Prisma Renderer¶

Optional. SL Widgets works fully on the standard Flash renderer — nothing on this page is required.

iWant Widgets — Prisma Edition is a drop-in replacement for the rendering layer underneath iWant Status Bars. It draws the icons through PrismaUI (an HTML/Ultralight overlay) instead of Scaleform/Flash.

It replaces only the part that paints pixels. iWant Status Bars, its MCM, SL Widgets, and existing .dds icon packs all run unchanged — same script API, same coordinates, same settings.

What it changes¶

	Flash (default)	Prisma Edition
Icon sharpness	1280 × 720 stage upscaled by the game	Rendered at your monitor's native resolution
Save loads	Widgets die with the HUD menu and are rebuilt every load	The overlay survives loads; icons are rebuilt once per session
`hudmenu.swf` conflicts	UI overhauls that replace it can stop icons drawing entirely	Unaffected — no Flash involved
Icon formats	`.dds` only	`.dds`, `.png`, `.jpg`, animated `.gif`
Ultrawide margins	Unreachable without an extended-stage HUD mod	Reachable via negative X
VR	Works	Not supported

Requirements and installation¶

Requirement	Notes
SKSE + Address Library	Standard SKSE plugin requirements
PrismaUI	Plus its own requirements
iWant Widgets (the original)	Must stay installed and enabled — see below
iWant Status Bars	Unchanged, untouched

Keep the original iWant Widgets enabled

The Prisma Edition ships no icon textures and deliberately uses the same plugin and script filenames as the original. Install it at higher priority so it overrides the original's plugin and scripts, while the original keeps supplying the .dds icon library and its load-order slot.

Disabling or uninstalling the original will leave you with missing icons.

Install it like any mod, above the original iWant Widgets in your mod manager's priority order. Nothing needs configuring afterwards.

Switching mid-playthrough

This mod itself holds no meaningful save state, so enabling or disabling it is safe on that count — expect only a few one-time Papyrus log warnings about the original's orphaned quest on the first load. The Flash backends (original / NG) are a different story: they do persist widget state, and moving between them on one save can strand it. Read Switching between widget backends below before you do.

Animated and alternate-format icons¶

With the Prisma renderer, SL Widgets automatically prefers a .gif and then a .png sibling of each icon's .dds, applied uniformly across all of that icon's states. To animate the arousal heart, drop aroused0.gif … aroused8.gif beside the existing .dds files — no configuration.

Format	Result	Colour
`.dds`	Static (the default; BC3/DXT5, 100 × 100)	Painted with the state colour
`.png` / `.jpg`	Static, no DDS conversion needed	Shown as authored
`.gif`	Animated, per-frame delays honoured	Shown as authored

Why the state colour doesn't apply to PNG/GIF

The stock icon libraries are authored as white masks: Flash's tint replaces a widget's colour outright, so the state colour (the pink of an arousal stage, the amber of a needs bar) is what you actually see, shaped by the mask's transparency. Run full-colour artwork through that same tint and every pixel collapses to one flat colour — a colourful PNG comes out as a plain white or pink silhouette.

So the renderer tints .dds only. PNG, JPG and GIF are assumed to be finished artwork and are drawn exactly as authored, at every state. The per-state alpha still applies to them, so icons still fade in and out with their stage.

The practical consequence: a white mask you want tinted must stay .dds. Converting the stock masks to PNG would leave them permanently white.

Alternate-format packs are Prisma-only

Ship all states of one icon in the same format. A pack containing both .dds and .png will pick the .png on the Flash renderer too, which cannot decode it — so the icon renders as nothing. Label such packs as requiring the Prisma renderer.

Icon paths and naming are otherwise identical to Customization.

Three mods can provide the iwant_widgets script: the original iWant Widgets (Flash), iWant Widgets NG (the same Flash rendering with native plumbing, and it requires the original), and this one (Flash replaced entirely). They all ship Scripts/iwant_widgets.pex, so your mod manager's priority decides which one actually runs — make sure only one wins that conflict. With the Prisma renderer that does not mean uninstalling the original: it stays installed for its icon library (above), it simply loses the iwant_widgets.pex conflict to the Prisma files placed higher. So the rule is one winning script, not one installed mod.

Migrating to this renderer is always safe

Coming from the original iWant Widgets or NG — even on a long-running save, even one that already hit the trap below — just works. This renderer never reads or writes SkyUI's widget record, so nothing the Flash backends did to it can carry over. The warning below is about the Flash backends among themselves; it does not apply when the destination is this mod.

Switching between the Flash backends on an existing save can permanently break them

The original and NG both draw through SkyUI's widget system, which assigns a widget's HUD modes exactly once and remembers it in your save:

if (!_initialized)          ; persisted in the save
    _initialized = true
    if (!_modes)            ; the only place modes are ever defaulted

Both plugins define their quest at the same FormID, and every backend names its script iwant_widgets — so a save holds one record for it, and whichever backend ran last overwrites it. Come back to a SkyUI-based backend afterwards and it can find _initialized already true with the modes gone, so the defaults are never reassigned and SkyUI keeps the widget hidden. Nothing clears _initialized on an existing save — the modes are defaulted only inside that if (!_initialized) block, and SkyUI's version hook (OnVersionUpdate) is empty and touches neither flag — so there is no in-place recovery once a save is in this state.

The signature in Papyrus.0.log — search for NoValidModes, since the FormID's light-plugin index (the FE0xx part) depends on your own load order and is not a fixed value to match on:

WidgetError: [iwant_widgets <iWant_WidgetQuest (FE0xx800)>]: NoValidModes

Everything else looks healthy around it — ***LIBRARY RESET***, the reset event, and iWant Status Bars: Loading Icons all succeed. The scripts are running fine; only the container they draw into is never shown. Fix: start a new game. A clean-save can also work, but note the catch created by the shared filename: because every backend ships the same iWant Widgets.esl, disabling just one mod leaves the plugin in your load order (supplied by another), so the ruined quest record is never dropped. To clean-save you must disable every backend at once so iWant Widgets.esl leaves the load order entirely, load and hard-save, then re-enable only the one you want.

This mod is not affected by that. It doesn't use SkyUI's widget system at all — its script extends Quest, it owns its own overlay, and it reads no persisted widget state. A save whose SkyUI widget record is already ruined will still render here, which is worth knowing if you are debugging one: if icons return under this renderer but not under the original, the save is the problem, not your install.

Ultrawide positioning¶

The Prisma renderer centres the fixed 1280 × 720 stage rather than letting the game stretch it, so on ultrawide monitors the usable left margin sits at negative X — roughly −200 on 21:9 and −640 on 32:9. The right margin extends past 1279 as before.

Both the iWant Status Bars MCM and the SL Widgets NPC group sliders accept −1280 … 2560 for X and −720 … 719 for Y with position lock on (unlocking still opens ±10000). Because coordinates are icon centres, small negative values also let a bar tuck flush against the screen edge on any monitor.

See Screen coordinates for the standard-stage ranges.

Known differences¶

Transitions snap to their final value instead of animating. Fades end exactly where the Flash original ended them, and autohide delays are still honoured — only the intermediate frames are gone.
.swf custom widgets cannot render (they need Scaleform). They are logged and skipped.
Meters are a close stylistic approximation of SkyUI's meter rather than a pixel match.
VR is not supported — PrismaUI limitation. VR users stay on the Flash renderer.

Troubleshooting¶

If icons disappear entirely after switching, check in this order:

The original iWant Widgets is still installed and enabled (it provides the textures).
The Prisma Edition sits at higher priority than the original.
PrismaUI is installed and its own requirements are met.
Check Documents/My Games/Skyrim Special Edition/SKSE/iWantWidgetsPrisma.log — it names any icon file it could not read or decode.

Everything else on the Troubleshooting page applies unchanged.