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Full Version: Altering the HUD.
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The reason i'm asking is because a friend of mine has a problem seeing the colour red.

From what he's described to me different shades of red and orange would mesh together where he couldn't tell them apart.

Normally he struggles to see the crosshair. At stages he couldn't see the crosshair at all if the fighter he was shooting at moved along a sun while he was targeting them.

So I was wondering is it possible for him to edit his hud so that instead of red for hostile he could use a different colour?

Any help is greatly appreciated.
It is possible yes, but apart from screen resolution changes I don't believe HUD alterations are permitted to be used with Discovery. I may be mistaken.

If so, then we deffinately need an exception for people with colour blindless. If I knew how to edit HUDs I'd gladly make a more colour blind friendly HUD for your friend and for anyone else with colour blindness...
' Wrote:It is possible yes, but apart from screen resolution changes I don't believe HUD alterations are permitted to be used with Discovery. I may be mistaken.

If so, then we deffinately need an exception for people with colour blindless. If I knew how to edit HUDs I'd gladly make a more colour blind friendly HUD for your friend and for anyone else with colour blindness...

As far as I know, the targeting redicule is hardcoded into freelancer.exe. It changes color depending on the repstatus you have with the ship you target. I.E. target a neutral ship, move the targeting redicule over the ship, and it will be white. Same with friendly ships, redicule will be green. It will only be red against enemy ships as dictated by your rep.

There is no way by editing the ini's you can change this behaviour of the targeting redicule.

Cpt. Miller, of the BHG|Core vessel "Miller's Draft"
' Wrote:As far as I know, the targeting redicule is hardcoded into freelancer.exe. It changes color depending on the repstatus you have with the ship you target. I.E. target a neutral ship, move the targeting redicule over the ship, and it will be white. Same with friendly ships, redicule will be green. It will only be red against enemy ships as dictated by your rep.

There is no way by editing the ini's you can change this behaviour of the targeting redicule.

Cpt. Miller, of the BHG|Core vessel "Miller's Draft"
No actually the target rectile is always red regradless. The thing that changes is the colour of the targeting box around the contacts. You play the game and you didn't know this? :\

I haven't played around with the HUD but it's just a colour. Likely you only need to change the integer of a file to change it's colour to something else.
Yes, it is possible to change it. The HUD is controlled using Freelancer.exe, but you can edit it using a hexeditor. I'll happily take a look for you.

-Seth
' Wrote:No actually the target rectile is always red regradless. The thing that changes is the colour of the targeting box around the contacts. You play the game and you didn't know this? :\

I haven't played around with the HUD but it's just a colour. Likely you only need to change the integer of a file to change it's colour to something else.

Actually it is NOT red all the time, only the predictor cross is red all the time. The reticule changes colour depending on whether the target is classified as hostile, friendly or neutral. You play the game, and you didn't know this ? :\

But to get back on topic - I dug around in some of my old FL modding docs from way back when, and found a part solution to AtheistKnight's problem.

The targetmarker box color can't be changed, since it is AFAIS from the old docs, hardcoded. The same goes for the predictor cross, but the targeting reticule can have a custom color, which means that the spinning red circle can have a better colour for his colourblind friend.

[attachmentid=5750]

This change is quite easy to do.

Use Bini to unpack the mouse.ini file located in the /Program Files/Microsoft Games/Freelancer/DATA/ folder,, then edit the resulting unpacked mouse.ini file with notepad.

Change the following section :


[Cursor]
nickname = fire
anim = hostile_fire, 1, 0
hotspot = 32, 32
blend = 4
spin = 10
color = 191, 29, 29, 255
scale = 0.450000

so it says :


[Cursor]
nickname = fire
anim = hostile_fire, 1, 0
hotspot = 32, 32
blend = 4
spin = 10
color = 29, 29, 191, 255
scale = 0.450000


The three first values in the color (sic) line is the values for Red, Green and Blue, while the last value is transparency according to my docs. A quick way to find out the values for the colour you want, is to open up MS Paint, click on one of the color boxes at the bottom of the screen, then click the "Define Colours" button in the dialogue that opens. Play around with the values for Red, Green and Blue, or click in the colourpicker, and then use those values in the color line.


Save, and dump the new mouse.ini in the original folder. Remember to keep a copy of the original packed mouse.ini file, just for being on the safe side.

Restart FL, and voila, Blue spinning targeting reticule when targeting hostile targets.

Hope this helps Atheistknights friend.

Cpt. Miller, of the BHG|Core vessel "Miller's Draft"
Thanks everyone for all the replys.

' Wrote:[attachmentid=5750]

This change is quite easy to do.

Use Bini to unpack the mouse.ini file located in the /Program Files/Microsoft Games/Freelancer/DATA/ folder,, then edit the resulting unpacked mouse.ini file with notepad.

Change the following section :
[Cursor]
nickname = fire
anim = hostile_fire, 1, 0
hotspot = 32, 32
blend = 4
spin = 10
color = 191, 29, 29, 255
scale = 0.450000

so it says :
[Cursor]
nickname = fire
anim = hostile_fire, 1, 0
hotspot = 32, 32
blend = 4
spin = 10
color = 29, 29, 191, 255
scale = 0.450000
The three first values in the color (sic) line is the values for Red, Green and Blue, while the last value is transparency according to my docs. A quick way to find out the values for the colour you want, is to open up MS Paint, click on one of the color boxes at the bottom of the screen, then click the "Define Colours" button in the dialogue that opens. Play around with the values for Red, Green and Blue, or click in the colourpicker, and then use those values in the color line.
Save, and dump the new mouse.ini in the original folder. Remember to keep a copy of the original packed mouse.ini file, just for being on the safe side.

Restart FL, and voila, Blue spinning targeting reticule when targeting hostile targets.

Hope this helps Atheistknights friend.

Cpt. Miller, of the BHG|Core vessel "Miller's Draft"

Thank you Cpt. Miller for this solution, I might try it on my copy in a minute to see how it works.

After looking at your pic attachment i'm starting to think it might make things easier for players who aren't colourblind also.

Thanks everyone. :D
It works! :yahoo:
' Wrote:It works! :yahoo:
Ofcourse it did - Did you suspect otherwise ? :angry:

Please post back if it helps your colourblind friend, since it might be submitted as an option to be included in a future release. Thats the reason why I choose Blue as the reticule color, since Blue-Yellow (tritanopia and tritanomaly) colourblindness is far less common than the 7-10 % occurences of Red-Green (protanopia, deuteranopia, protanomaly, and deuteranomaly) colourblindness.

Cpt. Miller, of the BHG|Core vessel "Miller's Draft"