The HUD editor

Moving, sizing, grouping and hiding every HUD element, so the layout stays where you put it.

The HUD editor is where you decide what Vantage draws over the game and where. This page is for anyone arranging their screen, from moving one timer out of the way to building a tidy layout out of dozens of panels. It covers every control in the editor, every shortcut, the inspector, and where your layout is kept. Everything here is as of 2.0.1.

Opening the editor

Opened from the sidebar's HUD Editor button, the setup wizard, the key or the command, the editor goes back to the game when you close it. Opened from the Open HUD editor button beside a feature's preview, it goes back to that feature's page. The editor does not pause the game. Keybinds has more on binding the key.

What you are looking at

While the editor is open, the normal HUD stops drawing and the editor draws every element in its place, filled with sample content, so you can see a timer or a tracker even when it would have nothing to say right now. The editor works in the same screen pixels the HUD uses, so what you see is where it will be.

Around the canvas sit four floating panels:

The panels are solid enough to read over a busy HUD, whatever your glass opacity. While you drag something, the element list and the inspector step out of the way, because the top-right corner they cover is exactly where many HUD elements live. Tab hides the list for good when you want the whole screen.

Why it works in structure, not coordinates

Nearly every HUD element changes width as its numbers change, several times a second. A layout made by placing a few hundred boxes one at a time starts to drift as soon as the game runs: the gap you set between two panels becomes an overlap when one of them grows.

So the editor gives you four tools that hold a layout together instead of freezing it in place:

• Containers own a set of elements and lay them out again every frame, so their spacing survives.
• Pins attach one element to an edge of another, so "this goes under that" survives the parent resizing.
• Layers set the draw order, so which element wins an overlap is your decision.
• Scope (search, a category focus and a state filter) decides what the canvas draws solid, which is what makes a few hundred elements navigable. Between them, the features in this release add 198 HUD elements.

Moving and sizing

Dragging and selecting

Click an element to select it and drag to move it. With several things selected, dragging one moves them all by the same amount. Ctrl-click or Shift-click adds an element to the selection or takes it out. Dragging on an empty part of the canvas draws a box and selects every element it touches; Ctrl+A selects everything in scope.

Clicking a panel inside a container selects the panel. Clicking the space around it selects the container. A locked element does not move: the status line says so, and Ctrl+L or the inspector unlocks it.

Snapping

While you drag, an element snaps when it comes within 8 pixels of a screen edge, the centre of the screen, or another element's edges and centre (including sitting flush against it). A thin guide shows what it snapped to, labelled with the gap in pixels or with "Aligned". Snapping ignores elements outside the current scope, so a node never jumps to something you cannot see.

Snapping is on by default. Hold Alt to ignore it for one drag, or switch it off with the Snap button.

Grid and zones

Grid draws an 8 pixel alignment grid and is off by default. Zones shows the nine regions of the screen an element can be anchored to; they always appear while you drag, and the button keeps them on screen the rest of the time.

Anchors

Every element is placed against one of nine anchors, and its position is an offset from that anchor, measured inward. A top-right element five pixels from the right edge stays five pixels from the right edge at any window size or GUI scale.

You rarely choose one by hand. When you let go of an element, Vantage re-anchors it to whichever third of the screen its centre landed in, so it stays put when the window changes size. The inspector's Anchor setting picks one explicitly. Every element is kept on screen; one larger than the screen is held at the top-left corner, the only end of it you could still reach.

Scale

Scroll the mouse wheel over an element to scale it in 10 % steps, or hold Ctrl for 1 % steps. With several elements selected, the wheel scales them together. The inspector's Scale slider runs from 50 % to 300 % in 5 % steps. A container's scale multiplies the scale of everything inside it.

Nudging

The arrow keys move the selection, or the element under the pointer, by 1 pixel; with Shift, by 10. An element laid out by a container cannot be nudged: drag it to reorder it, or take it out first.

Lining things up

With two or more elements selected, the selection bar offers Align left edges, Align horizontal centres, Align right edges, Align top edges, Align vertical centres and Align bottom edges, and, with three or more, Space evenly across and Space evenly down. They work on elements placed on their own: anything locked, pinned or stacked in a container is left alone.

Containers

A container is a set of elements that moves, scales, hides and stacks as one. It is the lasting answer to two panels overlapping: the container spaces its members every frame, however their contents change width.

Making one

Select the elements you want together and press Ctrl+G, or Group in the toolbar. They go into a new stacked container in reading order, named after the category they share, or "Group" when they are mixed. In the Library tab, each category header has a button that puts the whole category into one container.

Adding and taking out

Drag an element over a container to add it; a line shows where it will land, and the status line says "Drop into name at position n". Inside a stack, dragging a member reorders it. Drag it more than 24 pixels past the container's edge and let go to take it out, or use the take-out button on its row. Ungroup (Ctrl+Shift+G) removes the container and leaves every member where it was.

Container settings

Right-click a container to open its settings in the inspector.

Reset in a container's inspector puts every setting above back to its default and leaves the container where it is.

Draft containers by category

When a layout has at least twenty overlapping pairs and no containers at all, the editor offers to draft one container per category from the elements that are switched on. It is a starting point, not a finished layout: it may not find room for everything, and Ctrl+Z does not take it back.

Pins

A pin attaches one element to an edge of another, and the pinned element follows its parent every frame. Open the inspector on the element and use its Parent section:

An element is either pinned or in a container, never both: choosing one clears the other. Vantage refuses a pin that would make a loop and says "That would make a loop of pins". A pinned element is placed by its parent, so it cannot be dragged on its own and its anchor is fixed.

Layers

The Layers tab lists the layer stack, front-most first. Ctrl+] brings the selection forward one step and Ctrl+[ sends it back; add Shift to send it all the way to the front or the back. Inside a container, the member order is also the draw order, so the same keys reorder members. The arrows on a container's row move the whole container.

Finding one element among hundreds

Two ways to list them

Layers shows the structure: containers with their members indented under them, then loose elements. Library groups every element by the feature category it comes from. Each category header shows how many of its elements are switched on, and has four buttons: show only this category on the canvas, put the whole category into one container, switch them all on, and switch them all off.

Search and scope

The search field matches an element's name, its id, its category, the name of the feature it belongs to, and the name of its container. Ctrl+F jumps to it. Under it, the scope tabs filter both the list and the canvas:

When elements overlap, a button above the list counts the overlapping pairs and takes you to Issues, and each overlapping row carries an amber mark down its edge.

Ghosts

Elements outside the scope fade to a faint outline so you can still see where they sit. Switch Ghosts off to hide them entirely.

Reading a row

Each row shows the element's name and a short summary: its position in a container, what it is pinned to, or its anchor; its scale when it is not 100 %; "locked"; how many elements it overlaps; and "modified" when it is not at its default place. The switch on the right shows or hides that element in game. Hiding an element only stops it drawing; the feature behind it keeps working.

The inspector

Right-click an element, on the canvas or in the list, to open the inspector. Its heading names the element, its category and its id, and a status line says what places it: "Laid out by container", "Overlaps n elements" or "Placed on its own".

Glow is off everywhere by default on purpose: an interface where everything glows has nothing left to say when something matters. Use it on the two or three panels you most need to notice.

Below the style settings, Feature options lists the options of the feature the element belongs to, the same rows you would find on that feature's page in the menu, so a right-click on the HUD answers everything.

At the foot: Isolate shows only this element's category on the canvas, Reset puts this element's position, scale and style back to its own defaults, and Done closes the inspector.

Weight and visibility (the Director)

The Director, off by default, keeps every HUD element enabled but shows only the ones about to cost you something, on a small stage under the crosshair. In the inspector, an element that reports urgency gets a Director section:

An element that does not report urgency says "This element does not speak urgency, so the Director never hides or stages it." The editor itself always shows every element, and a small amber dot on a row marks an element the Director is watching right now.

Keyboard and mouse

F1, or the info button on the status line, opens this sheet inside the editor.

A few more that are not on the sheet:

While the search field has focus, single-key shortcuts such as R are ignored, so typing "reset" into it never resets anything.

Undo, reset and presets

Ctrl+Z steps back through up to 64 changes. A burst of the same gesture, such as a spin of the scroll wheel or a held arrow key, counts as one step. Undo covers where things are and how big they are (moves, nudges, scaling, aligning, spacing evenly, anchor changes) and every reset. It does not cover grouping, ungrouping, the inspector's style switches or Draft containers by category. The history ends when you close the editor.

There are three resets, all of which Ctrl+Z can take back:

Each puts an element's position, scale and style back to that element's own defaults, not to some general default.

A look replaces the whole layout at once. The setup wizard's Choose a look step and the presets screen (More actions, then Presets in the menu, or /vt presets) offer four: Minimal, Balanced, Everything and Competitive. Applying one can be undone until you close the game, with the presets screen's Undo button or /vt presets undo. First launch says what each one does.

Where your layout is kept

The editor saves as you go and again when you close it; Done means "Save and close" and Esc does the same. The layout lives in one file:

.minecraft/config/vantage/hud.json

That file holds one layout per config profile, so switching config profile switches layout too. A profile you create or duplicate starts with the default layout. /vt reload re-reads the file, along with your settings, if you have edited it by hand.

When an element's id changes between versions of Vantage, the saved position and scale carry across. An entry for an element this build does not have, such as one from a newer version, is kept in the file untouched rather than thrown away.

The look of elements you have not styled yourself (backdrop opacity, corner radius, text shadow, and whether they follow the theme's colours) comes from the HUD defaults on the Appearance page.

Related

• Appearance: the theme, the glass, and the HUD defaults every element starts from.
• Config profiles: separate setups, each with its own HUD layout.
• First launch: the setup wizard and the four looks.
• HUD elements: how a feature puts something on the HUD, for developers.