Author Topic: Just one concern.  (Read 9170 times)

TheLaw

  • Regular
  • **
  • Posts: 96
    • View Profile
Just one concern.
« on: 2008-11-18, 03:19:33 AM »
Here's a newbie question for ya. I'm considering making a RPG style game with SGDK 2 but I'll need a pretty strong in game GUI for all my inventory menus and such. I've been poking around a bit and I can't seem to find a premade one. I googled "SGDK GUI" and found a result mentioning xWidgets and SGDK, but I don't see anything I want at that site. I'd consider writing my own, but I see SGDK is in another beta now and is being converted to opengl - so now is probably not the best time for that.  So, I thought I'd ask to see if there is a GUI out there that I haven't found, or is there a GUI system planned in the not too distant future? Also, just to get me going for now, is there a reasonably easy way to use windows native GUI controls?

So long and thanks for all the fish! (Sorry I just watched that move it's stuck in my head now)
Lawrence
I fought the law and TheLaw won...!

Jam0864

  • Contributor
  • Fanatic
  • **
  • Posts: 744
    • MSN Messenger - marmalade0864@hotmail.com
    • View Profile
    • Jam0864's Content Dump
    • Email
Re: Just one concern.
« Reply #1 on: 2008-11-18, 04:40:37 AM »
I don't know how difficult it would be to use the proper windows mouse in your game, but it's very easy to make a cursor shaped sprite controlled by the mouse.

as far as I know if you create something with SGDK2.0, then bring it in to SGDK2.1 when it comes out, you will only have to change a few instances of "DirectX" with "OpenGL" but I'd wait for someone who knows more about that to confirm first.

bluemonkmn

  • SGDK Author
  • Administrator
  • Fanatic
  • *****
  • Posts: 2761
    • ICQ Messenger - 2678251
    • MSN Messenger - BlueMonkMN@gmail.com
    • View Profile
    • http://sgdk2.sf.net/
    • Email
Re: Just one concern.
« Reply #2 on: 2008-11-18, 06:38:11 AM »
Just because 2.1 is in beta doesn't mean you can't use it.  Please, use it!  It's ready to use, and the only reason it's beta is to let people know that it's the first release of a big update and hasn't been heavily used and tested by users yet.  So there will likely be fixes before I release something official (non-beta).  But there should not be significant design changes.  If you have a project created with the beta, you should be able to continue working with it in the final release of 2.1.

As for a GUI, if you're going to run the game in windowed mode, the GUI could be accomplished quite simply by using Windows Forms developed normally with .NET controls, as demonstrated by the player options dialog box.  You can see the code for this among the other code in the Source Code portion of the project tree.  Is that an option for you, or do you want to run full-screen?

TheLaw

  • Regular
  • **
  • Posts: 96
    • View Profile
Re: Just one concern.
« Reply #3 on: 2008-11-18, 03:52:58 PM »
Hey thanks for the speedy replies guys.  Yeah I did try out the 2.1 beta. The only thing stopping me from using it right now is that wonderful weather effects import uses directx and of course will not compile. Now I'm wondering if what Jam0864 mentioned is true. Can you just change instances of directx to opengl?

Yes I really wanna go fullscreen, but I gave up hope because my monitor says "signal out of range" when I try to use it - which is weird 'cause 16 and 24 bpp screens normally work fine...  Perhaps opengl will fix this. It would be nice to include crazy eddies gui in the project somehow. Apparently he's got a c# version that I've been eyeballing: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ceguisharp
Even if I get stuck in windowed mode, I'd still like to have a pretty GUI like eddies. I'm not keen on hacking up something on my own, so if anyone is already working something they plan on sharing, I'd love to know about it. And I'd like to hear the developers thoughts on bringing in Crazy Eddies GUI(or other (GLGooey?)), 'cause I believe it's worth doing.

Thanks again,
Lawrence
I fought the law and TheLaw won...!

durnurd

  • Lead Lemming
  • Expert
  • Fanatic
  • *****
  • Posts: 1234
  • Games completed so far: 0
    • MSN Messenger - durnurd@hotmail.com
    • View Profile
    • Find My Ed
Re: Just one concern.
« Reply #4 on: 2008-11-19, 08:36:56 AM »
The weather effects template doesn't really use DirectX features outside of what SGDK v2.0 used.  It's basically just directly drawing its own layer on top of everything using the same (or similar) code that SGDK used to draw the "real" layers.

I'm not 100% on this, but I'm fairly certain it would not be a difficult task to update the weather effect to work with OpenGL.  It should just be a matter of simply re-copying the code SGDK2.1 uses now to draw layers into the correct places.

Specific knowledge of OpenGL or DirectX shouldn't be required, although of course, you do kind of have to know what you're doing in a general sense.  I know nothing about either OpenGL or DirectX, but I managed to make the weather template in the first place!
Edward Dassmesser

TheLaw

  • Regular
  • **
  • Posts: 96
    • View Profile
Re: Just one concern.
« Reply #5 on: 2008-11-19, 03:23:47 PM »
Hummn. Well, the compilers complaints where about directx, but I see what you mean now. Probably as I get my head around this SDK, I'll finger it all out. There's quite a bit going on under the hood. Thanks for the response, durnurd, and thanks for the great template. I wouldn't be to upset if you converted it for us... ;)
I fought the law and TheLaw won...!

durnurd

  • Lead Lemming
  • Expert
  • Fanatic
  • *****
  • Posts: 1234
  • Games completed so far: 0
    • MSN Messenger - durnurd@hotmail.com
    • View Profile
    • Find My Ed
Re: Just one concern.
« Reply #6 on: 2008-11-19, 08:09:34 PM »
I sure would like to try, but unfortunately, I've since moved to Ubuntu, am unable to reinstall Windows in a second partition, and the portion of the DataSet class in the current version of Mono that parses XML schemas is apparently incompatible with the C# 2.0 version, which yields errors when loading .sgdk files.  That's only the first of the errors; Since I can't get past that, I don't know what other kinds of inconsistencies there might be.

Hmm... maybe I'll try installing Windows again.
Edward Dassmesser

TheLaw

  • Regular
  • **
  • Posts: 96
    • View Profile
Re: Just one concern.
« Reply #7 on: 2008-11-20, 01:58:46 AM »
I knew it! I've been real close to trying a Ubuntu/Windows dual boot. Lots of folks say it's easy as pie, but I had visions of frustration. This is really getting off topic, but my Windows is running like crap now so I was gonna reformat and try the dualboot thing this weekend. Think I'll save the aggro and just install windows. Thanks for saving my weekend...! :-\
I fought the law and TheLaw won...!

TheLaw

  • Regular
  • **
  • Posts: 96
    • View Profile
Re: Just one concern.
« Reply #8 on: 2008-11-20, 02:24:49 AM »
Back on topic.... Is an in game GUI a possability? I don't mean to pry, but if it's on the todo list, I'd be inclined to wait for it :yes:. Otherwise I may have to start hackn' my own :ugly:. My major project I wanna write will need every fiber of muscle this kit has, which means  I'll be taking my time and writting smaller projects to learn from. So I'm not in a big rush for it.
I fought the law and TheLaw won...!

Jam0864

  • Contributor
  • Fanatic
  • **
  • Posts: 744
    • MSN Messenger - marmalade0864@hotmail.com
    • View Profile
    • Jam0864's Content Dump
    • Email
Re: Just one concern.
« Reply #9 on: 2008-11-20, 04:38:05 AM »
linux+windows dual boot is easy provided you install windows first. If you install linux first, I'm not sure how to do it. I'm sure google has the answer somewhere.

But pretty much, after a windows install, make a new partition, install linux to it and your done!

The hard part is getting apps you need to use working on linux.

bluemonkmn

  • SGDK Author
  • Administrator
  • Fanatic
  • *****
  • Posts: 2761
    • ICQ Messenger - 2678251
    • MSN Messenger - BlueMonkMN@gmail.com
    • View Profile
    • http://sgdk2.sf.net/
    • Email
Re: Just one concern.
« Reply #10 on: 2008-11-20, 06:31:32 AM »
Back on topic.... Is an in game GUI a possability? I don't mean to pry, but if it's on the todo list, I'd be inclined to wait for it :yes:. Otherwise I may have to start hackn' my own :ugly:. My major project I wanna write will need every fiber of muscle this kit has, which means  I'll be taking my time and writting smaller projects to learn from. So I'm not in a big rush for it.

There are no plans to create an in game GUI, although there are rule functions to track the mouse and make a sprite show at the location of the mouse cursor, which is a start.  And I believe there are rule functions to detect the state of the mouse buttons, and all the keyboard keys.  Those basics should be enough to get started on creating one.  I'm not sure if you'd be better of using those somehow, or bypassing them to use other events directly from the window/display object.  If you get stuck I can try and help you out or give you tips, though.  If the final result is clean enough, it could be included as a core component of SGDK 2.2 or as a custom object that a user could import.

durnurd

  • Lead Lemming
  • Expert
  • Fanatic
  • *****
  • Posts: 1234
  • Games completed so far: 0
    • MSN Messenger - durnurd@hotmail.com
    • View Profile
    • Find My Ed
Re: Just one concern.
« Reply #11 on: 2008-11-20, 08:07:43 AM »
Well, I gotta say, I just installed Windows (finally!  And it worked this time!) and now all I have to do is boot off my Ubuntu CD to reinitialize the GRUB bootloader to be able to boot into both.

On topic:  Now that I have Windows and .NET 2.0 and SGDK2 installed, I should be able to work on SGDK2 things much more quickly now, like the Weather template.
Edward Dassmesser

durnurd

  • Lead Lemming
  • Expert
  • Fanatic
  • *****
  • Posts: 1234
  • Games completed so far: 0
    • MSN Messenger - durnurd@hotmail.com
    • View Profile
    • Find My Ed
Re: Just one concern.
« Reply #12 on: 2008-11-20, 09:45:43 AM »
Status Update:  I have rain somewhat working in SGDK 2.1.  Currently, only a weight of 1 works correctly.  When I get back home, I will finish scaling, and update the others to work as well.  Woohoo!
Edward Dassmesser

TheLaw

  • Regular
  • **
  • Posts: 96
    • View Profile
Re: Just one concern.
« Reply #13 on: 2008-11-20, 04:34:14 PM »
Well, bluemonkmn, I'm a ways off from writting a GUI, but I'm pretty sure I want to. To me - to do it right, I'd like to look into including Crazy Eddies GUI with your source code. Is there an area of your code that might accomodate such a beast? There's a c# version that uses opengl, so that's a start.
I fought the law and TheLaw won...!

TheLaw

  • Regular
  • **
  • Posts: 96
    • View Profile
Re: Just one concern.
« Reply #14 on: 2008-11-20, 04:36:10 PM »
Hey, durnurd, how's the conversion going. Is it as easy as we thought?
I fought the law and TheLaw won...!