Cartur's Combat Text

World of Warcraft style combat text for Valheim. The motion was timed against retail WoW footage, frame by frame, and it only changes the numbers you see over an enemy you just hit.

What it does

Ordinary hits fling off to one side in a short arc and are gone in about half a second, as in retail WoW. Crits pop. They snap to a big peak and are back to size within about 0.14 seconds, then sit on the creature for around a second and a half. Enemy hit numbers are drawn at 2x vanilla size and crits at 3x. Colours are the game's own.

A hit counts as a crit in four cases: a backstab, a stagger hit, a hit that triggers the game's weakness text (a creature taking extra damage from that damage type), or a hit at least twice the average of your last 20 normal hits. The average needs at least five hits before it starts counting, so the first swings of a session are not all crits. It is one running average across every enemy, not one per creature type.

Numbers are drawn in Federo, the closest free match to WoW's damage font. Federo is under the SIL Open Font License (fonts/OFL.txt). Hit numbers on enemies are also readable from further away. The mod raises the game's text-visibility distance to 80 metres for an enemy hit, so a bow shot from range still shows a number. The raise applies only to that one hit, so distant chopping, mining and other players' numbers are not pulled in.

Only hits on enemies are changed. Numbers on trees, ore, buildings, crafting and pickups, and over the player or tamed creatures, are left as vanilla draws them.

Settings

Config file: BepInEx/config/com.jekkle.valheim.carturcombattext.cfg.

The names of the game's loaded fonts, for example Valheim-Norse, are written to the BepInEx log when you enter a world. A config from before 1.2.0 keeps whatever Font it already had. Set it to Federo-Regular.ttf to switch. If a font file cannot be loaded, a warning is written to the log.

Install

Use a mod manager (r2modman, Thunderstore or Gale) and it pulls in BepInEx for you. To install by hand, drop the CarturCombatText folder, which holds the DLL and its fonts folder, into BepInEx/plugins.

Client-side. The server does not need it and neither do the people you play with.

Free, and always will be. If it improved your game you can tip me on Patreon.

Discord: bug reports, install help, and mod requests. Bug reports get their own thread so nothing is lost in a chat scroll, and requests are voted on.

More from Cartur: HD Blood · Map Pins · Compass and Clock · Safe Stamina · Follow Command · Flooring · UI HUD · Waste Management · Feeding Trough

Changelog

1.2.3

• New icon in the Cartur's Mods style. The mod itself is unchanged from 1.2.2 (BepInEx still reports 1.2.2).

1.2.2

• In-game screenshots in the README. No code changes.

1.2.1

• New icon, and the README is rewritten: a fuller description of what the mod does, every setting and default checked against the code, and image captions that match the pictures. No code changes.

1.2.0

• Retail WoW motion, measured frame by frame from 60fps WoW footage. Ordinary hits fling off to one side in a short arc and fade in about half a second. Crits stay on the creature for about 1.5s.
• Crit pop now shrinks straight back to size by ~0.14s, with no undershoot.
• No more recolouring: crits keep the game's colours and are no longer bold.
• New default font, Federo (SIL Open Font License), the closest free match to WoW's damage font. An existing config keeps whatever Font it already has; set it to Federo-Regular.ttf to switch.
• A font loaded from a file now keeps the game's outline and vanilla's digit height.

1.1.1

• An error while drawing a damage number can no longer cancel the hit's damage.
• The list of recent hits no longer grows without limit where the text is never shown (hidden HUD, dedicated server).
• Stagger hits count as critical.
• Less garbage per frame, and a guard against the last entry being shown with the wrong label.

1.1.0

• Choose your own font. General / Font takes either the name of a font the game already has (the list is written to the BepInEx log when you enter a world, e.g. Valheim-Norse) or the file name of a .ttf/.otf you put in a fonts folder next to this mod's DLL. Empty keeps the game's.

1.0.0

First release.

• Enemy hit numbers scaled up (2x normal, 3x crit) with a fast crit pop - everything else the game draws is left alone.
• Crit on a backstab, a weak-elemental hit, or a hit at least 2x your recent average against that kind of enemy.
• Red for elemental weakness, yellow for every other crit.
• Numbers follow the creature instead of hanging where the blow landed.
• Visibility distance raised so a ranged hit still shows a number.