So, I've been working on some stuff in the HUD, and I thought I'd talk about an old 'new' feature I'd like to reinvent. Granted, some of the code has already been restored in there recently for the FSPort, but I want to expand it to give us a lot more possible customization. I'm talking about the weapon links gauge from FS1, on the 'right arc'. It shows which weapon(s) are active. Go look at 2_rightarc*.ani in sparky_hi_fs2.vp if you don't remember what it looks like.
It's already going to need quite a few changes to make it work with 3 primaries and 4 secondaries, as well as be future-compatible

. So, while I'm at it, I thought, what else should I think about adding? Here's my rough idea of the new structure:
The weapons are divided; each weapon bank is assigned a different ani. Let's call them primary1 through primary3 and secondary1 through secondary4 for now. The first frame (0) of each is the 'empty frame', and the game picks only one of them to display according to how many banks there are ... i.e. if you're in a fighter with 2 primary banks it uses frame 0 of primary2, but if you only have 1 primary bank it uses frame 0 of primary1. Functionally this is identical with the current behavior if we were to define primary1 as 2_rightarc2 and secondary1 as 2_rightarc4 and so on. This is before anything lights up though. Now for the lighting up, let's have frame 1 just be the weapon is lit up selected and ready, so at a bare minimum, all you need to have this work is frame 0 and frame 1.
This is where it gets interesting. Each frame after 1 has to do with separate points. Picture this: They are rendered on top of each other in the same place. Let's have N more frames according to the number of points in the weapon bank (remember, once I finish hud_gauges.tbl we'll be able to customize the ani used per-ship if we want). These frames have to do with which points are selected and ready... by default for primaries
all of em are selected, so unless the "cycle" flag is set (or maybe some other link settings to be implemented later

) this isn't really necessary, but it gets more fun when you consider secondaries or cycling primaries: it would light up the banks that are ready to fire next.
Still with me? I've got another idea to add on top of that involving ammo, but I'd better wait and see what people think of this stuff so far. Keep in mind that with each weapon bank being given its own ani and coordinates, each can now essentially be considered a separate gauge. With hud_gauges.tbl I'll be allowing for customization, different coordinates and different ani files per bank and per ship, so consider the possibilities:
1. by default this could behave just like FS1's right arc, all coordinates set the same so rendering on top of each other
2. moving the gauges closer to the reticle we could make it look like the reticle changes according to what weapon is selected. zeck we could even get rid of the default reticle and actually have this be our reticle. Somewhat like TIE Fighter

3. moving the gauges down to a corner like in a MFD we can make a more complicated/informative weapons gauge, Wing Commander or Tachyon style (at least, somewhat). Mind, this is according to what bank is selected, not what specific weapon is named ... but put it next to the regular weapons gauge and we can make this into a more complicated 'show which bank/weapon/points are selected' arrow/symbol system.
I've been goofing around with testing a minimalistic version of idea #2 -- it's pretty sweet so far. The more complicated point-specific stuff takes more work but is optional. I'm sure there's more I haven't thought of, too, so that's where you all come in to brainstorm.
