Hi,
I'm sure, it must be possible to use GameStudio not only for game programming but also for rather technical 3d visualizations. In my project there is only a little 3D-window but also a lot UI-stuff that I need to provide to the user like file-open-dialogs, choosing via radio-buttons and checkboxes, dialogs for text input, printing out screens, advanced user management... Some of the inputs made via UI will of course have an impact on the 3d view others won't.
What would be the best choice to bring both together? Should I re-program UI-functionalities via panels? Are panels that advanced that you can do a whole lot of menus and all the other UI stuff. Or should I build a plugin-DLL for the whole UI-functionality - maybe using MFC?
Anyone who knows some games/programs done with GameStudio which I would like to glance at regarding this topic?
Thanks for any advice :-)
Grit

You won't have to program a plugin for this, Conitec is already working on this!
Read the forecast-document:

quote:

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WINDOWS CONTROL ELEMENTS (priority: low)
Allows to create arbitrary Windows applications by providing a C-Script
interface for creating windows and applying styles, buttons, and menus.

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Unfortunately, the priority is low, so you will have to wait a little bit. But, I suppose it would take more time if you try it by yourself or use a panel-solution.

It's possible to kludge together dialogs via the SDK, but I don't know of an easy way to spit things out to the screen from a DLL. You can twiddle pixels and write your own routines to draw fancy boxes for the interface, of course. However, I get the impression that Windows-native dialog boxes do not display in fullscreen mode. (Whether or not this is true, I'm not sure.)

I'd also be interested in hearing if anyone's come up with some easy-to-use dialogs.

I have some pretty fancy environmental control via my panels enacted in my project.

If I understand you correctly, I'm "almost" sure you can get any functionality you want by proficient panel programming. I've yet to find something I couldn't do with panels.

If on the other hand, you are going for a "look" that panels don't provide (and I really dont' know how this could be ??) then probably a dll solution is best.

Near as I can tell, all the features you listed can be implemented by panels. Maybe not easily or transperent, but I can think of ways to implement them, and I ain't no programming genius!!!

YOur best bet is to be specific. Put your wish list of features in the "user request" forum and watch the yea's and nay's roll in.

Thanks for that reply. I guess, I'll just start to play around with panels a bit, to get a better idea of what I'm talking about ;-) Is your project puplic in any way, so I could take a look?

On the other hand: the idea of finally ending up re-programming a whole library of user interface functionality in the presence of ready to use UI-toolkits which could save me a lot of time (such as MFC) keeps bothering me. So I'm still wondering how easy (or not) it would be to integrate this.

[double post]

Make a complete different thing:
Get the "JanFX" plugin which allows you to draw on panels. This way you could easily create windows with checkboxes and everything else. Then you have to write something like a little interpreter:
If you click somewhere a "message" is sent and the engine can decide what will happen next. For example the first thing you do is to check, which window was clicked. If it was an inactive one then make it active. Next step is to find out wether you clicked on a control element. Depending on those decisions you draw your "desktop" again. That saves a lot of panels and the problems which come with it.

I've just assumed that you can't do native Windows dialogs under A6. Note also that in the event of an engine error, 3DGS will switch from fullscreen back into windowed mode before displaying a dialog box. I tried the following just now:

code:

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// Display an alert box:
DLLFUNC fixed native_test(void) {
	MessageBox(NULL, "Testing!", "Notification", MB_OK | MB_ICONINFORMATION | MB_DEFBUTTON1 | MB_TASKMODAL);

	return 0;
}

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Calling it from C-Script causes the game to hang, (which is not unexepected). You can ALT-TAB out of fullscreen mode to get to the alert box that it pops up. After you dismiss that, you can pop back to fullscreen without problems.

If there's a workaround, such that we can get modal dialogs up (especially the file selector), I'd be thrilled.

-tes

In DirecX9 you can set Dialog Box Mode:

quote:

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IDirect3DDevice9::SetDialogBoxMode Method

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This method allows the use of Microsoft® Windows® Graphics Device Interface (GDI) dialog boxes in full-screen mode applications.

Syntax

HRESULT SetDialogBoxMode( BOOL bEnableDialogs
);

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Look in the DirectX9 SDK documentation. I don't know if that functions under DirectX8 also, but a fear that not...