VIRTUS - Development Questions

[Dr. Delta]

Little people will know and care, but I started working on a small mod; some while ago.
It's on Source, EP2. I've little experience coding when it comes to HL2/C++; but I do have some experience with C#/Unity/XNA.


I hope I can use this thread for questions regarding issues I run into and hopefully you guys can help me with solving them. I plan on updating this post if I run into new issues or if older ones get solved.

Very brief description what the mod is about, I won't get into detail (yet):

Alien (robots) hijacked the cargo-spacecraft you work on, murdered nearly everyone; selling all cargo for profit etc. Goal for the player is to reclaim the ship/get rid of the enemies/survive.

Issues:

Dynamic text on models

There are 2 different things I want to use if for:
1. Text that can be triggered via hammer's i/o (showing objectives)
2. Text that the user already sees on the GUI (displaying ammo count on a display on the weapon)


1. Text that can be triggered via hammer's i/o
I want the player to have a device (weapon/holographic watch) which will display his current objective(s). I think using the i/o system for showing text corresponding to his current objective(s) is the easiest (and maybe the most effective) way to do so. But I don't know how to display that kind of text on top of a model/'in' the texture, 'the display' will be worn on the player's wrist, and i want it to be skewed/angled towards the display/player and him being able to move around with the text relative to his movements. It won't be aligned to the screen, the text will have to be skewed too.

Example, Dead Space:




2. Text that the user already sees on the GUI
I want to display the amount of ammunition a weapon has, the selected fire-mode and possibly other weapon related information too; on a display build in the weapon model. I've no idea how to achieve this.

Example, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2:








If anyone could help me with anything related to getting these two things to work, that would be really great. Thanks in advance everyone.

[Gary]

The weapon thing, do you mean like in Halo?

Example:



If so, there is a tutorial for GUIs on weapon models at the VDC: VGUI on Entities

VGUIs might be useful to you if you want a Deadspace hologram system:

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki ... n_Creation

[Mephasto]

reminds me of:

VIRTUCON

[zombie@computer]

both can be done using vgui, though you should mind the readabilty of (smaller) text is horrific.

[Dionysos]

both can be done using vgui, though you should mind the readabilty of (smaller) text is horrific.

The load indicator on weapons could also be in the form of either color coding or load bars, though of course those are more inaccurate than actual numbers.

[Dr. Delta]

both can be done using vgui, though you should mind the readabilty of (smaller) text is horrific.

If I would use something similar to Halo's Assualt Rifle;


Do you think that the text would be large (and smooth) enough for the player to be clearly readable? I wasn't planning on using a light font-weight actually.

The example shown on VDC doesn't give me much hope though, looks rather horrid.




Thanks everyone so-far for the feedback!

[Gary]

The vgui rpg ammo tut is just to get you started. It shouldn't be too hard to get it to look like the halo one.

[Dr. Delta]

The vgui rpg ammo tut is just to get you started. It shouldn't be too hard to get it to look like the halo one.

I was more referring to the text looking shitty, with that tut I don't think it will be that hard to get it working. ^^

[Habboi]

Don't be absurd, that's cosmetic. Which means you can change it to be better. It isn't their job to teach you to make it pretty in a tutorial that is meant to push you on your way. Isn't that obvious?

[Dr. Delta]

Don't be absurd, that's cosmetic. Which means you can change it to be better. It isn't their job to teach you to make it pretty in a tutorial that is meant to push you on your way. Isn't that obvious?

It's obvious (obviously), but I wouldn't expect the normal text to look like that