The Dink Network

Ok... another annoying uberpizza question... LoL. Is it possible to modify the status paraphilalia at the bottom of the screen (such as the life meter, gold, etc.) to include custom attributes? My plan is to remove the graphics (or just not draw_status(); ) and create my own custom attributes, but I have had zero success with trying to get objects to appear outside of the "main window" where all of the action takes place... I tried setting the said objects sp_que astranomically high, but that didnt work... the status still seems to cover it. Anyone know of a way to make this work?

sp_noclip is what you want. Beware that these overlay-sprites are killed on a screenchange, and it looks crappy when you create them in an infinite loop. They start to blink when the screen is moving. It's the only way to make screenchange-surviving sprites, though.

Try using sp_noclip(&sprite, 1); to make sprites appear above the status bar. However, it won't be very easy trying to make stats appear there and such, as you'll have to manually re-draw them every time you change screens.

Cool, thanks!

Well, I'd probably have to loop them anyway, so they'll update as the values are changed... I'll make it work somehow.

Another trap not to fall in: loading saved games. It can (and probably will) kill an unsuspecting traveller in the realm of statusbar modifying.

EDIT: To elaborate, this is a trap not only in the realm of statusbar modifying. It's in the whole realm of infinite loops. You must make sure the loop spawns when loading, but doesn't spawn when just entering the screen. Or you intend to have a screen-script on every screen, but that's not practical.

Thanks for the advice. I'm pretty sure I'll only need the modified stats on selected screens though, not the majority, and it probably won't need to switch screens, so I should be ok.

I'm having trouble getting text to display over the statusbar... is this possible?

&text = say_xy("Blah",x,y);
sp_kill(&text, 0);
sp_noclip(&text, 1);

This might work... no guarantees, though.

Yeah that's what I did, the status stuff still covers it though...

Hey, I'm working on something like this too, for my project. And it works(still have some bugs to fix, though). You don't even have to use infinite loops. Just to show my fairplay, and to improve the quality of the released files, I can teach you how to do this, if you want.

Cool. This isn't for the failure contest though, it's for the enourmously, ridicuoulsly overambitious project I'm working on that 90% of my questions lately have been geared toward... I'm planning on devulging some information about it as soon as I've made a bit more progress. Anyway, you know how to display text sprites above the interface? If so then I'm very interested...

Well, the scripts I've done are not for displaying numbers, they display a new bar on the status, but displaying text should be much simpler. If you want them, mail me at cypryoprisa@gmail.com.