Hud concept questions

[SR114]

I have a couple of questions regarding Huds. First, does anyone know how to display the stored weapon in the hud? I'm trying to make a halo 3 version for the fun of it. In halo 3 the weapon icon of the current weapon is displayed above the ammo meter. The second weapon is displayed below it.

My second question regards "binoculars". When I checked the "don't show when zoomed" flag in the crosshair overlays section of the weapon hud interface, it hides my entire reticle even when I don't zoom. I'm trying to make "binocular vision" for non-scoped weapons. I'd like it if the reticle didn't show up, in fact, I'd like it if the entire hud didn't show up (except for the binoculars). Is this possible?

[Donut]

ok, secondary weapons. it is possible to simulate it, but the amount of work that would go into it is ludicrous. i think we are all aware enough to remember what our secondary weapon is.
for binoculars: to make the reticule only appear when unzoomed, try checking off "dont show when zoomed" and "one zoom level". if that doesnt work, add another crosshair block, and set that for one zoom level only but dont reference a bitmap. so unzoomed shows the reticule, and zoomed shows the blank crosshair block
i dont think you can stop the rest of the hud from appearing when zoomed though.

[SR114]

I tried your first method-- checking both the one zoom level and "don't show when zoomed". It Didn't work. I tried the second method. I duplicated the first crosshair and checked the "one zoom level" flag, nulling out the crosshair bitmap as well. I got an exception error. Thanks for the help though :)

[ThePlague]

i dont think you can stop the rest of the hud from appearing when zoomed though.Well then how does the zoom for the sniper work out?

I'd think it'd be the same way as that, because when zoomed in with the sniper makes the shield bar and etc. disappear. I'm not sure though. Just mess with what donut said and try to get it not to exception, and I think the second method should work. (taking into consideration that I haven't done shit with HUDs or anything tag related for awhile thanks to Linux, so i'm going off of dumb instinct and back of brain memory)

[SR114]

Sorry it took so long to reply.

Yes I did try out his methods.

I even tried out the double crosshair method using a blank crosshair. Still didn't work (no exception though).

I've decided to move on to the hud in general.

The real Halo 3 Hud
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1085/775700808_9d91b3ab3e_o.jpg

My version
http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l7/echoranger449/h3hud-1.png

I would appreciate any suggestions. i.e. bitmap improvements, colors, dimensions, etc.

P.S. the shield background takes up more room when uncharged. What I did was make the shield background invisible when charged. I used the health background as the normal, charged background.

I think it would work better if I could make it a sprite...
Is it possible to make the bitmap a sprite so that the first bitmap shows up when charged and the second one shows up when uncharged (flashing)?

[dark57]

Shield bar looks a little to small and maybe put a curve in it? Besides that it looks decent.

[Masterz1337]

Wow that's really good. I'd just set the offset of the shield bar up a bit by subtracting 10 from the y value of the offset. And of course change the color on the bullets. Fantastic work. 10/10

edit: the spacing on the side of the weapon interface compared to the grenade interface is off a bit.

[Inferno]

Make the reticule a little lighter blue and do what masterz said and you will win.

[FRain]

put a curve in it? .
NO
NO
NO
NO.

NEVER put curves into Halo 1 HUD elements, they always end up looking like absolute garbage when you do.

[Donut]

NO
NO
NO
NO.

NEVER put curves into Halo 1 HUD elements, they always end up looking like absolute garbage when you do.
my visor looks fine..... let me see if i can find a picture...

[FRain]

I'm talking about making stuff look 3-d in the visor. The halo 3 effect, I'm talking about.

[dark57]

NO
NO
NO
NO.

NEVER put curves into Halo 1 HUD elements, they always end up looking like absolute garbage when you do.

Oh i never knew that lol.

[SR114]

I think it would be ok to make it 3d-ish, but it would require a much higher resolution. I want to get it as close as I can, but at the same time I don't want to make bitmaps with 4096 pixel dimensions.

Everyone's given me a lot of help and I'll try to use as much as I can. Right now I'm reshaping the hud meter to get it closer to the Halo 3 version.

[FRain]

You can only make sprites up to 512x512.

[SR114]

I did not know that. Thanks!

By the way, here is my re-done "glow" bar. I'll be tweaking the main one shortly

http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l7/echoranger449/hudglow.jpg

This is what it looks like in game
http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l7/echoranger449/final_shield_flash.png

Now I'm working on the suggested fixes.

[Inferno]

Sexy HUD is sexy. Please release this with a classic version that has original weapons and reticules. Like the h2 hud was released.

[SR114]

I've never really released tags before, but I could do that. What do you mean exactly by classic?

BTW, a friend gave me a binocular bitmap which I am planning to use.

http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l7/echoranger449/charged.png
http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l7/echoranger449/uncharged.png
http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l7/echoranger449/nightvision_binoculars.png

Here is something similar to what the h3 AR will look like with this hud (shaders not adjusted):
http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l7/echoranger449/h3_ar_and_hud.png

I'll adjust the radar later.

[t3h m00kz]

That hud is pretty bad ass. Binocs are especially sexy. Still, I think the unzoomed hud needs to be a LITTLE more transparent, about 75% opacity of what it is now. It's slightly overwhelming, but not much. I could just be crazy though, I don't know what it looks like in the heat of the battle, lolol. Compared to the H3 picture, it looks pretty much dead accurate, honestly.

The AR looks pretty good too. The only problem with the H3 weapons being imported into H1 is the whole gun pointing down thing...

It's possible to get it to look like H3, but still be pointed in the right place. The gun just has to be a bit higher... You can get the normal models to look similar to H3 with Yelo Battery for instance, just by moving them upwards. Covers a fuckload of the screen though.

[FRain]

Download the H2 HUD by Polar and use the font for that one.

[SR114]

I'll try making my own first.

[p0lar_bear]

The name of the font face used in Halo 2's and 3's UI elements is called "ITC Conduit (http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/itc/conduit/)."

Install it and use the font command in tool. It will prompt you to select a font face and size to create the font tag from.

The only gripe I have is that the shield bar is too small, and you don't have a health meter here. Because of the limits of Halo's engine (no recharging health; only shields), I would highly recommend making one so players know just how close to death they are.

As for what people are saying about curvy elements, if the RGB channel (on meters) or alpha (for static elements) isn't done right, it will look like crap on low resolutions (example: the MA5K reticle on Snow Grove).

[SR114]

Thanks for the font-- I'm working on it right now.

http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l7/echoranger449/numbers.jpg

Done. I might want to fix the zero though.

[dark57]

Dude i love that lol.

[SR114]

Thanks polar bear, it worked great. I'll fix/create:
1.) the "m" for the meter (distance)
2.) the other weapon icons
3.) the radar

after dinner

[.Wolf™]

Hav´nt this been done so manny times?Looks good thougt..

[SR114]

the awesome thing is that when I took that halo 3 hud screenshot and adjusted my hud screenshot, the shield bar is at least 90% identical.

In fact, the biggest difference was the top left corner of the shield meter (a few pixels are too transparent).

I used the max resolution I could when comparing (1280x1024).
http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l7/echoranger449/h3hud-2.png

Got the shield bar, "m", and radar done. Doing the other weapon icons now.

I've figured out a method to create the icons quickly. Here is how the easiest part of the HUD currently works:go to http://halowiki.net/p/Weapons
look for the weapon icon and click the first image, then the second image that loads
save image
select all and cut
create new image 180x70
paste image
fill background with black

copy green channel
paste it over red and blue

Select white lines with magic wand of tolerance "25"
create new layer
paste {209,209,209} into selection

brightness and contrast original outline (not "fill" outline)
40
-40

reverse both layers
clean up any stray pixels
merge layers
select layer
cut layer

resize canvas to 130x66
paste layer
resize it so that width equals 126 pixels. Keep aspect ratio though.
center layer
copy new layer and paste it

select duplicated layer and increase brightness and contrast to 20,-20

cut layer
merge visible
go to channels and duplicate one of the three channels-- call it Alpha 1
clear it
paste layer

Make sure Alpha lines up with the RGB channel

go back to RGB channel and select all
press Alt + left click to subtract a rectangle one pixel less on each side than the selection rectangle
make sure pure black is secondary color and clear selection area
paste blue {0,0,255} into selection

save as tiff and compile bitmap


swap to 32 bit
miscellaneous: mipmap count= 1
bitmaps: a8r8g8b8,uncheck "compressed",mipmaps= 0

recompile bitmaps
Here is what it looks like:http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l7/echoranger449/h3hud_br.jpg

[Inferno]

If you want to lower the reticule like in halo 3 its possible to do it I think. You would need to move the reticule down in the hud tag then go into the weapon tag and lower the first person offset the exact same amount so the bullet comes out where the reticule is.

[SR114]

I was thinking of that, but is that a good idea?

[Masterz1337]

No, it wouldn't work.

[SR114]

Thanks for clearing that up. how do the new weapon icons look? Are they better than the older version? I think they are. I tried the new method on the AR icon again and saw more detailed results.

[Inferno]

No, it wouldn't work.
Care to elaborate?

[p0lar_bear]

Care to elaborate?

Sure, you could move the reticle down, but that would fuck everything up since the projectiles originate from the first-person camera's position.

There's a flag that lets weapons fire from the weapon's origin instead (like vehicle weapons), but that wouldn't work either since I'm pretty sure it means the origin on the third-person model. IIRC the earlier versions of H2CE's maps had an SMG set to fire from the weapon's origin, and the cone of fire wasn't centered on the reticle.

[Masterz1337]

The bullets will always go towards the center of the screen, changign the offset wuill just change where they come from.

Edit: The first H2CE weaposn were screwed up from a script, not tagwork in guerillla.

[Inferno]

You can offset the origin of projectile. By that I mean you can literally make the projectile come out of the camera with a X Y Z offset. So you could make it come out of camera but with a offset that lowers it down to the reticule.

God I explained that horribly.

edit-
Masterz posted while I wasn't looking. Fucking ninja.

[p0lar_bear]

No. It's either the FP camera or the weapon.

[Inferno]

http://www.freewebs.com/infernosk8terstuff/orly%20polar.PNG

[SR114]

The reason the shield bar looks so short is because of the resolution. I decided to remake the grenade outline, because, well, it looks better.
focus on the grenade outline, not the grenade icon and numbers. I wish there was a way to add a model to the hud, so that I could texture the model instead of making the elements round. The final result I hope to get to is to make the hud look as close to Halo 3 as I can, and still look good. I think this stuff will look like crap until it all has the same "problem" (width oddity). Then it will look decent. The shield bar will probably not seem so short after I'm done scaling the other elements. btw, anyone is free to help me if they want to.

Just as a note-- classes start tomorrow for me so I'm not going to be on like I have been, if at all, until my next vacation.

http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l7/echoranger449/new_grenade_outline.jpg

[p0lar_bear]

Well, I've been mistaken. I don't have Guerilla in front of me (laptop), so I'm doing this from memory.

Though, that might tie into what Masterz is saying. Try messing with the sniper rifle's bullet and see what happens.

Also, you could very well model a 3-dimensional HUD. Metroid Online did it, and it's pretty functional. I'm not sure of the limitations of doing so are off the top of my head, though; I know there are some.

[Inferno]

Radar has to be 2d. Also it has to be built into the FP arms and to make it work you have to have animations for it in every single weapons animation tag. That is pretty much it.

[SR114]

Yes, that sounds a little bit too advanced for me.

[Advancebo]

The weapon icon in the top right corner should be lower in detail, and not be the same as the pickup icon.

Also its not that hard to make the radar ovaled. Just transform it by squishing it down somewhat, then rotate it about 35 degrees. Then just do the same for the radar masks.

[SR114]

I don't think it's that different.

http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l7/echoranger449/icon_comparison.jpg

Top one is mine, bottom one is Halo 3's.


The shield bar will probably not seem so short after I'm done scaling the other elements.

As I was implying, I'll make the 3d effects later. I have to make the right bitmaps before I do the other stuff.

[Inferno]

The weapon icon in the top right corner should be lower in detail, and not be the same as the pickup icon.

Also its not that hard to make the radar ovaled. Just transform it by squishing it down somewhat, then rotate it about 35 degrees. Then just do the same for the radar masks.

If you do that then it will not be accurate. Also when we said 3d we meant a model that replaces the HUD.

[SR114]

Come to think of it...only the non-animating bitmaps would work.
Things like the shield and ammo meters won't work. You could have the grenade outlines, but they wouldn't be able to flash anymore.

[Advancebo]

In halo 3, when something runs out, it doesnt come up with a warning icon.

For weapons it says:

Out of Ammo.
Press Y to switch to <weapon icon>

Also, very nice assault rifle icon you gots thar.

[t3h m00kz]

:words:

Aha, yeah, offset was actually one of the first things I noticed in Geurilla. The way Halo 3 did it, was they offset the projectiles by just a little bit (very noticable with the plasma rifle) to give it the illusion of the projectiles coming out of the gun. If you select gun origin, it will be waaay too inaccurate.

I think they offset the Sniper Rifle too, but I don't remember. It's possible to offset the sniper bullet by just a little, and it won't be too painfully off of the center, but it won't be 100% dead on accurate.

Check my old map, I tried to simulate Halo 3-style weapons, offset, damage and everything, along side my UT ones.

Map:
http://www.modacity.net/forums/showthread.php?t=8601

Tags:
http://www.modacity.net/forums/showthread.php?t=9898
(http://www.modacity.net/forums/showthread.php?t=8601)

[SR114]

Well guys, I'm done until the next vacation I get. Have fun and




enjoy!


Oh, one more thing to ask, just because I'm really curious-- If I added a new model region (or whatever you call the actual model piece, not the markers) and I attach it to the main marker (the one that everything in the model needs to be attached to before exporting), I wouldn't need to recreate animations right? I mean, it wouldn't need to animate and it wouldn't be in the way of anything that does animate.

Metroid Prime's hud model moves around, but I think I could keep that from happening by linking the main marker to the hud model, instead of linking the hud model to the main marker.

[Inferno]

Possibly depends on how much you could do with a out b out c out and d out shaders.

Also Masterz if you get rid of all the deviation angle in the weapon tag the bullets no longer fire towards the center of the hud. They fly straight out.

[p0lar_bear]

Radar has to be 2d. Also it has to be built into the FP arms and to make it work you have to have animations for it in every single weapons animation tag. That is pretty much it.

Or you just make the visor model in the FP arms, tie it to frame bone24, and remove all vertex weights from it.

[SR114]

Would it require new animations?
Also, how would i get the stuff like "numbers" to work on it? Those are the only thing I can't make 3d.

[Inferno]

Use the a-in a-out functions to scale the shaders on the FP model. That's some pretty complex shit though and you should just stick to a HUD interface tag.

[SR114]

yeah, but I want the numbers. that's the only way to get things within 99-100% accurate.