CE-GUI branch: feature/ce-gui

[softcoder]

I've started work on looking at replacing our UI with CE-GUI. So far its working out fairly easy, I was able to add this dialog box on the main menu in one day and its fully clickable, resizeable and dragable!



Whats great about CE-GUI is you can create themes via XML files and they even have a GUI editor. It was quite easy to integrate thus far.

[Julius]

That will be a big improvement to the look of MegaGlest!

I would suggest the use of this theme: http://cegui.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=6679

[tomreyn]

Looks like a good theme!

And at least so far, with just the one window without text displayed as in the screen shot above, FPS is not impacted at all for me, neither in menus nor in-game.

[softcoder]

Yes its a great theme, theres what it looks like:

To see this in git add this to glestuser.ini:

Code Select Expand

CEGUI-Theme-Path=$APPLICATIONPATH/../../data/glest_game/data/cegui/themes/glossyserpent.1.0.7/cegui/
CEGUI-Theme-Name=GlossySerpent
CEGUI-Theme-Name-Cursors=GlossySerpentCursors




To see some of what is possible in ce-gui check out: http://cegui.org.uk/

[titi]

Thats nice I bet we will find some interested MG-artists soon who make our own theme too :-) .

[softcoder]

Notice how 'clear' the font rendering is. This will likely solve the problem we had with our previous rendering of fonts showing blurry. You can really see the difference in the screenshot above.

[tomreyn]

I did notice this immediately. :) Also the text is now brighter, proper white (which I think it was supposed to be before, too).

Hopefully we won't loose the UTF-16/multi-byte/RTL capabilities this way, though?

[softcoder]

According to their website they offer full support. We should lose nothing. Checkout out their videos on the website i mentioned above. There are lots of demos of the widgets and how they work.

The editor to make themes etc (you can build menus, assign fonts, mouse pointer etc..) is called CEED and reference on the cegui website. It is python based.

[titi]

Just so we don't forget it: CE-GUI is Mit License so we must add the license text  in our docs section too.

[softcoder]

Here is a screenshot of the main menu UI redone in CEGUI.

Using CE-GUI takes care of word wrapping in message boxes, adds scrollbars when the text is too large to fit the view area, ensures you cannot click under the messagebox on buttons below, allows you to drag the dialog around out of the way.



Using CEED (the CEGUI designer): (Help guide for how to use Ceed is here: http://static.cegui.org.uk/docs/ceed-snapshot11/user-manual.pdf)

Furthermore, text can use format tags to do all kinds of things: http://cegui.org.uk/wiki/Formatting_Tags_in_CEGUI

[GunChleoc]

Using CE-GUI takes care of word wrapping in message boxes, adds scrollbars when the text is too large to fit the view area, ensures you cannot click under the messagebox on buttons below, allows you to drag the dialog around out of the way.

This is excellent news :)

[Julius]

That looks excellent! Now on to the in-game HUD which is quite horrible in the old version :p

[Coldfusionstorm]

Huraaay i can do it too :D.



Now to understand the schema and and other configuration files that makes it possible.

:/.

[softcoder]

Here's another look at the misc tab of Options Screen using CEGUI: (ignore the stuff behind. its the old UI that has not been removed). **NOTE the language combobox shows each language in its native font!

[softcoder]

Here's another look at the misc tab of Options Screen using CEGUI: (ignore the stuff behind. its the old UI that has not been removed). **NOTE the language combobox shows each language in its native font!

[GunChleoc]

Nice - taghta! :D

[titi]

Looking at the screenshots I see the old dialogs in background too ( you mentioned it too ).
I am a bit concerned about how the code will look like in the end if the old stuff stays in place. I think its better if you really remove the old stuff so we only get the new proper things. Even if some things might get accidently lost by this, it gives us a much more proper start using ce-gui. So don't hesistate, remove old stuff in the menus :) .

[tomreyn]

I agree - we can always run 3.9.1 or even the develop branch next to it to compare.

[softcoder]

I left the old stuff only until i am finished replacing the code, as i did in the main menu ALL old code goes away when i am done (don't worry about that) :)

[titi_son]

Do we have sliders?
Because we could use them for the camera move speed for example.

The new UI looks really great.  :D

[kratos]

It's a good idea, but maybe you can adjust esteticly the CE-GUI.

[Julius]

Got it running for the in-game HUD also by now?

[softcoder]

Not yet, had many distractions for MegaGlest but I have in recent weeks been continuing on this work.

[kagu]

I have to admit , from the day that I saw that this is coming , I'm longing for it.

[jammyjamjamman]

Actually, I was wondering with this new feature would it be possible to store new themes in the mod centre? It would be quite nice if the MG-user had an easy-to-add selection of themes to choose from that are created by the community