EvoGUI 1.01

[Lenn]

Hello,

version 1.01 of EvoGUI has now been completed, and the website has been put online!

Update 08/09/2009: EvoGUI is now completely free, disregard the licence on the website and within the download!

Visit the website for more details, a few more screenshots, and the download: Website link

What most of you will notice first is the smooth fading in and out of windows when opening and closing them. It's a neat little effect, looks a bit like Vista. And then there's the animations, and animated image buttons, which also give a lot of dynamics to the presentation. Tell me what you think!

List of all the changes from v0.98
-Animatied images
-Animated image buttons
-Animated cursors
-Shader effects applied to windows. Included is an HLSL shader that makes windows fade in and out upon opening/closing respectively. You should see it, try the examples!
-Image buttons can now have clickable areas of any shape defined by the alpha-threshold value upon creation. Meaning, transparent parts of the button will not react to mouse cursor movement and clicking.
-Images can have render surfaces applied as a source, giving you the option of having a 3d object display within a window, use it like a viewport, or display anything else you want (radar screen? up to you!).
-Further optimizations of render surface handling, and better memory performance.
-Support for GPUs that do not handle non-power-of-2 texture sizes
-The TPE has also been updated with new sections for editing animations and animated cursors.
-I've also changed a few things in the code, such as using inheritance (didn't help that much because each control is very optimized and thus very unique), separating code into several code files (1 per class) , renaming the enumerations , making some Subs private , and maybe a few other small modifications to adjust to what seems to be general prefference for most coders.

There is also heaps more info on the website now. Reading through the full feature list will give you an idea how complete the system is. It took me a while to write it all down. Phew! So have a look.

Some new screenshots (click on thumbnail for high resolution image):

[Lenn]

Oh and , since I didn't have a computer to test this on, I'd like the users who had problems with the display due to the non-power-of-2 render surfaces sizes from the previous thread,

in particular nadjibus and Raine,

to confirm that the GUI now works by setting the ForcePowerOf2TextureSize to True upon initializations. This is done when you New the gui by setting the second param to True, ie:

Code:

MyGUI = New EvoGUI(Input, True)

Also, if anyone else has any major issues, or if i made a mistake somewhere with the website, please tell me.

[nadjibus]

Picture
Works like a charm! I'm really impressed! wow!

Thank you very much Lenn  A huge work was needed to do that...

ps: the fading ROCKS

ps2: I discovered a small bug... (the red circle in the picture:scrollbars not in the right place)

[Lenn]

Picture
Works like a charm! I'm really impressed! wow!

Thank you very much Lenn  A huge work was needed to do that...

ps: the fading ROCKS

ps2: I discovered a small bug... (the red circle in the picture:scrollbars not in the right place)

So it works? w00t!  Well, yeah, it was a bit of work, but it had to be done. Thank you for the impressions.

The bug you mention, it's not really a bug, it's more like my choice right now. The scroll bars are at the correct positions, there is just nothing covering up the letters behind them. Because Windows Forms for example covers up that area by forcing a texture on it, and it only appears when there are two scroll bars on a control such as listbox or textbox. Because I wouldnt like the right (vertical) scroll bar to go all the way down and its down arrow sitting right next to the right arrow of the horizontal scroll bar. From a design point of view, that isnt nice for me. But, I can "fix" that quite easily, in fact it was "fixed" before by drawing a listbox background over it which made it look like there was no listbox text (or contents) there. I'll add the fix in the next release, or i might just update the ListBox class via SVN instead of a whole new release each time.

Either way, I'm glad that the only bad thing you noticed was something that "unimportant".

------

Regarding the SVN

I'm also thinking about an SVN. I'm not sure which one to use. Google is a no-go because it forces you to declare your work under a licence of completely free open-source. I think I'll go for SourceForge, or... I dont know. Any other recommendations and advice are welcome. Thanks

[pabloescobar]

Congratz, it looks very nice, ill try asap...

[Lenn]

in my opinion.. by far the greatest GUI app i have found so far
it's great! 
nice work man

Kind words indeed! Thank you, I am glad you like it.

[-Mervin-]

hm evogui 0.98 worked fine..

but now im getting 3 errors with 1.01 .. strange
when i try to run TPE or any of the examples i get:

Code:

Error 1    Too many arguments to 'Public Function TextureFont_Create(sUserFont As String, sFontName As String, iSize As Integer, bBold As Boolean, bUnderlined As Boolean, bItalic As Boolean, bInternational As Boolean) As Integer'. C:\Users\Mervin\Desktop\EvoGUI 1.01 Release\EvoGUI 1.01 - Examples\EvoGUI - Examples\src\EvoGUI_D3DFont.vb 36 106 EvoGUI - Examples

Error 2    'GetMaxTextureSize' is not a member of 'MTV3D65.TVDeviceInfo'. C:\Users\Mervin\Desktop\EvoGUI 1.01 Release\EvoGUI 1.01 - Examples\EvoGUI - Examples\src\EvoGUI_RenderSurface.vb 25 9 EvoGUI - Examples

Error 3    Too many arguments to 'Public Function TextureFont_Create(sUserFont As String, sFontName As String, iSize As Integer, bBold As Boolean, bUnderlined As Boolean, bItalic As Boolean, bInternational As Boolean) As Integer'. C:\Users\Mervin\Desktop\EvoGUI 1.01 Release\EvoGUI 1.01 - Examples\EvoGUI - Examples\src\EvoGUI_TVFont.vb 24 102 EvoGUI - Examples

(running on windows vista ultimate x32 , Visual Basic Express 2008 , MTV3D65.DLL added as ref.)

btw: Is there going to be a forum for EvoGUI ?

[Zaknafein]

Marvin, try redownloading the 6.5 prerelease. I think you're using an old DLL which lacks some functions and overloads.

[Lenn]

Yes, Zaknafein is right, these are Truevision errors and not specific to EvoGUI, so you probably just need to redownload the newest TV3D SDK version. The version used in EvoGUI is the one released in May 2008, and as far as I know, it's the one you can download right now from the website. Make sure you are refferencing the right version if you have already downloaded it, when adding refferences to the project.

As far as a Forum is concerned, I'm not so sure about how many people are using it because I am not even trackind download numbers! So, I'm not sure how much need there is for a forum right now, but it's a good idea. I'll probably create it soon.

[-Mervin-]

ok, so i downloaded TV3D again and installed everything and added the reference,
still the same errrors..

(full download, mirror 1)
MTV3D65.DLL:  .NET  version:  1.0.2802.22118
(sdk download, mirror 1)
MTV3D65.DLL: .NET version: 6.5.2823.21213
(sdk download, mirror 2)
MTV3D65.DLL: .NET version: 6.5.2823.21213

i really want to buy and use EvoGUI , but i have to get it working first ..

[Lenn]

Make sure to delete everything from the bin\Debug and bin\Release folders . You may have re-refferenced it after redownloading, but the old DLL probably stayed in the folder.

Nothing has been changed since v0.98 in terms of refferencing or number of arguments in the given functions, so there's no way that it would have anything to do with EvoGUI.

Just check , and double check.

[-Mervin-]

@Lenn:  Tried it.. still having the same errors 
i want to use EvoGUI but unfortunately this is slowing me down

[Lenn]

I've done everything I can to test if it is my fault, and it is 100% not my fault. I'm sorry to say, but it's your fault you are making. Besides, it works for everyone else. Just to make clear, just because of you saying this I've tried:

-Testing everything with the new DLL (released yesterday), everything works.
-Created new project, refferenced everything, it worked.
-I even redownloaded the zip from my web page to see if someone tempered with it on purpose, or some crazy scenario like that, but no - everything worked!

Then I looked at the errors you are getting. You have 1 argument too few in the error for TextureFont_Create! You are missing the last argument which is "bUseClearTypeAntialiasing". As far as I know, this was added in a more recent version of TV3D 6.5 , as well as the "GetMaxTextureSize". This means, 100%, that you are using the wrong (ie old) MTV3D65 DLL!

Look, you really need to reinstall it properly, ok? Just uninstall the SDK (if you have one of the installable versions) or delete everything from it. Then grab the download directly from:

http://www.truevision3d.com/downloads.php

Do not use any of the mirrors! I dont know where you pasted the text with the "mirror 1" in it, but its no longer there, and it shouldnt be, so just download the full sdk and install it (after uninstalling the previous version).

Otherwise, you would be using the old version of tv3d 6.5 sdk, and I dont know why you would insist upon doing that, since the new one has so many fixes.

If you really are unable to install the new SDK, then you could just remove the last argument from the TextureFont_Create function, and comment the line with GetMaxTexture size and set the MaxSupportedWidth and MaxSupportedHeight (in EvoGUI_RenderSurface.vb) to something like 2048. See, the good thing about open source is you can fix anything yourself. But ok, since you seem to be new, i dont mind explaining things.

[-Mervin-]

@Lenn ok tried everything again a few times.. it's working now .. strange..
but ok  .

im going to buy EvoGUI now.  I bought EvoGui.

[Lenn]

Congratulations!

Thank you. I have sent you the licence information.

I may not always be as responsive to un-licenced users as I was to you in the previous post, especially because soon I will have much less time (just to be fair, and let others know). But now that you have the full licence, I guarantee you full support/advice on any problems you might encounter for the years to come.

[-Mervin-]

thankyou 

i'm going to start integrating EvoGUI into my game later this day  .

- is there going to be documentation for the TPE soon?.
- and are there going to be tabbed
windows soon?.
those are my last questions  .

Mervin.

[Lenn]

I am planning on writing the docs for the TPE in about 10 or 15 days. I will publish whatever I get done as soon as it's done. Until then, you can maybe figure some of it out by playing around with the example skins, and if you have specific questions you can ask me.

The next version will include the Tooltips feature. I'm not sure about the timeframe on that, but if more people request it I will hurry up. I'll probably continue more work on the whole of EvoGUI in about 2 months, but you know I'm working on a large project and the schedule keeps changeing! So it may be sooner, it may be later. It's the usual story like with all development.

ps
If you think tabs are absolutely incredibily crucial to your application, bug me, and i'll try my best.

[-Mervin-]

@Lenn,

ok.

well i did some things in my game to let EvoGui windows appear etc.
but i have 2 questions..
1). how can i create a skin and use it on a window ? (i find the TPE very vague..).
2). how can i apply a background image to a window ?.

about the Tabs:
well they would be very useful for almost everyone i think..
and in my game the are kinda necessary.
so if you could make them i would really appreciate that 

PS: don't forget to make a forum for the EvoGUI licensed users please (if you have the time)
PPS: i can provide you with free webspace+ftp (html+php etc.) for EvoGUI if you want, i have plenty of space and bandwidth so..     

[Lenn]

1) Try loading the fotonic skin in the TPE. The quick help file has instructions for doing this. Did you try that? You specify texture parts in it for each of the gadgets, and the properties in the skin properties window. If you load the fotonic skin you can select any of the texture segments, the active one will glow blue-yellow. That will give you an idea of how the textures are pieced together. Then, you can load your own image file with "pieces" which should look a lot like the fonitic skin DDS image for max efficiency. After that, you save the skin PRM file which should be the same file name as the image file of the skin so you should have 2 files, "yourskin.dds" and "yourskin.prm". Then just copy them into the Skins directory and load the skin like any other. In the examples where ever there is "fotonic", just type "yourskin" and voila... It's probably best to start by modifying the fotonic skin, ie modify the texture or increase/change the size of some of the textures by changeing the size of the texture segments. It's really not that simple, i'm going to have to make the time to write a full tutorial for it. I will do this in the next week or two, and let you know. Hope this helps until then.




2) In the examples, Windows 4 and 5 have background images. In the InitiateWindows() function you will see:

Code:

Win4 = MyGUI.NewWindow("Win4", "Window 4", "fotonic", 271, 512, 350, 50, "Arial16", True)
Win4.PictureBackground = True
Win4.ntex_background = MyGUI.GetTextureSegment("background2", "images2")

"fotonic" is the skin
"images2" is the loaded BigTexture
"background2" is a texture segment from the images2 BigTexture, ie, the actual background.

All images in EvoGUI are loaded as texture segments from a BigTexture, which is defined in the TPE. You can load images2 in the TPE and select each of the texture segments from the drop down list and it will show the bounding box (flashing red) on the big texture.



Tabs: yes, the next two features are tooltips and tabs. I am aware that they are popular, and they will surely be implemented. It's just a matter of time.

Forum: It's not that easy, it takes time, so I will have to think about it. It's better if i spend time on more constructive things. But if the userbase increases significantly, then i will create a forum.

Webspace: I have my own website with pretty much unlimited bandwidth and space. It's just that it has gotten kind of slow lately and has been down on occasion so I am probably going to change hosts. Maybe if it starts going down again, I could let you host it as an official mirror! That would be cool. Thanks for the offer.

[-Mervin-]

  , error again..

EssenceGUI = New EvoGUI(Inp, False)  <- crashes my game..
when i execute it i get a "Loader Lock was detected" directx error.

how can i fix this?