XBLA-type HUD Plugin for Phoenix

[fiddler_on_a_roof]

One of the best things that came out of the XBLA port of Marathon 2 is its HUD that allows to take full advantage of your screen real estate.

I've been so spoiled by using these XBLA-style HUDs that I start getting annoyed when I play other scenarios and see that my screen space is wasted. Marathon Phoenix is my favorite scenario right now, so I decided to hunker down and modify Hopper's amazing XBLA HUD plugin so that it works for this scenario. Attached is my attempt at doing this. It took a bit of trial-and-error to figure out how the plugin works. I also am a complete novice at image editors, so there was also some learning curve there.

As far as I have tested, the plugin is completely functional for Marathon Phoenix, and all the weapon images are based on bitmaps exported from the Phoenix shapes file. Here are some sample images, taken from "Neo New Mordor"

But before I post this on Simplic7y, I would like your feedback. The Pfhorums crowd are some of the pickiest people around, so there are probably a few things that I didn't notice. Let me know what you think.

[RyokoTK]

Looks pretty neato! There's no way to see skulls, though.

e: You also can't see keycards.

[fiddler_on_a_roof]

It's not ideal, but what do you think about displaying skull information when you have your fists out?

Also, how would I get the following variables in Lua?
- Total number of skulls collected since the beginning of the game.
- Total number of skulls (collected + uncollected) contained in a level.
- Current number of uncollected skulls contained in a level.

Thanks for the help and encouragement.

[treellama]

You can access the player's inventory through the Player.items table. I don't think there's a way for a Lua HUD to access how many skulls there are on a level.

[Crater Creator]

How about ItemTypes["ball"].initial_count?

[treellama]

How about ItemTypes["ball"].initial_count?

That's not available to HUD scripts.

http://marathon.svn.sourceforge.net/vie ... a_HUD.html?

[fiddler_on_a_roof]

I've uploaded a newer version of the enhanced Phoenix HUD below. Changes in this release include:

1) Skull information is displayed when you take out your fists.
2) When you pick up a keycard, a tiny keycard icon appears on the bottom right-hand side of your inventory, just to the left of where the chip is displayed.
3) Crossbow ammo display is slightly shortened.

If people don't have any more suggestions within the next few days, I think this is ready for posting on Simplic7y.

For those interested in the MML/Lua side of things, it turns out that when making Phoenix, RyokoTK hard-coded the display for the number of total skulls via the stringset of MML. Fortunately, while you cannot directly access the number of total skulls within the Lua HUD, you access these strings with the variables

Player.items["alien weapon ammo"].plural
Player.items["extravision"].plural

I was really happy to find this out via Treellama's link to the Lua HUD guide, since this allows me to isolate the hard-coding of the number of skulls to Ryoko's side.

[treellama]

Nice find!

[Destiny]

This is a great thing you've made roof, even being able to include the skull information to the HUD. I can't wait to see what you'll do next.

[RyokoTK]

Much better! Great job!

[fiddler_on_a_roof]

Thanks for the feedback! I've released this on Simplic7y.

http://simplici7y.com/items/enhanced-hud-for-marathon-phoenix