Vertically centered HUD bars
 

Currently the HUD bars for shrink/empty from top to bottom. While this is certainly a reasonable way to do it, I was thinking a nice option would be to have them shrink from both ends (toward the center); this might help keep the visual focus on the middle of the display.

Conceptually, it's a simple change - the filled length of the bar stays the same, but it is always vertically centered, so unfilled space appears at both ends (top and bottom) as damage is taken, instead of only at the top. Pet bars would also be vertically centered, and half the full length, as now.

The existing HUD can be easily customized to do this... it just requires new texture art and a minor change to the layout file (change the dimensions of the bars and change the bar orientation from top-to-bottom to left-to-right, etc.

OK, thanks - after poking around a bit, I think I understand what you mean and how to make it work.

Well, it seems I was a bit over-optimistic...

I have actually managed to get it to work for the full-sized bars, without changing the artwork, by using the "CENTER" orientation and adding a litte bit of code to deal with it.

This looks better than the alternative of treating the bars as horizontal, since with CENTER, the edge of the filled region is the same as now (a horizontal edge, whereas making the bars horizontal would give the filled region a vertical edge).

Unfortunately, this doesn't work for the smaller bars (Pet, ToT) however, since they are not centered, so it looks like I'll have to replace the art anyway...

You should not have to change any code, only the layout data in the [ Interface > AddOns > nUI > Layouts > Default > HUDLayouts > {hud mode} ] folder (where {hud mode} is one of PlayerTarget, HealthPower, etc.). If you're changing code somewhere else to make this work, then you're doing something wrong.

I'm at work atm, so I don't have access to my code base to show you the things that need changing, I'll try to remember to do that tonight. In the meantime, suffice it to say that the files in the HUDLayout directory are the only place you should be making any changes.

I will take your word for it, but I am pretty sure (from trying it that way) that doing what you suggested (making the bars fill from left to right) will produce a slightly different result than I was after (the bars will have a vertical edge when not full, like all horizontal bars do).

Anyway, I got it to work (perhaps the hard way, but it looks the way I wanted it to...):



The only thing I changed was allowing the code to handle orient = "CENTER" inside if blocks. The other orientations use the same code they did before.

(Seems from the screenshot that I unintentionally swapped the Power/Health order of the smaller bars when I changed art files...looks better after fixing that...)

AH... now that I see your screen shot I understand what you were trying to do... I had misunderstood your intent. I had never considered having the status bars collapse to the center like that. I'll keep that in mind in nUI6.

Would you mind posting the changes you made?

I am liking how it plays, especially for rage-powered classes where the bar starts empty.

I don't mind at all, if it is allowed. I was going to make it toggle-able through the console like the other HUD modes, but that will take a bit more work. Right now it replaces the normal Player/Target option. It also requires a few megabytes of new artwork.

If you want to e-mail your changes to me at [email protected] I'll integrate them into what I have and put out a release to support it.

Awesome, done!

That's a great look! Bars collapsing to the center instead of one end or the other. Huh, surprised I haven't seen that before.

I have added this functionality to nUI5 and created a plugin to implement the HUD changes. I'll be releasing both later today.