Expression2 HUD Creation Kit

A standalone, no-context HUD layout editor for Garry's Mod Expression2 EGP. This is a lightweight, dark-themed drawing app focused on building HUDs from preset primitives and exporting ready-to-paste E2 code. No extra setup beyond Python is required.

What This Is

• A desktop editor for assembling HUD layouts from shapes and text.
• A project format you can save/load and keep iterating on.
• An exporter that outputs E2 EGP code using a normalized EGP: wirelink style.

Key Features

• Tools: Select, Line, Rect (outline), Box (filled), Circle (outline), Circle+ (filled), Poly, Text
• Selection: click select, box select, multi-select, live selection center, delete, mirror X/Y
• Editing: drag vertices, snap to grid/text edges with Ctrl, axis-lock with Shift
• Layers: add/duplicate/rename/reorder, show/hide, lock, color override
• Grid + View: zoom, pan, fit-to-view, resolution presets, project-scaled output
• Project I/O: save/load .e2hud.json, export to file or copy to clipboard
• Dynamic Text: %NAME% and %NAME%R1 token support with 100ms updates

Run

python main.py

Build EXE (Windows)

This uses PyInstaller.

python -m pip install --upgrade pyinstaller
pyinstaller --noconfirm --onefile --windowed --name "e2_hud_designer_v1.1-alpha" main.py

The EXE is written to dist/.

Controls (Quick)

• Left click to draw or select
• Drag with Select to box-select
• Double click / Enter to finish polygons
• Delete / Backspace deletes selection
• Ctrl snaps to grid + text edges (and resizes circles from center)
• Shift locks movement to horizontal/vertical while moving or dragging vertices
• Ctrl+Z undo
• Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V copy/paste (disabled while typing in fields)
• Right or Middle drag to pan
• Mouse wheel to zoom

Dynamic Inputs

Add inputs in the Inputs panel as NAME:TYPE:

• TYPE is Normal (double) or String

Text tokens:

• %NAME% inserts the value
• %NAME%R1 rounds to 1 decimal (Normal only)

Dynamic text is updated every 100ms via a if(clk()) { interval(100) } block.

Export Notes

• Uses the EGP: wirelink style (e.g., EGP:egpBox(...)).
• Dynamic text uses EGP:egpSetText(...).
• Text alignment uses EGP:egpAlign(id, horiz, vert) (vertical defaults to middle).
• Output scales to the current screen size using the project resolution as the reference.

UI Notes

• Default in-game font size is 18; it's displayed at half size in the editor (9) for better parity.