Order of health/TU/morale bars should be TU/health/morale

This is about the current/maximum health/TU/morale bars in the ground combat main panel. Their current order is health (red), TU (green) and morale (blue), but I find this order unnatural and occassionally confusing. The problem is that they are not in the logical order of importance - the most important is definitely the TU one, as TUs are the most often used and checked, and they matter whenever a soldier does anything. But the TU bar is the middle one and so it is somewhat "hidden". It has already happened to me a number of times that I just quickly glanced at the bars and got the number of available TUs wrong. Moreover this is inconsistent with Geoscape, which lists them in TU/health/.../morale order in both Barracks and Soldier Equipment (and Barracks also calls TUs "APS", but that's a nitpick).

Therefore I think the bars should be ordered in the more natural order: TU, health, morale.

Ok, turns out this is quite easy to modify. The files are Xenonauts/assets/scripts/combatguiexport.lua and Xenonauts/assets/scripts/combatguiexport_large.lua (depending on the screen resolution). Switching y positions of all items hpbar/apbar, hpvalue/apvalue and heart/clock does the job. Attachments are diff files doing the changes.

hpapbarsswitch.diff.txt

hpapbarsswitch_large.diff.txt

strings.xml.diff.txt

hpapbarsswitch.diff.txt

hpapbarsswitch_large.diff.txt

strings.xml.diff.txt

Does anyone else think they should be the other way around? As Illunak has discovered, it's a relatively simple change.

I'd never really given it any thought, but that sounds eminently sensible to me.

(Does changing the order of the bars also affect the bars on the unit tabs?)

EDIT: Never mind. I don't really understand LUA, but looking at the file it looks like there's something that covers the unit tabs too.

I think it's a non-issue, but by all means: if you have nothing else to fix any more.

Does anyone else think they should be the other way around? As Illunak has discovered, it's a relatively simple change.

If its quick & easy for ya I too would like it switched.

Does anyone else think they should be the other way around?

I do.

He makes a good point. I hadn't really thought about it, but it makes sense.

I prefer to have health on top, just because thats where it is in basically every type of video game. First is health, then consumable ressources, like tu, stamina, mp...

That said, i wouldn't mind much if the order is changed, i just would be a bit confused by it.

My first thought was that health is more important because without it you're dead... but he's right that TUs are what change / we pay attention to the most, and having them on top would make things more scannable.

I think it'd make a nice thing to test out in experimental 8.

I prefer TU below the health bar, in accordance with RPG standards.

TUs first is pretty much the way every XCOM-style game did it so far and I think its the way to go.

TU is the value u constantly need to keep an eye on (how far can i walk, so I will be able to turn/kneel/shoot/reaction fire.. etc)

Health might seem the more impotant value at fist, but it rarely changes and you usually will check every soldier that got shot at immediatly (if he isn't already a corpse after the Alien turn).

Is it possible (by editing the display XML) to add the soldier class (that you normally get when hovering over) to the HP/TU bar?

I've noticed that the tooltip should have the order swapped too, so strings.xml needs changing too (I've added one more patch to the post with the patches above).

Is it possible (by editing the display XML) to add the soldier class (that you normally get when hovering over) to the HP/TU bar?

This indeed would be a convenient addition.

Is it possible (by editing the display XML) to add the soldier class (that you normally get when hovering over) to the HP/TU bar?

Yes and (presumably) no. It is possible to add a picture there, but since the class is not hardcoded, game code needs to update it with the picture of the actual class. So unless there's a magic trick to get it working just in the lua, you'd need to ask GH to modify the code that updates the class picture in the tooltip to also update the class picture in the added element. And if you're going to do that, please start a new thread, thanks.

As at this point it seems unlikely this will get fixed in the game, I've made a mod so that those interested can install the fix easily: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/10032-Time-Units-First