Minimal hud elements?

Wilson

Hey, I just wondered if anyone has made some minimal hud elements. The main things that annoy me are the waypoints and the icons that display around aliens when they are scanned or near an obs. These icons show in front of the player models and it's really hard to aim if there are lots of buildings etc. around, all you see are these giant circles on the HUD.

rhombus

After 1.0 I plan on sitting down and taking a long hard look at the UI and modding a lot of it. Until then I just don't have the time to sit down and do that at the moment.

Wilson

I tried to edit the obs icons but there isn't much you can do without editing the LUA files. I think these icons are bugged at the moment because they stay stuck on your screen and don't track the enemies accurately. I also think they scale much bigger than is required. You only need a small icon to indicate the position of the enemy. The waypoint icons have similar behaviour.

Here is a quick video of what I'm talking about:

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rantology

Just tried this out, you can edit any .DDS file and join most any server.

This means you can get rid of the way-point icons or any other HUD element by simply editing the .DDS file and making them fully transparent via the alpha channels. This will not work on servers with consistency checks for .DDS files obviously.. but for servers running the default consistency checks it should work fine. I would make a steam workshop mod for this but I don't really know how any of that works so you'll have to do it yourself :s



To kill marine waypoints, edit marine_order.dds file in "natural selection 2\ns2\ui" (also marinewaypoint_arrow.dds I think if you want the whole thing gone). readyroomorders.dds is the ready room waypoint icons. Not sure where the observatory circle things are.

Wilson

I know you can remove them, but I don't want to. They are useful in some situations for seeing aliens and also it is nice to know if the com gives you a way point. I just want them to work as they should (being helpful!) rather than getting in the way of my aim.

rantology

In that case you can manually resize the icons as well as making them partially transparent, whatever suits your tastes.

<a href="http://i.imgur.com/KxRO7.jpg" target="_blank">here's a test I made</a>, making the ready room waypoints about 1/3rd the size (default size top, edited size bottom). I think the best you could do for the scan circles is make them more transparent.

Wilson

How did you resize them? I tried to, but was having trouble with the transparency. It doesn't work if I just save it in photoshop after resizing.

rantology

I went from <a href="http://i.imgur.com/D7O3k.png" target="_blank">this</a>---><a href="http://i.imgur.com/e4LZP.png" target="_blank">this</a>. I didn't mess with the transparency in my test but in theory all you need to do is make the alpha channel slightly transparent and make sure it gets resized properly too.


edit: btw the scan circles are called sensor.dds, found them. :p

edit2: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share?s=ZYOew34mTMcuW3wUUmBTyY" target="_blank">here's my alterations</a> if any are interested. (has small waypoints/no waypoints, and smaller, less intrusive scan circles). Be forewarned that these are not steam workshop and so they wont work with consistency checks if you do install them... anyone is free to upload them to steam workshop if you wish, I do not know how and do not care =P

Sops

Any chance the ready room icons can be flagged as a tool tip so players can disable them from the options menu? They serve no function.

Wilson

Thanks rant, I will use the smaller ones for now but they still have the same problem as the regular ones. If there are lots in the one area they all stick to your screen and it is very difficult to see anything. They become more of a disadvantage rather than the advantage they are supposed to be.

This is also a problem with building health bars and other hud elements. Sometimes if a skulk is biting an RT you will get blinded by the health bar coming up over the skulk and it can be difficult to aim.