MILLENNIUM - Jedi Knight Modification Front

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Since July 1999

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Changing the HUD

This tutorial will show you how to overdraw the normal HUD images in Jedi Knight. This will show how to make your own HUD weapon parameter.

For any useful information on BM, visit Jedi Knight spec in the BM section. Gives you more clue on what BM is.

The HUD are all drawn and stored as BM files, which can be found in "ui/bm" folder of res2.gob. We're going to change the left bottom corner health HUD into something else.

All the BM that are used for that part of the HUD are
statusleft.bm
sthealth.bm
stshield.bm
so, get them out of the res2.gob to get information on them.

Note : That you will find the samely named BM but with "16" on its name's butt, like "statusleft16.bm". These will be used for computers that has 3D accelerator activated, and the normal bm, if the user hasn't got it turned on. So, the best choice is to create both 8bit and 16bit version of your BM, so all users are able to play with it.

To dev's : "st*.bm" are mainly the ones used for in-game HUD, "bk*.bm" are for loading screen BM, with width 640 and height 480.

In order to create BM, you must get BM utility from Code Alliance. Which can create BM from a BMP file.

If you try to open non 16 bit BM, you will see nothing in BM utility, as they can only store 256 colors and don't know which palette to use. But what you really need to know now is the size of the BM that you're going to modify. Open 16bit BM and get the information.

Once done, launch your favourite graphic program, MS paint, PSP, Photoshop or anything. Now, time to create your own graphic to use in-game.

The size of the BM can differ from the original, but the left-top corner of the BM's position is hard-coded(fixed), so if you make it too big, it will go out from your screen.

You need to in this case make 18 bmp. Don't be afraid, only minor difference are necessary for each images, but this tutorial will edit the Health HUD. Which is consisted of health, shield and surrounding BM.

Health BM can have 6 images, that will change according to the player's health. The shield BM can have 11 images and will rotate according to the amount shield the player has. And the surrounding BM is consisted of 1 bmp which will stay at left bottom corner.

All of them will have the fixed position to be loaded on screen.

Once you're done making the images, launch BM utility, click on "New BM" and choose 16bit colors. Offset values will be used to move the BM off from the hard-coded position in the display. Click on the little window to add your BM.

So, a good way to get the BM drawn is to make all of the BM the same size as the surrounding BM and make unnecessary spaces as transparent. So you don't have to fiddle with pixels by pixels to get the position right.

Choose the color that you wish to make it transparent. Turn it 255, 255, 255 if you want all white of your image to be transparent in JK, but if the surrounding BM is not transparent at all, it will be rendered behind the transparent BM.

Also note that transparent color cannot be overdrawn on HUD, meaning if any of the BM is drawn at certain part of the HUD, it will not be transparent anymore, even the next image is transparent on that position.

In order to create the 8bit version, you should get this file and convert it to a color palette that works with your graphic program, there is a utility at Code Alliance to convert the cmp into a Jasc palette (which works for PSP).

When you create your BM images as 8bit, make sure those 8bit(256 colors) bmp are made with the palette. The rest of the procedures are the same as 16 bit but this time name the files without the 16 on the end of the file name before the extension.

You get these BM files into "ui/bm" folder under resource folder and load the game, and you should see your new BM working and changing according to your vital.

Also note that the following examples are binary, so don't try to click, but rather try to save the file on your hard disk and use them. And make sure to take the ".txt" extension off too.

Resources

statusleft16.bm

sthealth16.bm