod!

Some preview screenshots:

[Xenaero]

How possible would it be to implement options for a different font for talllies and the timer? The console font doesn't scale very well at all and I find it harder to read compared to the previous versions. I'd like to suggest an option for the older font, if at all possible~

[NightFright]

Going back to the old font isn't possible since that's just numbers. Words were graphics which limited options significantly.

I see the need for some alternatives, though. We will look for some other fonts for this purpose. Maybe we can even implement an option to choose between different fonts. Will discuss it with 3saster.

[3saster]

Actually, I've looked into doing this before, and I would certainly like to do it with at least the previous font (which can be done as a font rather than graphic). I'll discuss with Nightfright which fonts we could do.

[NightFright]

How would this be for example? Using MementwoBigFont from Jimmyfonts (just a mockup, obviously there are alignment issues and everything.):



In my GitHub commit from today I have also increased spacing between the stats a bit which improves legibility IMO.

Comparison new (left) vs old (right):

[Xenaero]

Even that font looks like it'd run into issues on brighter backgrounds and it seems to scale far less well than pixel font alternatives.

I personally prefer the older version's font because it scales well while maintaining legibility at all resolutions. It had a sort of stroke/drop shadow effect that outlined the pixel-font characters that worked very well in all forms of scaling and seemed pretty Doom-like no matter the map background it was put against. If you can find a good pixel font that would fit the same vein, I'm sure it'd have similar results. Due to their small character size, they're forced to be legible. Compare to the arms numbers, for example.

I feel pretty lost looking at ZScript as I've only worked with ACS and SBARINFO, so I'm not much help on this endeavor, sorry~