Any way to hide the health bar in TG/T2?

[Garmonbozia]

Sup taffers, first post here. I want to have a more minimalist HUD by hiding the health shields, considering the fact that I'm trying to avoid all damage while playing they are pretty much useless most of the time to me except to create a more cluttered HUD. Is it possible to bind a key so I can hide the health bar while in-game?

[Twist]

In NewDark, if you add this line to cam_ext.cfg, it'll hide the health bar as long as you're at max health:

; hide health bar at full health
hide_maxed_hpbar

You can also minimize the visibility gem and and the health bar by adding these lines to cam_ext.cfg:

; zoom visibity gem
vismeter_zoom 85
; zoom hp bar
hpbar_zoom 80

(The lines starting with semicolons are for comments -- for helping you identify the configuration variables. You don't need those lines.)

You can play with the numbers to get the gem & health bar size that works for you, obviously.

You can just add these lines at the bottom of cam_ext.cfg.

[Garmonbozia]

Thanks, that's exactly what I was looking for!

[Twist]

No problem -- and welcome to TTLG!

[Komag]

I used to play with tiny blood drops for health and a 1/4 size gem, less obtrusive that way. Then TDS came out with MEGA SUPER SIZE HUD for Xbox and well all died a little that day.

[R Soul]

Argh! The gears! The blue glow! It was funny (in a way) that there was no escape when nothing was selected, as it kept the blue blow and even had text saying "Nothing". But I actually liked the compass going around the light gem as it didn't mean that we had to choose between that and an inventory selection.

[Komag]

Yeah, good point about the compass, have to give them a bit of credit there

[Bucky Seifert]

A number of things in Thief 3 are great ideas with mixed results in their execution.

[Estel Randir]

In NewDark, if you add this line to cam_ext.cfg, it'll hide the health bar as long as you're at max health:

; hide health bar at full health
hide_maxed_hpbar

You can also minimize the visibility gem and and the health bar by adding these lines to cam_ext.cfg:

; zoom visibity gem
vismeter_zoom 85
; zoom hp bar
hpbar_zoom 80

(The lines starting with semicolons are for comments -- for helping you identify the configuration variables. You don't need those lines.)

You can play with the numbers to get the gem & health bar size that works for you, obviously.

You can just add these lines at the bottom of cam_ext.cfg.

I never knew how you could do this. Where is this and similar modifications found? I would like to be able to do some interface custamization.

[Twist]

NewDark added a number of new commands and configuration variables. Many of them only apply to using Dromed, but several work for players, too.

Take a look at the NewDark documentation, which I think by default should be in a directory called Doc in your Thief folder.

You can further modify the interface by switching out or modifying assets, but that's a whole different animal, and I don't recommend messing with it unless you really understand how Thief's assets are structured and loaded, and you appreciate the problems and conflicts you can create with fan missions or with stuff done by TFix/T2Fix.

Create a separate Thief install from your main play install if you want to experiment.

This NewDark stuff works the same for both Thief 1 and 2.

A number of things in Thief 3 are great ideas with mixed results in their execution.

Yeah, I liked the ideas of the compass integrated with the visibility gem, the separate inventory screen, and even the flattening yourself against the wall bit, but the execution of all three of those ideas made them feel like detractions rather than the iterative improvements they could have been.

[ZylonBane]

Yeah, I liked the ideas of the compass integrated with the visibility gem, the separate inventory screen, and even the flattening yourself against the wall bit...

Fun fact, the silly "wall flattening" thing had already been done better in the original games. In Thief 1/2 if you're within about 1.3 DromEd units of any wall, you automatically receive a -1 to your visibility modifier. By comparison crouching grants a -3 to visibility, so it's not much, but it's still something. You can view all the modifier defaults under AI/Utility/Visibility Control. Adding the property to Avatar in the hierarchy and setting "Wall mod" to -100 demonstrates that it does actually work.

Also this thread is in the wrong forum. This forum is for listing mods, not discussing modding.

[Tommyph1208]

Hi, reviving an old thread here.... I cant get:

; hide health bar at full health
hide_maxed_hpbar

To work when launching T2 from the GOG launcher, any help?

[R Soul]

It should be a simple matter of copy and paste. Can you describe the steps you performed?

Also if you're using notepad to edit the file, make sure it's saving it as "cam_ext.cfg" and not "cam_ext.cfg.txt" by putting double quotes around the filename or using a better text editor.