A Few Questions...

tagi · Post by **tagi** » Fri Jul 22, 2005 4:54 am

Before I start, I cannot lie.. I haven't searched every page of these forums for my answers. I look for about 20 minutes and figured I'd just

I'm looking to get into game programming.. and I know just jumping into something isn't the best approach, but it's how I've always done everything. I have been programming for about 10 years.. 6 years with C/C++ and the past 4 years with C#. Me and my buddy are looking to write a game (I'll spare you the details) and before we go ahead and choose a game engine (Leaning to this one), I'd like to ask some questions about Irrlicht. I've looked at alot of screen shots of games created using this engine and I fail to see any games with an 'on screen menu'. What I mean is one kind of like the one you see in many MMORPGs.. the bottom bar with icons for options and stuff. Is it possible to do that with this engine? I don't need samples and what not, just a yes or no will do

Second is how is the GUI skinning with this engine? Can I have say windows that look like anything I want (round, triangular, etc)? Again, I don't need samples, just yes or no

Lastly, does Irrlicht support input from mouse/keyboard/joysticks? Is this a built in function, or would I have to write my own/get third party project to handle this? Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you!

Midnight · Post by **Midnight** » Fri Jul 22, 2005 5:11 am

Irrlicht is a wonderful engine.

It's possable to write your own GUI class of any sort.

Currently Irrlicht has "windows like" GUI and recently added the ability to add your own skins much easier then ever before even gradient colors for the shadow effect seen in the finest of GUI across the world.

Having been a programmer for so long I think you'll easily pickup on how to accomplish most things. The community will assist you with any help you need I'm sure.

Skinning GUI has nothing to do with the shape at least not in Irrlicht. If you want round or triangle you'll be writing that yourself Irrlicht can fully supply you with all the squares and rectangles you desire however.

Irrlicht supports keyboard and mouse input in the form of the Event Reciever as for joysticks well the better ones are reprogrammable otherwise you'll be adding that yourself aswell. pretty sure that goes for MOST graphics engines if not all of them.

Welcome to Irrlicht. Hope it'severything you dream about at night.

Good Luck!

b1_77y · Post by **b1_77y** » Fri Jul 22, 2005 8:54 am

I new in irrlicht to

and i think irrlicht is great...great 10x engine

it's arround 2 month, i enter irrlicht comunity.
and it's realy wonderfull comunity, because everybody seem like
wan't to help each other

welcome to the comunity.

tagi · Post by **tagi** » Fri Jul 22, 2005 3:27 pm

Thank for the reply and the great answer.. This is precisley what I was looking for. For the record, I do not wish for circular windows, it was just an example

. After doing more research, I've found no other open source engine that compares with Irrlicht on paper (I have not tried all the ones I've found), and seeing as I try to avoid all non-open source software as much as possible the logical choice is to go with Irrlicht. I hope it's all it's cracked up to be, and I'm sure it will be. With that being said, I was wondering if someone could point me to a tutorial, or atleast a description of how to, for skinning gui elements? That is probably one of the few things I do not really understand. Thanks again!!

Midnight · Post by **Midnight** » Sat Jul 23, 2005 3:49 am

you're not alone in misunderstanding.

I have talked with the developer "Niko" or god as i like to call him about this subject in the beginner forum under "gradient colors in Irrlicht 0.11" or something like that.

I partially understand what he is talking about and Intend to make a tutorial myself for this as no other tutorial for this currently exists.

However Irrlicht comes with two defualt skins "Metallic" which is a grey with black gradient shadow skin or the original basic "Classic" skin.

Appearently you can make your own but it requires deriving your own IGUISkin class and then adding it the same as the others however I'm not sure how to do this exactly myself as of yet.

Either by editing the gradient colors or adding your own textures within your class.. obviously putting images in place of 2d rectangles.

tagi · Post by **tagi** » Sat Jul 23, 2005 7:06 pm

aye.. I've found very documentation on this subject through my research.. and heres my new question.. if I were to create my own UI "engine".. I could theroretically use that inside a game, no? Guess my question is, Do I have to use the UI classes provided by Irrlicht, or can I use my own custom made UI components?

disanti · Post by **disanti** » Sat Jul 23, 2005 9:15 pm

Just... good luck with lighting... This community doesn't seem to help much with it!

________
Lamborghini flying star ii history

alejolp · Post by **alejolp** » Sun Jul 24, 2005 11:35 pm

tagi: The UI clasees Irrlicht comes with are built using primitives functions (lines, rectangles), also provided by the engine. If you dont like the existent UI, you can make one of your own. Also you have the source code of those UI classes, so you can easily extend or modify the existent one.

Good Luck!