The tileset is from the zelda, link to the past game, which I only use for testing, the map has been blown up to scale and is completely crap from a visual peasment aspect. It's just for testing, nothing more. The GUI, is 100% created by me and my wacom. Although it is influanced from games like MapleStory, Zelda 3 and a few other mmorpgs, I basicly took all the areas I really liked from those games and put my own spin on them and added.

The gui is high rest with a watermark over it at 60% quality, so it may look grainy for now. I will make a higher res map soon (when I build the map & world editor), but for now the crappy map has to make due. xD

wut.

I swear that was RPGM :<

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GMan
Black Ninja Games
Imagine ASCII art here!

I don't understand why DirectX doesn't support some sort of GUI aspects. This creating everything from scratch is getting kind of deep and boring.

I hope one day we'll get
- a free compact operating system. Not linux. I'm not impressed with linux. I'm interested to see what FreeDOS will grow into.

- os should not be hardware demanding. Even with future updates, it should be only slightly more demanding of the hardware. Better hardware should make the os respond like lightning. That's what future computers should feel like. It's how we imagine them.

- operating system installs on a read only drive, such as CF card plugged into the motherboard. It is always the same when it boots. It doesn't become infected or bloated with addons unless the user chooses it, which requires cloning the CF card onto another, and setting the changes in software, then shutting down and unplugging/plugging the new card into the main board. But there should be no need (or software dependency) to do that until the next OS is released.

- OS should always be backward compatible. At the least, do this like OSX and embed backward emulation.

- all software is portable. It doesn't update the system files. If it needs to use alternative system files, it provides its own in it's own directory, and tells the system to use them instead. The os should never need to be perma-changed by software.

- no security/license/certificate obsession. I'd rather we build technology on trust rather than paranoia. But the static OS allows instant recovery if there is ever infection, since it's just a reboot away.

- software should also be locked to read only drives or partitions. (Unlocked ones can be possible for development mode or software installations). Files are saved to user-assigned directories, which can (maybe) be virtually mapped into program directories at login for ease of file management. Some people (like me) prefer saving to program directories, so the implementation of mappings should be transparent.

- system startup should be fully contained within editable text files (eg, ini files) or scripts, that the system reads at on startup. Simple to backup, edit, or restore. Again, these can be put onto the static CF card once we have a configuration we want to keep. Carrying sessions over from hibernation should be possible with such files. But the user should always be given a choice over the boot script, so that a malicious program wouldn't always restore itself from script, you always have trusted scripts on the CF card.

- vb6-inspired IDE. RAD is good, but it should compile well.

- decent dx-like graphics interface, but made simpler, more like opengl, but integrated with the system API and GUI.

- system GUI should be able to be readily customized. I don't mean skinable as such, but always managed as a series of rectangles, with assignable/editable drawing routines to define graphical content.

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I ain't pushing no moon buttons.

VB6 takes alot of heat, but honestly, I haven't ran into a problem (in my professional career) that .net could do, that I couldn't do in vb6 or classic asp. I really love vb6s IDE, I do use vb.net which has a similar IDE but, I don't like the OOP, if I wanted OOP, I would just use C++.

I don't understand why they didn't create the same GUI layers they use in GDI for directx (isn't that what console developers take in mind when making a new system, how easy it is to develop for?). Why is that mindset not followed thru in the PC market? Obviouslly alot of game companys profit from licensing their game engines out due to time, energy and money just to get past a games GUI. The game itself is the easiest part.

In VB i can say, dim a as form and get a new window object, ready to go, obviouslly, you could apply OOP to vb6 and just design everything in a module and do everything from scratch, but why? lol. That's what it feels like in directx. Where is my dim a as directx.object.form?

It's mainly because there has been a distinction between "Windows Form App" and "Game" ... Windows Form Apps need to play nicely within the OS intermingled with other apps. Games want a more "Direct" access to the underlying systems so that the extra GUI overhead can be bypassed in order to make the traditional game-style drawing faster. So, at this point, you need to choose between the Forms GUI that is built-in to the OS (and takes care of a lot of things behind the scenes) or the faster "Games stuff".

Of course, this leads to generic libraries of various kinds getting built on-top of that Direct games-stuff-drawing system ... but in a lot of cases, it's more efficient to have a specialized system built into your own game code.

Another option you might consider would be to use a Windows Form with traditional Windows GUI objects on it, plus a PictureBox that you setup as your DirectDraw target area. Of course, there are potential problems with that approach as well.

-Bryk

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www.mwgames.com ... Dicey Curves, Space Mission, Jump Gate, Gem Raider, DareBase, Castle Danger, Keeps & Moats Chess

I'm just burning a ReactOS disc I've just downloaded. I'm gonna play with it a bit tonight I think

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I ain't pushing no moon buttons.

They could have implemented gui base objects into the directx librarys that replicate the functionality but with the directx core access.

Gui is nothing more then rects, but instead of me defining every area of a rect, its background, its objects, its rendering, mouse events, keyboard events, it would have been nice to have even a basic object that could at least give me a foundation instead of developers building from the ground up (not just the windows but the entire classes that go along with a rect acting like a traditional gdi window).

The gap between game and form app is long gone when 99% of all games have some sort of GUI or form implemented (and they act like traditional gdi windows).

I've downloaded that a while back but never got around to it, I'm still very skeptical about how it manages things internal with working with native win32 applications.

Well it's still only in alpha. They intend to take it to beta later this year. And it's all open source. I decided to download the lot just incase their project backfires for whatever reason.

I think it has good potential, but that's just my optimism.

Besides it is packaged as a live distro, so all win32 software provided should be stable.

I think it's really nice that they've got a clouds photo in the desktop options. I can just imagine the GUI programmer going outdoors and taking that photo.

It amused me anyway.

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I ain't pushing no moon buttons.

Ok, the backpack/items panel is almost fully functional, so, it is time for me to attempt to implement a text typing box. I'm going to start out small and add the Gold Drop Window (when you press the G gold button), which allows you to drop gold onto the ground. But You will need to enter a value say 10gold ~ 100,000gold.

Any ideas on how to implement this? I have the window already drawn up long with the text field area, and the OK/Cancel buttons.

After a long 4 hours, I finally almost got it.

It works as it should so far (I had designed the font engine a while back on page 2?) and it appears to be holding up, right now you can add only numbers and a max of 6, I need to add the caret and a delete input function, there is no highlight or copy/paste, I really don't see a need for that in here, and I will focus on that when I get to the textbox aspect of the engine.




Edit: I forgot that I used the Keyboard_Static function to handle user keyboard input, this uses the actual keydown of the form to handle inputs (which also includes the keyrepeatdelay of windows).

I'm going to go ahead and try and make the delay function for the keyboard_dynamic function using the timers we talked about above.

Edit: Ok, I played with the timer things and to no resolved. I can not figure out how to blink the caret without adding a ton of checks n stuff blink the caret ever second, the blink should last 1/2 a second.

Edit: Ok, I was able to add the timer but I used an actual timer control (I'm going to remove the timer and apply the time aspect to code and see if I can get it to work.)

Edit: While getting the coded timers (not control timers) setup and working, I solved the cursor caret blinking issue, I'm going to try and do the keyboard dinput for complete resolve!

Edit: All is resolved, I went with the Windows API function instead of trying to recreate it and using directinput for text input. I see no conflicts or any reasons not to do this for text input. I only have plans for 3 areas of text input (money drop, chatbox, player creation name input).

All working (including the text for plat/gold on item screen) and fixed the mouse drop during fast drags too!

http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/9646 ... tscopy.jpg

Ok, I'm going to take a break from handling the game aspect, you can read about that progression here..

http://gpwiki.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8901

..and move on to the Mini-Map section of the GUI. Any Ideas on how I should do this? Should I design a mini-map based on the main map or a function to shrink the main map surface to a small mini-map and handle it that way? What is the standards on doing that? Should the mini-map scroll? Or just be a static image with a small icon of the player/player firends, portals, etc..

Edit: I've noticed since I've added the drop items features, that for some weird reason, the items disappear then they get 1 pixel out of the buffer size. I've increased by buffer width and height, but this didn't seem to matter, normally an item should be drawn based on the pixels shown right? (say I have an object that is 20 pixels width, and it moves 1 pixel out of the viewable area, 19pixels of that object should be draw, instead of the entire object disappearing.) right?

my feelings on mini-maps is that they should be a low priority from a processing perspective, and not run like a miniature version of the main game window. They should be symbolic more than anything.

So I'd be inclined to use a pre-shrunken antialiased image, and add symbolic markers on top of it, and updated relatively infrequently, such as 4 fps. That jerkiness helps to emphasize that it just a minimap. If it's too helpful, the player can end up focusing on that more than the main window.

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I ain't pushing no moon buttons.

Ok Jas, I'm going to give that a try. I should finish this tonight.

Just as a side note. I'm doing everything myself, I can say althougth I have high hopes that I can at least turn out the game engine, being alone I can say, I haven't touched the content, animation, any of the physics, AI and I'm scared to think about the Map/Quest/World editor and even the Server/Network aspect for MMORPG. Over these past few weeks that I've been doing this (about 5 hours a day on top of my work normal day), it is burtal, almost impossible to think about how long it will actually take me. My milestone is before June, but with so much to do and doing it alone, I doubt it will happen. For those building a game, do it small, lol.


Edit: Minimap is 90% completed and fully functional. The Portal Markers and NPC markers are installed, but do not show up as I haven't built out the map engine and map data files yet, so theres no placement info for them. The W mini button brings up the Current World Map and the H mini button hides/shows the mini map window. The Player marker is Yellow and when the party system is done, will show Party members on the current map (displaying the party member number 1-6) on the map.

Again, this seems to take about 50FPS to show (including the text for the level and jobclass).

http://img167.imageshack.us/img167/7079/69510618.jpg

I've found that once I've made a program, should my computer stop working and I lose it, that I can program it again about 5 times quicker than it first took, simply because second time around I know how it all fits together.

I find that is also applicable to new game projects that are vaguely similar to games I've made in the past.

From my own experience, I find it's best to not make a project double up as a learning experience. The learning will slow me down, and the program just won't fit together nicely, and the whole thing is likely to become a disappointment with the project not being what I want it to be, and I don't really learn what I intended to learn.

In that case I feel it is better to postpone a project than begin it, and to spend a few weeks writing some throwaway experimental programs, trying out the features I intend to have in my program one by one, exploring each of them, getting a feel for them, and of their performance.

So the golden rule is to only begin a project if I have a good idea of how to do all parts of it to begin with.

----

As an aside, I've often felt that it would be nice to have custom keyboards for games. One that has one block of keys for the menu bar, another block for movement keys, another block for abilities, etc Instead of relying on letter shortcuts that are scattered all over the keyboard, and can never remember whether H is for Hide or is it I? or E? or .... too late I'm D for Dead.

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I ain't pushing no moon buttons.

Jas: You are absoultly correct. Since this is my first game (other then some pong stuff back in the 90s), I haven't done this before and it is taking a while (even for my own personal standards) to get the knowledge down for games. Application and Game development are two completely different beasts. Some may debate that point but to me, they are. Coming from a field of web enablement, database design and enterprise application architecture, games are like a slap in the face.

It's beginning to drag me down, Although the code and game engine are coming along very nicely, it has a cost. :/ I'm not sure how I will feel once I begin to get into the guts of the actual animation engine, map engine and character engine aspects.

Well that's why we have gpwiki, so we can put out heads together over stuff.

Maybe take a time out this weekend? If animation was getting on top of me, I'd do this:

• Make a new program to draw a simple looping animation. Keep it simple.
  
• Then do a timed animation that begins with a keypress and ends after so many milliseconds.
  
• Then expand it to many animations running simultaneously. Have a mouse click create an object and trigger an animation.
  
• Play with that, either moving them around the screen, or getting them bobbing up and down between triggered animations. Get each object support two or three animations triggered by clicking on them. Make on-screen chaos.
  
• Then when it's all okay in your mind, do it for real in your game

Another tip... Work through game projects step by step, breaking it down into small chunks. DO keep the bigger picture in mind when your defining game objects, to make sure they're future-proof, and able to be used in the way you intend to use them. But DON'T worry too much about how it's all going to fit together.

Games are a timer loop with conditional subroutines. You can always add more conditional subroutines, so don't worry too much about how it all fits together, just have faith that it will.

Step by step is the way

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I ain't pushing no moon buttons.

If you're still having this problem it is because with DirectDraw it will only draw items that are completely within the main screen space.

So, you either need to adjust your source & target rects during your FastBlt for items that are partially off-screen ... or, you'll want to create and apply a Clipper to your buffer.

-Bryk

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www.mwgames.com ... Dicey Curves, Space Mission, Jump Gate, Gem Raider, DareBase, Castle Danger, Keeps & Moats Chess

I currently have a clipper, I believe something isn't big enough, prolly the buffer, I'm not sure. I will attempt to figure it out.

Jasmine: Yes you are correct, I will try it out on a smaller scale.