[ccoventry]

Release note: New: the kill feed's names can have an outline (ds_hud_deathmsg outline 2) and a see-through box behind each line or each name (ds_hud_deathmsg background 150, background team 200), so they stay readable over busy walls; colours can be typed as r g b or as hex, like #0a286e.

Part of #562

The user looked at the screenshots and approved the looks (outline 2 and background 150), the options as built, and the Allies team-box default (a quarter of the team colour).

What

New ds_hud_deathmsg subcommands, all off by default:

• outline <0..4> [colour] [alpha]: draws each name again at every offset within N px, before the coloured pass. At 1 px that's the 8 neighbours; wider is a filled disc (68 extra draws a name at 4 px). It works with the game's font and with font. With the game's font the outline is always opaque, because pfnDrawConsoleString takes no alpha.
• background <alpha> [colour] [padding]: one translucent box per line, from the killer's name to the victim's. Default colour black, padding 4.
• background team <alpha> [padding]: one box behind each name, in a quarter of that name's team colour. The icon gets no box.
• background allies <colour> / background axis <colour>: that team's own box colour (... default goes back to the shade).
• outline default / background default: off.
• Colours: every colour argument is r g b (each 0..255) or one hex word: #0a286e, the short #0af (each digit doubled), or six digits without the # (0a286e).

All of it works with both kill-feed layouts, the game's (layout default) and #1023's layout even.

How

• Everything runs inside font's redirected text calls and scale's redirected SPR_DrawHoles, which see each line in Draw's order.
• The line box goes down at the line's first draw (the killer's name, or the icon when there's no killer). Each name box goes down just before its name.
• The line height is the one Draw steps by: the icon rect the line-start stub reads, which is the even layout's 26-row box (times scale) when that layout is on. So the boxes follow the even layout's slots with no extra code.
• Boxes are one GL quad each, from opengl32.dll's exports (as in hud_sprite_edges.rs), so there are no engine offsets and both builds are the same. Every GL state the quad touches is put back. pfnFillRGBA was no use: it adds its colour (GL_ONE), so a dark box comes out as nothing.
• Settings are atomics, read on the engine thread. There are no locks in the draw path.
• New modules: goldsrc-hooks/src/deathmsg/backdrop.rs (drawing, settings) and deathmsg/colour.rs (the one colour parser, with unit tests).
• While either option is on, the right margin from Kill feed: names no longer cut off at the right edge with a bigger scale or your own font (part of #728) #998 also applies, and grows by the outline width or the padding.

Decisions

• Team detection: by the colour the game passes for each name, from GetClientColor (client+0x2ad90, the same on both builds). Allies (team 1) is (0.3, 0.4, 0.3), Axis (team 2) is (1.0, 0.25, 0.25). The British are team 1 on a British map, so background allies covers them. Any other colour (spectator, HLTV) always gets its own quarter shade.
• Line boxes: the line's own height, 2 px short, so neighbouring translucent boxes never overlap and darken. Padding applies sideways only, because Draw steps lines by exactly their height.
• Name boxes: the text's height plus half the padding above and below, clipped to the line.
• Team mode: the icon gets no box.
• Hex forms: #rrggbb, #rgb and rrggbb are accepted. A bare rgb is not: 255 alone is a channel. Six characters are never a 0..255 number, so rrggbb without # is unambiguous. In background <alpha> [colour] [padding], one plain number is the padding and one hex word is the colour. Replies and the status line still print colours as r g b.
• # in the console and in cfgs: the engine's tokenizer splits only at whitespace, quotes, : and { } ( ) ' ,, and cfg comments start with //, so #0a286e arrives whole. Tested in game both ways (below). Studio's cfg_scan and the Commands tab's suggestions only read the command name, so they don't look at arguments.
• Settings: like scale/font, these are console subcommands set from a cfg (e.g. the WSOD25 movie cfg). There is no Studio-side setting.
• Console names: no new console name. console_commands_data.js was regenerated (console_names.py --pre --post --hlae) and came out unchanged. Commands.txt's usage line for ds_hud_deathmsg lists the new subcommands and the hex form.

Merged with dev

dev brought #1023 (layout even|default), #1026 (replace) and #998's right margin into the same code. Kept all of them: the status line shows layout, outline/background and replace; "is the layout ours" counts the even layout and the boxes; the line box goes down before the even layout's atlas icon draw. Other open PRs touching the same files: #1044, #1040, #906, #885, #882 and #758 edit docs/dodstudio_commands.md and Commands.txt (other commands' lines). None touch the kill-feed code.

Test done

Test DLL: local\test-killfeed-outline\ (built from 4340a652). game_probe, Brain account, -addons, 2560x1440, demo ktps8w11sf-dyelife_gskill_m2_armory_h1 (dod_armory_b6), the WSOD25 kill-feed settings (scale 2.5, font Bahnschrift SemiBold 32 shadow), max 8, six faked kills plus the demo's own. For the even layout I copied #1023's atlas (sprites\dodstudio_killfeed.spr/.txt and its two HD frames) into each install's dod_addon and removed it afterwards.

• POST and PRE, each with layout default and layout even: plain, outline 2, background 150, background team 200 + background allies #0a286e. All draw as intended. With layout even every line box sits on its 65 px slot with the 2 px gap, names centred in it; the victim's name and box stay clear of the right edge. Nothing overlaps.
• Hex from the console (the remote pipe uses pfnClientCmd, the same buffer and tokenizer as a typed line): background allies #0a286e replied 10 40 110; background 150 #141428 6 replied colour 20 20 40, alpha 150, padding 6; #0a28 and #zzz were refused with the right message.
• Hex from a cfg line (exec of a scratch cfg in dod_addon, deleted after): background allies #0a286e, background axis 5a0000 and outline 1 #fff gave allies 10 40 110, axis 90 0 0 and outline = 1 px 255 255 255, and drew that way.
• No crashes on either install.
• Seen, not from this PR: on PRE with layout default at scale 2.5 the weapon icons are the stock low-res sheets with bits of neighbouring icons, as Kill feed: an even layout where every weapon icon has the same height and nothing is cut off (#1022) #1023's review saw ([R&D] HD HUD sprites, and drawing the HUD bigger (kill feed first) #728's path). The boxes and outline don't touch the icons.
• cargo test --workspace --locked: 2228 passed. cargo test -p goldsrc-hooks --target i686-pc-windows-msvc: 884 passed. Clippy 1.98.1 -D warnings is clean on the workspace and i686, cargo fmt --check passes, and npm run test:unit passed 904.

Screenshots: main checkout local\review-images\killfeed-outline\final\. Start with 00-contact-post.png and 00-contact-pre.png (top-right crops of every grab); the full grabs are in post-2560x1440\ and pre-2560x1440\.

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[ccoventry]

Review pass (unattended): merged dev in, read the diff, one fix pushed (head 65e4909c).

Fixed

• background default turned the boxes off but kept the background allies|axis colours, so a later background team came back with an old cfg's colours. It now resets those too. There's a test for it, and the usage line and docs say so.

Checked, no bug found

• Draw paths: no unwrap, slicing or division on game values, and no locks per frame (atomics and a OnceLock only).
• GL quad: it saves and restores the texture, blend and alpha-test enables, the blend func and the current colour.
• Game-font outline: it sets the colour again before each pass and gives the game's own colour back exactly afterwards.
• Line box right edge is screen - margin. The margin includes edge_extra() >= padding, so boxes stay inside Kill feed: names no longer cut off at the right edge with a bigger scale or your own font (part of #728) #998's right margin.
• Boxes follow the y the game passes, so they move with the spectator bar.
• Team colours: checked in client.dll on PRE and POST (GetClientColor at +0x2ad90). Team 1 is (0.3, 0.4, 0.3) and team 2 is (1.0, 0.25, 0.25). The truncating conversion gives 76/102/76 and 255/63/63, and the British are team 1. Team 0 also gets the Allies colour, which does no harm: unassigned players never show in the feed.
• No settings.cfg persistence. font and scale don't have it either; all of these are set from a cfg.

Tests: cargo test -p goldsrc-hooks passes (779). clippy 1.98.1 -D warnings is clean for i686 and the host, and fmt is clean. The release DLL is built and copied to local\test-killfeed-outline\.

In game: POST only, 2560x1440, wsod25_grp1_h1_m00cat, with scale 2.5, font Bahnschrift SemiBold 32 shadow and outline 2.

• background team 200 at about 105 s and background 150 at about 160 s: the boxes cover the names, the names stay clear of the right edge, and the viewmodel and crosshair show no tint.
• background default and outline default clear both, and ds_debug_status reads outline = off, background = off.
• No crash.
• Not re-run on PRE: my change doesn't touch the draw code, and the PR's own run covered PRE.

Screenshots are in local\review-images\killfeed-outline\review1000\. It still needs the user's look for taste; I found nothing else blocking.

[ccoventry]

Final pass (agent)

• Merged dev: it brought Kill feed: an even layout where every weapon icon has the same height and nothing is cut off (#1022) #1023 (layout even|default), Kill feed: change who got a kill, who died or the weapon, or hide one kill, from the console (part of #1021) #1026 (replace) and Kill feed: names no longer cut off at the right edge with a bigger scale or your own font (part of #728) #998's right margin into the same code. All of them still work. With layout even, the boxes follow the 26-row slots (65 px at scale 2.5).
• New: hex colours (4340a652). Every colour argument (outline, background, background allies|axis) takes r g b or #0a286e, #0af, or 0a286e. One parser in deathmsg/colour.rs, with unit tests.
• In game, PRE and POST at 2560x1440, ktps8w11sf-dyelife_gskill_m2_armory_h1, WSOD25 settings (scale 2.5 and font Bahnschrift SemiBold 32 shadow). Both layouts: outline 2, background 150, and background team 200 + background allies #0a286e all draw as intended. Nothing overlaps, and the right edge stays clear.
• Hex worked from the console and from a cfg line. Bad hex (#0a28, #zzz) is refused with a message saying why. No crashes.
• Tests: workspace 2228 passed, hooks on i686 884 passed, clippy and fmt clean, JS unit tests 904 passed. CI is green.

Screenshots: local\review-images\killfeed-outline\final\00-contact-post.png and 00-contact-pre.png.

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