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Though subjective, I greatly prefer NES style bars to the alternatives shown. I have in the past (circa-v8b classes) used HUDShot, but since we adopted health numbers officially I haven't returned and prefer the simplicity and versatility of the current bars' looks. I'm willing to (reluctantly) play softball with the Genesis Flavor bars, but would still greatly prefer not to use them.
- Who is this bar change for anyways? The NES bars hit the nostalgia and coolness factor of "oh man that's cool, they got the health bars straight from the games in here?" and health/ammo numbers already fix the problems that the other bars will fix as well. You could argue that the health and ammo numbers are kinda tacked on, and yeah they are. I'm not gonna deny that at all. But it's not like the other bars fix that either - there will always be more precision in the numbers, and more novelty from the NES bars. Will the casual player (numbers don't matter so much) get that much more value from the other bars? And will the seasoned player (numbers matter more) ever want to turn numbers off?
- I use Vertical, and have always found discomfort with Horizontal bars. No matter which direction they deplete, it doesn't quite feel right. I respect people who do use them, and have never advocated for things to change to fit my standards (which I wouldn't have really), but they've never sat right. As a result, I really do just sorta need an option to have my bars to deplete from the top and end at the bottom.
- I need some selling on the gap between bars present in compromise. I don't understand what use it serves, and it just clutters more of the screen.
- How much is the 8bdm dev team familiar with Zandronum's Alternative HUD? You can enable it in Options -> Advanced Options -> HUD Options -> Alternative HUD. While definitely not made for MM8BDM, there are some extremely cool parts of this HUD that it seems are 1) important to newcomers 2) useful even to seasoned players 3) relatively nonintrusive and able to be built around the current HUD.
You could add all of them (NES, 16-bit, Minimalist) and allow the player to choose, defaulting to the one newer players are more likely to prefer (when they install MM8BDM)
All of us on the development team generally agree that introducing these as options is not a viable route to take. Modders already struggle to support both horizontal and vertical modes properly, given the amount of graphics and offsetting work it requires. It's definitely not gonna become any easier when that work becomes quadruple what it is now. The more difficult it becomes for modders, the more likely modders just won't support the other options or will remove the options, nullifying the entire point of them being options to begin with.