In addition to the anti-mong features that Rive advertised, 98a contains a ton of new additions that enable mappers to do new things in their mods! Here are two to get you started:

SBARINFO

SBARINFO allows you to create completely new HUDs that display whatever you want. The possibilities are (nearly) endless! Just work with SBARINFO, and you'll be able to create something like this...



Return Scripts

Return scripts allow for more flexibility with Hub systems by allowing for certain scripts to only be executed when a player returns to the hub. Just create the script as usual, and set the type to RETURN, and it will only activate when you return to the hub map; no more requiring workarounds to do the same thing!


That's it for preview #3! There may not be much to say, but these two additions are quite helpful for projects.

Wow, with these new features I can work on some projects I've been slacking on. Can't wait for the release!

The ACS HUD is confusing, and I couldn't get SBARINFO working, but now I have the reason!

*claps happily*
BRAVO! This is definitely a bigger update than 2, but well, I can safely say this is going to be the beginning of something pretty.

Cool, I never got how SBARINFO worked anyway, but I might try to learn (and to learn about PolyObjects as well... )

Does it mean that new ACC version will be released, or is the change included in latest SVN already?

These scripts are inherited from the ZDoom updates and are already supported by the ZDoom ACC for quite a while.

I could help with that.

What Catman did not mention is that SBARINFO is not sanity-checked by the server. So, if you put a WAD/PK3 with your own custom status bar in the skins folder, you can essentially create your own custom status bars for Skulltag that work...well...on any server.

Here is a quick proof of concept that I came up with a few months ago:


You can grab it here, if you want to test it out yourself with the latest 98a beta:

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1446507/doom/maxbar_a1.zip

With SBARINFO you can also put arbitrary graphics anywhere on the screen you like, so you can ALSO create a multicolored custom crosshair to go with your HUD as long as you're fine without the 'crosshair changes color' feature.

Finally! My status bar for Death matches and LMS wads can be completed!



When in versus mode, the "kills" ticker gets turned into a "FRAG!" ticker.

Note that ACS huds are tricky to get to work online. It's why I SBARINFO

While we are on the subject... Is it possible that someone already made, or able to make the statusbar text change from Blue, to Green, to Yellow, to Red like in the boom ports??

Last time I checked, this was not possible. In order to do this, you need to be able to do a conditional based on how much health or armor you have left, and then draw numbers (and the percent sign) colored according to the value, and SBARINFO as it stands does not support this.

It also doesn't support conditionals based on what armor type was last picked up either, (though it DOES support drawing a picture of the last armor type you picked up...wtf) which would be useful for armor.

You're welcome to ask Randy or Graf to add it upstream so Skulltag will get it eventually. Good luck with that though.

Eh, yea... Seeing as I don't roam on the Zdoom Forums as much. I would just like to have something that would aid me, and seeing how much health/ammo/armor I have. Then again, I just now started to play with the statusbar more. heh.

That's for a simple reason. Use the "printinv" console command to know what's in your player inventory. You'll notice you have a BasicArmor (unless you play Hexen, then you'll have a HexenArmor). Pick up a GreenArmor, try printinv again, do you have a GreenArmor? No. You still have a BasicArmor. Pick up a BlueArmor, same thing -- you still only have a BasicArmor.

What's happening is that when you use an armor item, the BasicArmor in your inventory gets its properties updated to that of the armor you're using. The only time an armor is in your inventory is when it's an armor that can be stored in the inventory, like the Strife armors. (The armors from Doom and Heretic are automatically used when picked up.) The damage absorption system simply look for your BasicArmor (or HexenArmor when playing Hexen).

When I added the ACS and DECORATE commands dealing with armor, I did it by adding a new property to BasicArmor to keep track of the used armor's class name, a property that, like the icon, the savepercent, maxsavepercent, amount, maxamount, etc. is taken from the armor when it's used.

Anyway, the reason SBARINFO supports displaying the icon of the last armor you picked up used is simply that it doesn't display the icon of the last armor you used... It displays the icon of your BasicArmor. Nothing more, nothing less.

It's possible. I've done it. Problem is, though, is that you have to use a global ACS script to calculate the amount of health/ammo/armor the player currently has (ammo is a bitch since you have to do it per-weapon) and in that script you alter the player's inventory, giving or taking away dummy inventory items such as ArmorCheck, AmmoCheck, HealthCheck, which you then check for in SBARINFO and render the properly colored digits.

It's way more pain than it's worth, has bugs, and since it's using ACS, you can't put it in your skins folder for use anywhere.

You could probably get around the armor and health parts, but weapons definitely need to be checked with ACS, since ammo amounts are dynamic per weapon. Like if I had a shotgun, I'd want the shell count to turn gold instead of green at the halfway point (25). Same with bullets (100) and plasma (150). Although I haven't tried nesting inventory checks in SBARINFO inside weapon checks...Hmm...

EDIT: Ah, nevermind. Don't need ACS at all.

Ah, that's good, so I don't have to recompile my ACC.

You never had to in the first place, because I already did it for you!

That's a windows binary, and I'm on Linux.

Damnit, i really cant wait for 98a. It all looks really awesome, good job guys!