CSQC HUD roundup

Knowing that we now have CSQC to do all sorts of stuff, I've decided to have a close look at our HUD system, as well as HUD systems of other games like Quake 3 Arena. I've found out that the mod CPMA for Quake3 (as well as the Q4Max mod for Quake4) offers the possibility to configure the style of the elements of your HUD by modifying settings in a dedicated file. Here is an example:

Console
{
	rect 0 0 640 48
	time 3000
	font threewave
}

WeaponList
{
	rect 0 64 48 16
	color 0.2 0.2 0.7 0.75
	font id
	fontsize 12 16
}

StatusBar_HealthIcon
{
	rect 200 448 24 24
	image "models/players/mynx/icon_pm.tga"
}

As you can imagine, this is just a small snippet.

This whole thing is called the “SuperHud” system. They even developed a HUD editor for creating new HUDs in a comfortable way. This system allows you to alter stylistic parts of the HUD elements, like position, size, image, font, background etc. This file would not control which elements are actually shown, as you would still configure this by settings such as “showfps”, or using similar variables. This system should only alter the style of the elements if they are shown. Elements that are not contained in this HUD config file would be displayed using a default (hardcoded) style. Anyways, I think that Nexuiz could actually use such a system as well.

Oh, and to be complete, a way how something could work for a player who wants to load a new HUD (just an example console command):

set sbar_hudfile "myhud.cfg"
loadhud

The goal is to get away from hardcoded HUD styles that require a modified csprogs.dat file, but instead allow normal players to alter their HUD. Some advanced users or developers could create a few more HUD config files and let the players choose which they like best. The way of doing this doesn't necessarily have to be the SuperHUD system and its syntax. It could also be done altogether by using a lot of new cvars, probably even introducing a complete namespace like ui_xyz variables. The problem with the SuperHUD system is that we would need a proper parsing mechanism for the configuration file first – but maybe the developers of CPMA or Q4Max can help us out with portions of their code, we'll see.

Regardless of what you think about the previous suggestions, regardless of what you think how much configurable such a system should be, the following chapter lists all HUD elements that came into my mind, including the options that make sense to be configurable. Feel free to comment the items or add new items. With this list, you'll get a list of ideas of what could be done. This will help CSQC developers who are looking for new ideas for the HUD, and might also help UI designers to find out which elements exist when they create new UIs.

Also keep in mind that, right now, this list was created without really knowing anything about CSQC yet.

One important note: when the following list mentions a color to be configurable, the user should be meant to be able to specify the four values R, G, B and A (alpha), and not just R, G, B.

• HP Symbol (static image), configurable Position, size and visibility (alpha). Configurable (but optional) alternative image (if not configured, use the default image)
• Armor Symbol (static image), configurable Position, size and visibility. Configurable (but optional) alternative image (if not configured, use the default image)
• Ammo-Type Symbol (static image), configurable Position, size and visibility. Configurable (but optional) alternative images for the different ammo types (if not configured, use the default images)
• HP/Armor/Ammo value: configurable Position, style (font), size and visibility. Apart from that, add 3 customizable areas (one for HP, Armor, Ammo each). Areas are e.g. Low, Medium, Good, allow color definition for each area, e.g. red, gray, green, and the values, e.g. low=0-40, medium=41-100, good>100, that will define which area is used for the current value (e.g. HP). Example: if you have 25 HP, your will be in the low area. If you defined the low area to be colored red, your “25” will be colored red.
  Side note: the HP/armor/ammo value would need to be drawn on top of possible bars (see next point) so that they are always visible
• New: Status-Bars for health, armor or ammo.
  • Configurable start and end position and the values assigned to it. e.g. StartPos = “200 400”, EndX = “300 340” (x/y coordinates), StartValue = 0, EndValue = 200 → Would be a health bar which is completely filled if you have >= 200 HP and would be a rectangle with top left coordinate “200 400” and a bottom right coordinate of “300 340”. This allows the user to have health bars that go from left to right and vice versa.
  • Configurable color (I don't think we need “areas”, like presented above for the hp/armor values, a single color should suffice)
• new: If the characteristics of a weapon (which is usually just the ammo count) are more complex, these additional elements need to be shown as well. Example: the camping rifle magazine status
• new: display of your available weapons:
  • Only list weapons that you actually have, not all existing weapons (if you have laser gun or hook gun, also list them)
  • if you have a weapon, show it in the list, including its ammo
  • If you have the weapon but lack ammo, cross the weapon, or gray it out (needs a good idea of how to visually represent this state)
  • Each weapon needs a small identifying 2D symbol (just as Q3 has one for each weapon)
  • Configurable options are:
    • selection mode between horizontal or vertical layout
    • symbols right or left to the ammo-count-text (when layout is set to vertical), which of course also means “symbols above or below the ammo-count-text” (when layout is set to horizontal)
    • overall position, style (font, background) of each weapon „cell“
    • highlight color or image of the cell of the currently selected weapon
    • size of each weapon cell, margin of the cells to each other
    • configurable font style and size of the font
    • idea: one could also add the percentage value (hit shots %) to that weapon bar. That could especially be good when being an observer