Hud Color Change?

[HazelrahFiver]

I'm on PS4, so no modding for me.

Have Frontier ever discussed patching in an option to change the hud color of our ships?

I'm not a fan of orange in the first place, but more so would love to switch to green, blue, and purple.

 

[RidingTheFlow]

I suspect its on their list of things to add to the cosmetics store.

 

[Shadowdancer]

"Discussed" to the degree that they stated proper colour handling would require major changes to the HUD (and possible the entire UI), so unless they see enough value to to invest resources into that, the crude hack on PC will remain the only way.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

I think FD are in a bit of a tight corner with this.

On the one hand, console and non-techy PC users want easy colour changes, and don't mind paying, and in the other hand, the players who make their own custom colours for free, don't want to have to pay for them.

Tough choice.
You can't just charge console users.
And charging everyone will annoy the PC users who have had it for free.

The only solution I can think of is have officially supported colours from the store for all, but allow unsupported hacking to anyone willing to do so.

 

[HazelrahFiver]

I think I would pay $2 to transform my hud to green or blue.

 

[lysan]

"Discussed" to the degree that they stated proper colour handling would require major changes to the HUD (and possible the entire UI), so unless they see enough value to to invest resources into that, the crude hack on PC will remain the only way.

Store it is then....

 

[lecorsobreton]

Adding some RGB sliders to the graphics menu wouldn't be rocket science.

I mean, I used that site: http://arkku.com/elite/hud_editor/ to tinker with the hud. I guess the devs could add that to their game. It would probably be very low on the list though.

 

[Jeep Regent]

It'll never happen!

People have been asking since the beginning and the answer is always NO.

We're led to believe that the entire game would collapse should they even try.

 

[danteuk]

I'm on PS4, so no modding for me.

Have Frontier ever discussed patching in an option to change the hud color of our ships?

I'm not a fan of orange in the first place, but more so would love to switch to green, blue, and purple.

A new hud colour thread, it must be Thursday.

This forum has a search feature, sometimes it even works properly!

 

[CMDR Mayhem]

The horse has been beaten to dust by now. Come on FD we know you want our money.

 

[HazelrahFiver]

A new hud colour thread, it must be Thursday.

This forum has a search feature, sometimes it even works properly!

Thanks for the stellar response!

Humans have the ability to ignore things, sometimes even threads on a forum!

 

[NeilF]

I suspect its on their list of things to add to the cosmetics store.

OMG! If they ever charge for different HUD colours, that will be very cynical!

 

[Shadowdancer]

OMG! If they ever charge for different HUD colours, that will be very cynical!

Why? (Apart from maybe offering base colour-blind schemes for free…) What is wrong with charging money for a cosmetic change that takes work to make possible?

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

OMG! If they ever charge for different HUD colours, that will be very cynical!

The current system is basically hacking files and is unsupported, and looks generally bad. I'd gladly pay for a fully supported colour scheme from the store.

Why? (Apart from maybe offering base colour-blind schemes for free…) What is wrong with charging money for a cosmetic change that takes work to make possible?

^this.
It'll take a lot of work (according to FD) so either they have to charge to cover the dev time, or they simply won't do it.

From the sounds of things, it's such a large job, I doubt they'll do it anyway.

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

 

[NeilF]

Why? (Apart from maybe offering base colour-blind schemes for free…) What is wrong with charging money for a cosmetic change that takes work to make possible?

Because it would be at the level of tacky and cynical where I declare OMG! And yes, when they charged for #FF0000 and #00FF00 lasers, I declared OMG!

Don't forget we've been changing HUD colours for years manually, and for FD to offer it officially would take little more than a new dropdown in the far right system panel (with say a dozen defaults).

 

[Patrick_68000]

Yesterday, in the last Livestream Sandro said that it is not for the moment because it takes a lot of work


"Not at the moment as it’s a significant amount of work."

 

[NeilF]

In the last Livestream Sandro said that it is not for the moment because it takes a lot of work


"Not at the moment as it’s a significant amount of work."

Really? I wonder if Sandro understood what the question was? ie: Not super detailed colour definitions etc etc... But simply at least a bunch of default variation configs for the very definitions file all these existing 3rd party tools have been amending for years?

 

[Shadowdancer]

But simply at least a bunch of default variation configs for the very definitions file all these existing 3rd party tools have been amending for years?

Sandro understood what was asked, and he has understood it for years.

To reiterate: the changes that are currently possible are a hack that does not work very well. They don't want to make that a primary feature because the results are, my words, ugly as <expletive redacted>, break target colours, and require an unstable workaround to not completely screw up portraits and other non-orange UI elements. The way the UI currently works is not conducive to a codified customisation feature that they want to advertise (or sell). It's really as simple as that.

If you want to be wearing a tinfoil hat about the whole matter and be all snarky about microtransactions, sure, go ahead, but the technical issues have been mentioned and, like it or not, take significant work to surmount.

 

[NeilF]

The problem is that you are not simply changing your HUD colours. The entire UI (including npc portraits) is linked to it. To the point that if you chose the wrong colours you got some really weird looking faces. So FD has to completely overhaul the UI code. (Why they linked it in the first place, i don't know the technical background.)

Oh! Excuse my ignorance then...

Are there not combinations of colours that work fine without issues? Could these not be offered as a set of defaults?

 

[AkenBosch]

The problem is that you are not simply changing your HUD colours. The entire UI (including npc portraits) is linked to it. To the point that if you chose the wrong colours you got some really weird looking faces. So FD has to completely overhaul the UI code. (Why they linked it in the first place, i don't know the technical background.)

Just an uneducated guess, since I'm a simple "hardware repair guy" and have just a passing layman knowledge of this kind of software stuff: there's the possibility that since the game UI and HUD are not a 2D overlay but part of the "game world" and hence rendered together with everything else on the scene (I'd say a requirement to be viable for VR use without the need of a sickness bag), the colour management of the hud elements is tied to some basic shader code, basic in the sense that it's kept to a bare minimum to keep it as light as possible for rendering times. I'm totally clueless about that mind you (so if anyone more competent in the matter thinks I'm writing just nonsense, I'd be more than glad to be corrected), but I suspect that adding the capability to manage every color channel independently on said supposed shader code, even if basically a simple task in itself, could add a significant amount of overhead on the rendering time for every frame given the current context (a total no-no for VR capable games).

Are there not combinations of colours that work fine without issues? Could these not be offered as a set of defaults?

None that I know of, looks like the initial colour scheme has been calibrated to give red to boogeys and green to frendlies on the orange/red/pink base hud colour, any significant change from reddish tones for the general hud structure will throw that calibration off for some element or the other.