Hi,

I'm not actually new to Gamestudio, been around since A4 or 5 (!) it's just that the forum doesn't look too active and I thought posting in this subforum might make it more likely to be seen.

I am thinking about coming back to A7 to make an idea for a 3D shmup I have. The thing is I would like to use an external language, including my own debug tools. My question is, can anyone tell me if it is possible to overlay your own graphics on top of each Gamestudio frame, as well as receive and respond to input events in the game window?

Roger

Hi,

Depending on what you want to achieve, It could be possible. Here I tried to use librocket inside 3dgs. For Input, you could try on_message .

You dont even need the SDK to do this, you can simply hook any engine function.
Theres engine_start, frame and end, you can also hook the engine message handler to catch the messages.
You can also take a look an EndScene and Reset of the D3D-Device

At this point you also might want to switch to an engine that is better suited for your needs?!

Seriously guys, I'm all for cool hacks, but this is more insanity than a cool hack.

^this.

Depending on the language you're working in, there are several libraries that give you a window and render context as well as window input events, which seems to be what you're looking for.
Have a look at SDL, SFML, GLFW, those are C/C++ libs with bindings available for multiple other languages (C#, Python, etc etc).

HM you have those hooks for a normal anticheat system too.
Hooks are secure if you know how calling conventions are working in asm.
Well, your still right, if he wants to do that and the engine doesnt offer this by default it may be a good idea to use another engine as long as he didnt buy it yet

Anti-Cheat is useless.

Also if you want to draw over the output from gamestudio, use draw_quad with a corresponding BMAP oder use DirectX functions after draw_begin();

Thanks all for the tips. I have A7 Commercial.

I want to call the render routine for my debug GUI after GS renders each frame, and hook in my input event handlers as well so they can override all or selected buttons/keys.

I'm not sure I understand what this means:

"You can also take a look an EndScene and Reset of the D3D-Device"

From the link to on_message I think I understand what hooking into functions entails. I'm using SwiftForth, which has provisions for callbacks, but it's hit and miss with different libraries. Hopefully it works with A7. If this works out it'll be very exciting because programming with my codebase in SwiftForth is a lot of fun.

I already have a codebase and extensible game engine built on top of Allegro 5, and I'm using SwiftForth (so I had to fashion my own bindings). I'm trying to see if I can interface parts of this setup with A7 easily enough.