I'm at the very initial planning stages of making a GUI creator. I'm making it out of necessity for my own projects, but will make it available to the DBP community if there is a need for this sort of thing. So, I would like to know if anyone has any general input which I can use in my planning. Specifically:
- Is there a general need for this kind of software? Is there anything similar I don't already know about?
- What features would you like to see incorporated? What would you use it for?
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-The Idea-
My idea is to create a drag and drop editor that will make for the easy creation of things like menus, in-game HUDs, cockpits/dashboards, mediaplayer skins, etc. The user would be able to make buttons, dials, sliders, etc. within the GUI editor, and assign events to them which can be controlled from within their code with a small and simple command set.
For example;
If you wanted a menu button, you would create it, texture it and position it in the editor, assign a name to it, then in your code you would simply write:
if GUI_buttonclick("highscore")=1 then .......
If you wanted to have a score counter, then again you would create it in the editor, assign text style/colour etc., give it a name, and in code write something like:
GUI_display("playerscore")=str$(score)
I am planning to combine this functionality with a library of graphics for making and texturing buttons and other GUI components, some options for adjusting things like transparency of GUI components, snapping to grid, some basic paint fascilities like drawing lines/polygons/text etc.
Any feedback appreciated.
