Bitburner: How to Add Custom Stats to the HUD (Heads up Display)

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Customise your stats HUD using secret built-in hooks, and a little bit of scripting.

 

Poking Around

This game encourages you to look beyond the UI, beyond the documentation. You’re encouraged to inspect the DOM, and even look at the source code itself. You’ll find there’s much you can do once you start thinking outside the box.

For example, a quick look at the stats HUD (heads-up-display) section of the UI will reveal that there is an empty section:

id="overview-extra-hook-0"

It was placed there deliberately to allow any sort of custom stat you like to be added to this UI element.

Sample Code

Did you know you can access the document (UI) from within the game itself? With a little bit of scripting you can hook these placeholder elements and put whatever you want in them. Here’s an example:
nano custom-stats.js
/** @param {NS} ns **/
export async function main(ns) {
    const doc = document; // This is expensive! (25GB RAM) Perhaps there's a way around it? ;)
    const hook0 = doc.getElementById('overview-extra-hook-0');
    const hook1 = doc.getElementById('overview-extra-hook-1');
    while (true) {
        try {
            const headers = []
            const values = [];
            // Add script income per second
            headers.push("ScrInc");
            values.push(ns.getScriptIncome()[0].toPrecision(5) + '/sec');
            // Add script exp gain rate per second
            headers.push("ScrExp");
            values.push(ns.getScriptExpGain().toPrecision(5) + '/sec');
            // TODO: Add more neat stuff

            // Now drop it into the placeholder elements
            hook0.innerText = headers.join(" \n");
            hook1.innerText = values.join("\n");
        } catch (err) { // This might come in handy later
            ns.print("ERROR: Update Skipped: " + String(err));
        }
        await ns.sleep(1000);
    }
}

Here’s what it looks like coded up in-game (Steam’s rendering of code isn’t the greatest)

Run your program from the terminal (make sure you have enough free RAM):

run custom-stats.js

And there you have it, custom stats on the HUD, updated every second:

By In-sight-

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1 thought on “Bitburner: How to Add Custom Stats to the HUD (Heads up Display)”

  1. Thanks for this guide! But, I’m midway through the game and the intro here seems like a late-game spoiler. That kind of thing bugs me more than it should, so should I skip ahead in the game to find some closure? I could friend you on Steam to chat. Thanks.

    Reply

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