A useful big HUD

[Ralzar]

The recent Retro HUD mod reminded me of my thoughts about this.


I love the general look of the BIG HUD. Particularly seeing your face, making you more connected with the character you are playing.

However, with hotkeys, we have no need of the buttons in the big HUD, so close to 90% of it is wasted on superflous functions. It would be much handier to have a HUD that has stuff like:

Character face. Possibly with damage being shown. Maybe background changeing color to indicate poison/disease. Maybe shown wearing the helmet you are wearing (optional?).

Health/Fatigue/Magica obviously.

Buffs and Debuffs.

Readied spell.

What weapon is equipped in each hand and which is active.

Durability of armor/weapon.

Lit torch item and its condition.

Gold amount in coins and bank notes.

Level bar, showing progress to next level.



There is a bunch of stuff that would be super handy to have in a big HUD. It is a bit outside my area of expertice though. Not to mention I have at least 4 mods that need some serious looking at atm. So starting a new mod, while typical of me, is something I am holding off on and hoping someone with more experience with modding the menu system takes a stab at.

[DunnyOfPenwick]

The character portrait frame in retro-frame already shows indicators for poison/disease/low health/low fatigue. After the next DFU update I will release a few more mods and the character portrait will reflect local lighting conditions as well.

The action button panel on the right would be a good place to put the other stuff you mentioned. I just added code to allow modders to replace it.

[jayhova]

What about a semi-transparent HUD? or a popup hud?

[DunnyOfPenwick]

Those would be good options when playing in full-screen mode.
I've been recently focused on making use of the empty space in 4:3 mode.

[Hulgore]

I was thinking that big HUD could have icons to display the various statuses implemented by your climate & calories mod

[DunnyOfPenwick]

I was thinking along the same lines regarding retro-frame. There's already a panel in front of the character portrait that flashes colors to indicate low-health/poison/disease. I could add a secondary panel behind the character portrait that other mods (like C&C) can flash color to indicate a certain status.