So your getting sick of the way Red Faction's HUD looks like eh? In this tutorial you will learn how to change it.
Yea... Its only how to change the health meter, but after learning this youll know how to change anything!
Heres what you will need:
* A VPP Builder (which you can get here).
* A text viewer (notepad/wordpad)
* And a picture editor (eg - Photoshop)
Ok FIRST you will need to open your VPP Builder. Once youve done that go to File > Open and then when a window pops up click the button that says "Quick jump to game directory >" that is at the bottom of the window. Now click where it says "Jump to Red Faction 1 Directory" and it should bring you to the Red Faction folder!
Click the file that says UI and click Open. A list of .tga files should appear.
Scroll down this list until you come to a file that says health0_0.tga
You should also see other files with the word health. Like health100_0.tga where the 100 means 100 health. You should also see some files that say enviro, thats the armor.
Now select health0_0.tga, then hold shift and the down arrow button until you selected from health0_0.tga to enviro100_0.tga.
Once youve done that click the Extract button, which is at the top of the window.
Now it asks you what folder you want to extract the files to. I just made a folder on my desktop called HUD. You dont have to do that but just remember what folder you extracted the files to...
Ok select your folder and click OK
NOW open up your image editor (Im using Adobe Photoshop 7.0) and go to File > Open and then go to the folder where you extracted those .tga files.
Hmm... what file to open first... I would open 2 files up, health100_0.tga and enviro100_0.tga so you can see what they look like.
This image look familiar? Your HUD doesnt have to be in the shape of a circle, it can be anything you want it to be. Now.. um just go nuts! Edit these two pictures to your liking! Just remember to make both the health and the enviro fit to each other so it doesnt look weird when you play it. Also... Make sure you tell the parts you want to be transparent so that it doesnt look like the image below.
Done editing? Me too, this is what i have (below). The one on the left is the health and the one on the right is the enviro. See the gray and white squares? Thats the transparent part.
Ready to test? Save these 2 pictures as health100_0.tga and enviro100_0.tga
Now open the VPP Builder again and go to File -> New. Then Click the Add button and a window should appear. Go to the folder where you saved those pictures and select them both and click Open. Now to save go to File -> Save and when a window appears go to the Red Faction directory which is at C:/games/RedFaction now double click on the folder that says Mods. Now make a new folder by clicking a button that looks like this: and name it 'HUD'. Now double click on that folder you just made, type 'HUD' in the text box that says File name and click Save. Now go to Red Faction.exe to open up the Red Faction Launcher. Click on the Setup button and a window should appear. Click on the Misc. tab and where it says 'Optional Command Line' Type in '-mod HUD' Click OK and click Play.
!REMEMBER! You only edited the pictures for 100 health and armor
so you have to get 100 health and armor to see your HUD work!
Hm does your HUD out of place? Or not they way you wanted it to look? This is what mine looks like (below). See how the Numbers are on top of the line and one dot is lower than the other? If yours is like this all I can tell you to do is to keep editing it until it looks the way you want. :|
Ive edited it and move it around a bit and got it the way i wanted;
OK! 2 down 20 to go! o.0
It wont take long to make the other ones cause now youve got your pictures in the right spot all you need to do now is to edit your pictures to show that the health and armor is going down.
This is what the armor looks like at 30 and the health at 70 (above). To add them to the game do the same thing you did with the first 2. Go to Add and select all your images and click Open. Now Go to File -> Save and go play the game!
Here it is in action;
Now about the Numbers... I dont like green and yellow. I think ill change it to red. To do this open up your text viewer (eg- wordpad/notepad)
Open up the VPP Builder again and go to File -> Open and click the 'Quick jump to game directory' button and click Jump to Red Faction 1 directory. Now a list of .tbl files should appear. Look down the list until you find a file called hud.tbl. Click on it and click the extract button. Now select the folder you extracted those images to and click ok.
Now go back to your text viewer. Go to File > Open and then where it says Files of Type Select All Documents Now just look for hud.tbl and click open. Now you should see almost at the top where it says:
// default colors
$HUD default color:
{ 52, 255, 57, 255}
$HUD msg color:
{228, 205, 32, 255}
$HUD msg bg color:
{ 33, 33, 16, 220}
$HUD full color:
{ 0, 255, 0, 105}
$HUD mid color:
{255, 255, 0, 150}
$HUD low color:
{255, 0, 0, 150}
$HUD countdown color:
{153, 153, 153, 255}
$HUD body msg color:
{ 53, 109, 53}
Now your thinking to yourself.. this doesnt look like colors ... Well it is. These numbers: { 52, 255, 57, 255} = green.
The first 3 Number is all you really need to worry about. The First Number, 52, means How much red you want on your color
The second Number, 225, means how much green and 57 means how much blue. 0 means no color and 255 means full color. The last number is the transparency. So since i want red i'll change;
$HUD full color:
{ 0, 255, 0, 105}
$HUD mid color:
{255, 255, 0, 150}
TO
$HUD full color:
{ 255, 0, 0, 105}
$HUD mid color:
{255, 0, 0, 150}
$HUD full color:
is the left number
$HUD mid color:
is the right number
You can experiment with different colors and you can also edit other text colors.
Now all you have to do is save this as hud.tbl. Go back to the VPP Builder and open your HUD.vpp that you made with your images. Click the Add button and locate the hud.tbl that you edited and click Open. Now click File -> Save and play the game!!
Below is what the final project looks like;
It also changes the Ammo Numbers. So If you wish to change that picture too you will have to edit;
Welcome to redtech. Here you will find lots of info for mapping and modding Red Faction and RED Editor. There is a little bit of 3D Studio Max stuff getting around aswell. Hope you find what you are looking for.
Two more tutorials, both on Particle Emitters. Goober shows us how to make an Emitter look like a force field and Sir Lotsa has unveiled a cool trick with how to get what would be a hard to create brush by putting a picture onto a particle emitter.
The first round of long awaited tutorials are up. Thank you very much Assman for insightful tutorials into more realistic explosions and how to get transparency from Paint Shop Pro. More tutorials coming soon.
Hello everyone. Sorry about the inactivity over the past few months. I have been very busy with things other than RED and RF. Some of you will be pleased to know that the redtech forums are back online and some of you will be even more pleased to know that I am on the hunt for forum moderators. :D If you are a sucker for punishment then feel free to
me with your submission for forum moderation.
Everyone who has submitted a tutorial, either by mail or the forums, expect to see it up within the next week or two. Again, sorry about the delay, and thanks for your time with helping keep this site and the mapping/modding communities alive.
Yes that's right! Another really informative lighting tutorial from reaper_47 showing you how to get some great effects from particle emitters. A wonderful new effect for all to try.
Great news! redtech now hosts it's own weapons modelling tutorial. Thanks ExoStatic for a great insight into how to use Max to model a Glock. A must read for all!
Three new tutorials for you today. Two great tutorials submitted by Goober who happened to stumble across how to move a brush with a transparent texture. What a find, great work.
There is also a new tutorial for those of you who cannot grasp the concepts outlined in Volition's MakeVBM readme. Ranswer3 approaches the MakeVBM method using a bat file.
Have updated the links pages for you all. :) See the latest additions here.
Looks like the latest poll is already developing a trend toward some more SP tutorials. I guess the next poll will be what sort of SP tutorials would you like. See the progressive results of the poll here.
I expect to recieve some new tutorials for you all very soon ... stay tuned.
Some great member tutorial contributions have been made over the past couple of weeks. Tutorials by RF Grim Reaper, Assman and Gr3atWhite with their different takes on how to build stairs in Brush mode. Exostatic has written a Sound Compression tutorial and Ninja has taken the time to explain how to use water and it's properties. Assman also made a few revalations in regard to dynamic lighting and how to configure it for your maps.
Thanks guys!! They are all top quality tutorials. If you are having some difficulty with the new tutorials most of them have a support topic in the forums. :)
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and name it 'HUD'. Now double click on that folder you just made, type 'HUD' in the text box that says File name and click Save. Now go to Red Faction.exe to open up the Red Faction Launcher. Click on the Setup button and a window should appear. Click on the Misc. tab and where it says 'Optional Command Line' Type in '-mod HUD' Click OK and click Play.
