Copyright dodbits.com 2005 Copyright explained... FFS... show some damn backbone and make your own n00b :)
The Player Status Panel.
This area has a lot of components in it. When you try and find things to edit you wonder where to start!
Let's divide up the sections to make it a bit clearer. The files used in this area are...
HudPlayerStatusPanel.res, HudPlayerStatusHealth.res. These are the main players, the HudPlayerStatusPanel.res holds the most info'... positions, images, text and so on.
Other files that help control this area are two files that have common links with all the res files to display items within the hud....
ClientScheme.res, it controls the fonts, their size, color and type. It also controls things like the Health Bar colors and the ammo count text.
HudLayout.res, this file is a master file controlling the positions of items assembled in groups.The Player Status Bar is one of these areas. Care must be taken, read on...
In this file you can set the size of the area all those components will fit in and adjust the assembled separate items around the screen as a whole group.
A bit more info' about the HudLayout.res file... and a warning can be found at the bottom of this page, see the section...
" A bit more info' about the HudLayout.res file... and word of warning! "
You will find it is better to leave the standard "xpos" and "ypos" alone in the HudLayout.res and adjust the items in the HudPlayerStatusPanel.res, HudPlayerStatusHealth.res files.
The Player Status Panel is a great area to edit. There is so much you can do with it!
In most of my Hud's I chose to get rid of a lot of the items... well it's a "small HUD" after all :)
But what about just converting an image like the image on the top right of this page?
That image was a sprite file in DoD 2.1 beta, converted to a bitmap, reworked in the GIMP and made into a VTF/VMT files and used in the DoD:S HUD. It allows the health bar to sit behind the image and changes from green to red after damage has happened.
Reworking the DoD:S HUD is not a matter of just working on some text files, when you learn how to make a graphic that the HUD can use many more design possibilities open up!
In the case of the HUD on the right I also made an image of the "running man" graphic from the dods font file... "dodlogo.ttf"', (see the bottom of this page for more detail ) then I edited the running man in the font file and changed the "/" Character to the Turtle from dod 2.1. I also made the running man into a VTF graphic... stamina_ok.vtf.
The effects in that HUD after editing the HudPlayerStatusPanel.res, HudPlayerStatusHealth.res, ClientScheme.res files was...
The Stamina bar and the Health bar only have two colors... green for OK and red for damage.
The running man disappears because the Turtle is a dodlogo.ttf "font Character graphic" bigger than the stamina_ok.vtf file.
Note: Make the dodlogo.ttf file "Read only" or it will be replaced when the game starts!
The colors in the man change because the image is transparent in places and the Health bar is behind it.
HudStaminaIcon.Active "0 0 0 0" This is Black (0 0 0) but the last value "0" makes it totaly Transparent, invisible!
HudStaminaIcon.ActiveLow "HudProgressBarInActiveLow" (This is red)
I made theHudStaminaIcon.Active invisible because the graphic stamina_ok.vtf is green and we want the Turtle to appear only when we have low stamina.
The "running man" graphic I made, (stamina_ok.vtf) was added to the HudPlayerStatusHealth.res...
In this case I just used the two icon files that I had disabled in previous HUD's.
The graphic files (VTF and their VMT files) were placed in the dod\materials\vgui folder and as you can see above the line... "image" "../VGUI/OLDHealth" will supply an address to find the image :)
So... with a bit of knowlage about how a .res file talks to the rest of the files in the dod:s folder mixed with some graphic skills, you can really start to customize your HUD with more options.
To be honest, I would not try this area of the HUD first if you are learning. Work on places like the obective icons or chat text, the MG bar before attempting this area.
If you want to look at the files I described above and even try out the HUD and view the Graphics... download this package.
