Looking for info (can this be done?)

[johan_d]

Hi,

I have a little game idea in my head, and looking for the easiest programming environment. I have some basic
knowledge of basic :-)

What I want to be able is have a screen like below attached.
With some pseudo windows, where I can put data/text in than will be filled from the game and that
the user can scroll thru, and cklik on to open/read more of the text.
I also want to use background images for the screen and the windows.

Been looking around on the forums I found little about windows, or pseudo windows, not real per say Windows windows
but an scrollable area with clickable text.
It wont be a few lines, it must be able to hold some hundred lines in a scrollable box or window.

Can this be done rather easily in PB or is it a burden do program?

Please advise. (currently playing a bit with the demo)

[kevin]

  Seems simple enough.   To create pseudo windows,  you'd just be rendering to images as caches, each cache only needs refreshing when the window has  changed.   So for the most part it's going to be sitting waiting to react to user input.  The interaction is also trivial, it's merely a matter of converting the mouse click from screen to  'window space',  from here you can calc the row that was clicked, then it's just a matter of parsing the string for a word like level intersection.  Ie. Split the string and step through the words looking for a region hit.

   There's a number of gui example spread all over the forums (search for GUIs/Menus/Windows),  most are more complicated than what you need, but will no doubt give you some ideas on how to implement you're own GUI.


   Here's a few

Dragon GUI
PB GUI  (windows gui)
PlayGUI
Menu GUI
Flexi Gui
Flexi Menu

etc

Here's a few heavier examples that include lots of realtime parsing and text output.

Kyruss
Syntax highlighting

[johan_d]

''Seems simple enough"

Well, not to me.. a lot of programming I see to get something. :-)

"To create pseudo windows,  you'd just be rendering to images as caches, each cache only needs refreshing when the window has  changed.   So for the most part it's going to be sitting waiting to react to user input.  The interaction is also trivial, it's merely a matter of converting the mouse click from screen to  'window space',  from here you can calc the row that was clicked, then it's just a matter of parsing the string for a word like level intersection.  Ie. Split the string and step through the words looking for a region hit."

Please explain in English? I am sure what you tell me is correct, but ''rendering images as caches'' ? What have images todo with this?
Puzzled with the PB slang here.

I looked into the demo's and such, but its sad that there isnt yet a understandable and easy to use implementation of it, at least not for me YET!
As you might understand, I want to determine within the trail period of PB will do the job for me at ease, since populating my game with data and creating the AI (it will be a strategic simulation, mainly text, not a RTS or something) will be the hardest job, on what I want to concentrate on, in stead of working 120 days to just get a textbox on the screen, if you get my drift.

Ill keep on studying this and I hope you dont mind I ask more questions.