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HUD Compass


Durandall

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I recently mentioned a project I've been working on in another thread and thought I'd post it in it's own thread for more visibility.

It is an always visible HUD compass. It will only appear if you actually have a compass in your inventory.
Like the inventory grid, it is completely optional.

Here is a video demonstration:



It works just fine without any issues that I've been able to see, but I'd like to make it more efficient/tweak it and maybe move most of the code over to scripting.
I'm in the process of moving at the moment and won't be able to work on it anymore until late this weekend or monday, but I'd like to get some feedback before I get too far.

Also, there was a recent discussion about "dropping" items from the loadout screen and I'd like to know what changes have occurred with this.
Are all normal inventory items now droppable in game? Do the loadout dropped items still run their init scripts?
The Dark Mod has no scripting api for removing inventory items or detecting inventory changes or item drops, correct?
I'd test this a bit, but SVN doesn't seem to work and there is no public access to assets.

 

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I think it looks good. It's in the right place and keeping with our minimalist style, much better than the TDS compass.

 

I personally always turn off these kinds of UI compasses in games so probably wouldn't use it, but for people that would use it, it's a good version of it.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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It looks lovely, I quite like it... Like Demagogue, I turn off all hud items, I dont even use the lightgem, so I guess I wouldnt use it unless the map really asks for it, but Im sure this would be much appreciated by many players out there. It would be amazing if you were able to test an alpha blend version, a translucent one. That would be even nicer, in my opinion... But in that case, the model would probably need to be a single surface, or you would be seeing hidden sides of it... Yeah, we keep asking for more.

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Typically letters need quite many triangles to look good, while a transparent cube- or cylinder-like shape with texture costs next to nothing.

 

I took the time to trim the letters down a great deal. They are in total < 500 triangles, which meets the wiki standards for small items.

I could try a crude cylinder with a 2d transparent texture on it to really trim down the complexity, but I doubt the current style has any effect on FPS as it is.

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The existing compass gives me more information, because I like the red arrow pointing north, plus I can see all the points of the compass. I don't have to quickly figure out which direction is to the right or left or behind me.

 

But the design looks good, and if there are people who like it, they'd prolly use it.

 

The standard compass would need to be toggled out of sight, of course.

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The existing compass gives me more information, because I like the red arrow pointing north, plus I can see all the points of the compass. I don't have to quickly figure out which direction is to the right or left or behind me.

 

But the design looks good, and if there are people who like it, they'd prolly use it.

 

The standard compass would need to be toggled out of sight, of course.

 

I'm not sure how I could possibly hide the regular compass. Prevent the player from selecting it somehow? Completely rewrite it? The scripting api is fairly limited, but it might be doable. Could break future missions that may relay on frobbing the compass. I'm not sure anybody would actually do that though.

The regular compass doesn't show up unless you select it anyway and isn't required to be on screen for this to work.

 

The youtube video doesn't really do it justice (looks low quality and washed out), so I've uploaded the ~10mb original video if you need to make out details.

TheDarkMod_HUD_Compass.mp4

 

I can always try out some other designs. I had a flat semi-circle compass that rendered right above the light gem. Kinda of like a clock. Didn't think it looked as good.

If anyone has any ideas, throw them out.

 

Comments so far suggest that it looks okay, but no one would actually use it.

I'd rather not model other designs unless people actually want this. :)

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Dont let that discourage you, its a pretty small sample, and we are all veteran players, set in our ways. Most of the people who actually appreciate stuff we do online we never get to know about it, Im sure a lot of people would find that cool. It looks really good in the video. Personally, I much prefer your compass than the stock one. I like the size of it, I like the minimalist texture. The only suggestion I made was to perhaps see how it would look if you only had the compass glass surface (whithout the rest of the body), and made it translucent, just so it wont stand out so much from the background shadows. Otherwise, it looks very cool.

Edited by RPGista
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Dont let that discourage you, its a pretty small sample, and we are all veteran players, set in our ways. Most of the people who actually appreciate stuff we do online we never get to know about it, Im sure a lot of people would find that cool. It looks really good in the video. Personally, I much prefer your compass than the stock one. I like the size of it, I like the minimalist texture. The only suggestion I made was to perhaps see how it would look if you only had the compass glass surface (whithout the rest of the body), and made it translucent, just so it wont stand out so much from the background shadows. Otherwise, it looks very cool.

 

It's not really discouraging. Much like the inventory grid, I made this thing for myself. Little things that help me out or make things a little better. I wouldn't dream of trying to push this in if nobody wants it. I was just checking if people do. No reason not to share it with everyone if people want it.

 

I'm not sure I understand your idea, could you reword it?

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Yes, if people can create and release things in a modular way, as Im sure you intend to, anything created can be used by mappers or by the community independently if it gets to be implemented in the core mod or not.

 

What I tried to explain is that I would like to see the same compass you set up, but as a slightly translucent model. This would allow it to blend much better with the background. Failing that, perhaps an "older" texture that makes it less bright. This is to address the way it stands out when the hud model is in front of dark environments.

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Yes, if people can create and release things in a modular way, as Im sure you intend to, anything created can be used by mappers or by the community independently if it gets to be implemented in the core mod or not.

 

What I tried to explain is that I would like to see the same compass you set up, but as a slightly translucent model. This would allow it to blend much better with the background. Failing that, perhaps an "older" texture that makes it less bright. This is to address the way it stands out when the hud model is in front of dark environments.

 

Ahh yes. I considered a darker and grittier texture before. I just grabbed this one out of the available assets to test. I'll look to see if The Dark Mod has any better textures available. I'll also look into some transparency, but I'm afraid it will come off a little weird to have only one of the HUD elements transparent.

The design is definitely open for consideration in font or shape or texture or whether it should have the diagonal cardinal points.

 

I just wanted to get a compass on screen that I don't always have to press a key to get out.

Something that doesn't stand out too much that I can read at a glance.

The normal compass model is good, but a bit bright, not always visible, and at the bottom right of the screen.

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I always liked the always visible compass in TDS as I tend to lose direction if I do not explicitly concentrate on it. So I would definitely use it. However, as I am currently bound to my limited amount of mobile data, I could not watch the videos,so I cqnnot comment on the design roght now. I will watch them as soon as I can (at latest on Wednesday)

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  • 1 month later...

Not really, if you want the compass model I can upload it. I was going to continue work on the compass and test some ideas of moving it over to scripting, but I've been busy working on this map and I want to get it out by Halloween if possible.

If you just want a permanent HUD compass and you don't need to worry about the player having a compass inventory item, then that should be much easier.

If you need it soon, I can look into this other method, otherwise you will have to wait.

 

It should also be noted, that a bug in the engine won't render the compass appropriately.

I think I mentioned that somewhere. This wouldn't effect a compass that did not need shading.

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Oh sweet! Totally reminds me of how TDS implemented their compass. I'd support the idea of adding this to replace the current compass by default, as I can agree it's annoying to have it getting in the way when scrolling through inventory. If anything, just keeping it as an option (under gameplay) to use the new or old compass would be great for folks who want it hidden/like the old version.

 

EDIT: Also if you ever wanted to get a nifty decorative bit on the top for a possible, "weather vane" styled TDS like variant; I'd be down to pitch a model for that :D

Modeler galore & co-authors literally everything

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Always wanted an actual hand come out with a compass in it. I had planned on making some intricate, believable animations for such a thing with some coding support. Like, the compass would stay down a bit and you'd have to look down a little to view it, but instead of basic AAA hand behavior where your hand stays basically still, we could have made some animations for it to give the hand some behavior, like the hand would come up just a bit when you looked down again indicating your intention to look at the compass again, stuff like that, very subtle though because the game can't know if your looking down to look at the compass or look at something below. That, and idle animations for it. Ideas like that were met with yells of Blasphemy by my memory.

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  • 6 months later...

I've been getting back to some tdm stuff and I saw the other day that someone was altering a cvar via scripting and it reminded me of this.

I think it may be easy enough to make the hud compass entirely scripted, even with choice of style.

I'm not sure why I didn't just do that to being with.

It would require a single cvar for choosing style and the renderDef fix.

If there is any interest in this by the devs, I'll start working on it again.

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