Question about touch screen and HUD ingame

[06dak287]

hello all. new to the forum. i have a question. i just used johnny chung lee's concept to make a touch screen with a IR led pointer and Wii remote. im new to scripting and writing in code but im reading alot and learning as much as i can.

my question is if i play a game..(diablo 2) on my main (non touchscreen) how would i go about moving JUST the h.u.d down to my touch panel and implement that into the game. to where i still use the mouse to move my character about the main screen. but my menu and options and inventory and such are down on my touchscreen for my to poke at during the game? i figured it would have to be somewhere in the scripting to be able to move the menu ONLY down the the touchpanel.

any help would be much appreciated. thank you

[tlhintoq]

I've never played Diablo, or its its successors.

Your choice of input sources aside... Does the game itself allow you to move elements such as the HUD to other monitors? Does it let you move these elements *at all*? Do you get to choose where on screen different items such as inventory or menus will be placed even on the one screen (Upper left, lower edge) etc.?

I would assume this has to be something supported by the game itself. Is the game even multi-monitor friendly? Can you limit it to one screen, or expand it across your entire multi-screen desktop, as you want it to appear?

[06dak287]

I've never played Diablo, or its its successors.

Your choice of input sources aside... Does the game itself allow you to move elements such as the HUD to other monitors? Does it let you move these elements *at all*? Do you get to choose where on screen different items such as inventory or menus will be placed even on the one screen (Upper left, lower edge) etc.?

I would assume this has to be something supported by the game itself. Is the game even multi-monitor friendly? Can you limit it to one screen, or expand it across your entire multi-screen desktop, as you want it to appear?

no, none of that. its a single screen, attached HUD setup. im wondering if somewhere in the scripting of the game i can "unlock" the position of the items to be moved. than mate that with the dual screen driver.

[tlhintoq]

no, none of that. its a single screen, attached HUD setup. im wondering if somewhere in the scripting of the game i can "unlock" the position of the items to be moved. than mate that with the dual screen driver.

A couple ways to look at it. First... I doubt that 'scripting' is how they created a program of that complexity. A script, like a movie script, goes from beginning to end following a fixed path. You can script some options, like a script for copying files, but only if the size is over a threshhold, or repeat the same boring process of adding watermarks to an entire folder of images... but you're not going to script a game like that.

Second, no program does anything that someone didn't write code for. By saying that you think you can 'unlock' and reposition those graphics would imply that someone at the software company wrote that ability into the game, but decided to not make it available to the public. My guess is that didn't happen. Usually a feature like that, which would require such fundamental support at the base level of the program, would be a big selling point. I'm just guessing here, but if they had created options like multi-monitor support then they would be using those advances to sell the game. "Hey look, our games does *THIS* and that other one doesn't." - "Version 2, now multi-monitor aware" and so on.

Somewhere buried in the code of the program are numerous drawing routines. Some draw characters, some backgrounds, some the HUD. Now it is absolutely possible that the way the developers implemented those functions, that they could be totally independent, and that each one is based solely on a single origin point for itself that is not tied to the others. Hypothetically if that were the case then you could fool the origin point for the HUD without affecting the other routines. But more likely, all the routines work together and feed each other. Or at the very least, they all look at the same variables such as: Screen height/width, origin. So they all base their actions on the same environment and thus don't pose a risk of getting "out of sync" with each other.

Again, I'm only guessing based on how I write software. Someone with a more intimate knowledge of game program might be able to blow away all my assumptions.

Have you done some extensive searching on the 'net for things like "Diablo2 HUD customization" - "Diablo2 HUD relocation" - "Modify Diablo2 HUD" and so on? If it can be done, I'm sure you're not the first guy to give it a go.

[RedSon]

I have played Diablo 2 and what you are trying to do is not supported by the game. As was explained earlier its more fundamental then a scripting procedure and there is nothing to unlock since there is no unlockable content in the game.

However, I do have one suggestion. If you are an *extremely* advanced programmer then you can try Microsoft Detours (http://research.microsoft.com/sn/detours/). If the drawing code calls into dlls or if it uses the DirectX dlls you might be able to intercept the call with your detour and then use the trampoline to change the target device of the render. There is a buddy of mine who is using this to modify EQ, but I won't go into more detail then that since what he is doing isn't exactly following the EULA.