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Work in Progress / NoWinNoDllGUI

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Colonel_Klink
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Posted: 9th Sep 2009 14:55 Edited at: 9th Sep 2009 14:59
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This is definitely a work in progress. As I need a GUI for my Virtual Movie Studio app I looked at the various incarnations here. I never recieved an email from the BlueGui guy, found that WinGUI/TwilightGui had little documentation, and the other free gui was no longer being worked on.

With that I decided to create the code for the GUI myself based loosely on the OOP method of Visual Basic (although there are really no comparisons between my DBP code and how VB actually does it.

With that I've decided to experiment away from VMS and have been working on my own Windows-less DLL-less version of a GUI.

I cheat a bit as I design the interface (for VMS) in VB and then code it to produce the necessary code for the various sub routines. Then its a matter of copy and paste the code into DBP.

NoWinNoDllGUI is experimental, and with only a day or so work I'm pleased with the result. It has a long way to go to be fully fuctional, but at least the coding will be a lot neater than it presently is in VMS (nested routines by the meter).

Anyway this is a wip as I've stated and the present code is still being modified. i've posted it here if anybody is interested in using it for their own projects.

The buttons have normal,mouseover, and mouseclicked states, and can have either no graphics or graphics. The buttons have property sub routines that can have various properties changed such as caption before runtime. Not all properties are ready to go yet.



Oh my gosh! He's wearing Full Metal Pyjamas!
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tiresius
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Posted: 9th Sep 2009 16:13
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Cool. BlueGUI development is no longer continued, and it will eventually become open source. This is a shame because there are already some quirks with Vista and who knows how it will behave in Win7?

If BlueGUI stops working for what I need it for, I'll probably end up doing what you're doing and make my own GUI. I don't really want to, but sometimes doing it yourself is the safest bet. I'll really miss the event driven behavior of BlueGUI, not sure how I could emulate that.

So good luck on this one it is looking good!

I'm not a real programmer but I play one with DBPro!
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RUCCUS
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Posted: 10th Sep 2009 03:42
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Last time I checked Blue GUI was released for free a year or so back. I highly recommend it, I've been using it for a few years without any major problems. Great syntax, fast to implement, and fast to run.
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Xenocythe
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Posted: 10th Sep 2009 04:19
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Ruccus, I didn't know you were still programming. I actually haven't seen you around at all lately. Where've you been man?


Batty Ratty,
Those buttons look pretty cool. You could make them customizable so you can load your own button images. That would be neat.

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Colonel_Klink
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Posted: 10th Sep 2009 04:30
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RUCCUS, I had a search for the download for BlueGUI but couldn't find it. The search function here is not that very comprehensive if the mention of a download is within a thread. Unless of course, i haven't mastered the search function yet . Which probably most likely.

Xenocythe, Because VMS will comprise of about a dozen inbuilt editors I'm creating a GUI editor which will allow me to change button images, button sizes and other features. The GUI will most likely be a Visual Basic application that will write the necessary DBPro code for each VMS editor.

Oh my gosh! He's wearing Full Metal Pyjamas!
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feiting shadow
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Posted: 10th Sep 2009 09:19
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http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=95831&b=5 Sixty Squares's

and mine is in here, 2nd page of snippets: http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_read&i=6&t=&p=1

I went over your code, it seems we did it very similar. Even the special function for making sure the button's in the up position, lol, I had to place my reset() function very carefully.

The caption feature is something I have yet to add, and making this an easy "include.dba" is something I have yet to toy with.

I had issues with GUI studio and made it. The reason I'm telling you is I want to ask if the way we use our button systems is similar. I wrote a tutorial so you don't have to wade through my whole system.

It seems many of us here have written GUI subsystems, usually buttons. I'm wondering if you'd enjoy further work, collaboration or not, for a DBPro-functional GUI that doesn't get Vista-ized (outdated) like the DLL's. Omen's on a slight detour right now so I have the ability.

S

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Colonel_Klink
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Posted: 10th Sep 2009 12:36 Edited at: 10th Sep 2009 12:37
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Hi feiting shadow
Seems a lot of us are trying to accomplish the same thing, that is, a gui system that is indeed non dependent upon external dlls. One of my concerns with dlls is portability. eventually I want to port my Virtual Movie Studio to other platforms. However I do realise that some of VMS functionality will depend upon dlls of some sort.

Today I've added several other text functions for the captions, such as alignment (left, center, and right), some visual enhancements such as raised and embossed text, and a check to ensure the mouse doesnt fire any other buttons when in the mouse down (clicked) state. The italic mode is crap, but I think that is a DBPro thing where the spaces between the letters doesn't get calculated properly.

With that however a bug has crept in that is making the text redraw on buttons in the mouse move function behave badly.



Oh my gosh! He's wearing Full Metal Pyjamas!
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RUCCUS
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Posted: 10th Sep 2009 16:20 Edited at: 10th Sep 2009 16:21
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Just a side note, you wont be able to get any sort of DBP program running on anything other than a PC unless you use a partition, and even then Im not positive. DirectX is married to the PC, and doesn't look like it will be cheating on it anytime soon.

If you ever get in contact with Robert Knight (Blue GUI's creator, IIRC that was his name) and he gives the Ok Id be happy to email you my copy. But then if he gives you the ok he would probably just email you it himself .

Xeno I've been pretty busy between a full time job and college but in terms of programming I've been working on one project for about a year now. But I wont post about that here.
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Xenocythe
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Posted: 10th Sep 2009 22:41
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Colonel_Klink/Batty Ratty,
The new button styles are looking great.


Ruccus,
Ahh I see, I remember a couple of '3D Modeling class' posts from you a bit ago. If you ever get the chance, you could add me on MSN and I'd love to see your new (but secret) project.

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Colonel_Klink
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Posted: 10th Sep 2009 23:18
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Ruccus,
Yeah, I don't think that either Linux or Mac are going to run off with the DirectX bride anytime soon. I'm not too concerned if my app isn't cross platform atm.
I sent Robert Knight an email a couple of weeks ago, but he;s not replied so I'll persist with this in the meantime.

Xenocythe
Thanks. Ok I'm done with buttons now. Next is scroll buttons to save typing values into those pesky textboxes (still to come).

Oh my gosh! He's wearing Full Metal Pyjamas!
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feiting shadow
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Posted: 11th Sep 2009 11:59
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wow, that's really awesome. I was just gonna add stuff like checkboxes and simple extras to my system. Never knew the text could be so good. It might show up different on dif. systems. Also, are you using the D3D Func DLL from cloggy? He did amazing text work on that, along with many other things I have yet to put in myself.

I gotta sleep, but plan on working on my GUI system tomorrow, along with write an essay. Lol, school's an issue here now. I was just a bum for awhile... (had a job, but a bum forumwise, heh).

s

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Colonel_Klink
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Posted: 11th Sep 2009 13:13
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Nope so far I've refrained from using any external dlls, not that I have an aversion to using dlls. To me this is a good way of learning how the various standard functions work in DBPro.

Oh my gosh! He's wearing Full Metal Pyjamas!
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RUCCUS
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Posted: 11th Sep 2009 16:46
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I do recommend switching over to Cloggy's Dll at a later time. Its free, mimics all of DBP's built in 2D commands but comes with a tonne of others. Not only that but they all run much faster than DBP's built in ones.
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