Recoil

Music Shop Maybe - this could also be used as the map music for a modern carnival-type environment. Castle-Cave-Battle Theme - I agree with Apache_ that they have a city beat-em up vibe. The main instrument changes a lot in this one. Individually that backdrop with those instruments is great, maybe not all together? Marching Beat - it seemed like this was 4 different things with the same backdrop mixed together. The main instrument was changed too many times and would have been better sticking with 1, or ones that were similar. The individual parts by themselves were good, but a too much all in the same song. Tribute-troid - this one was much better by using the same main instrument type and similar ones to the same rhythm. This one could be applicable to several map-types, from a futuristic boss fight at an Asian massage parlor , or in a tech-type map. Cheerful Day - is still my favorite so far. The backdrop is consistent, and it uses the same main instrument the whole song, with 2 (maybe 3), changes in the rhythm on the main instrument. Please don't take my comments too harsh, I like what you've done so far trying different things out to see how it goes together. One thing that might help with the direction of a file is to choose a genre & theme for it first...it could change to something else entirely and still be useful, but it would have the same feel throughout the whole song.

I am a professional graphic artist outside of these forums. If you are interested I can DM you examples of my work and/or portfolio if desired. Can you provide more details about your project, such as your deadline, budget, and style requirements? Any other additional details would likely help.

Progress? While this looks like less, I have removed all unnecessary controls from the engine, and am using only a button. The engine itself is now standalone. I have updated the Latest progress spoiler on the top post to reflect changes in the last several days. I am also adding 2 more projects to this venture: UX Editor and a Theme Editor. Progress is slowly being made, but the overall goal keeps growing as well as to what this is going to be when it is done, and how additional stuff is supposed to function properly. Essentially: I am stuck. Edit: See top post for latest images and updates in the spoiler (fair warning: it's loooooong)

@devs who know what they're talking about... Is it a goal to allow the generator to have n^th number of layers? If so, is there any current progress on this?

A little more progress in the last few days. I know it doesn't look like much, but... I got padding and margins (somewhat) working. Alignments work too now, both vertical and horizontal, on buttons and groupboxes. Labels (used by every control for text) have a FontOffset that pads the Y axis for the font used. This is due to the variations between the font descenders and space above the ascenders, in this particular case it was 3 pixels (purple ellipse would be fine set at 0). Other fonts may vary, so this can be set for each label. While the text blocks are centering, I have no idea how to approach centering the double lined rows aside from adding spaces to the text, but then that's not right. Text justification fixed: There is still a grip to do, but I have the majority of the working code regioned off properly and all the commented out code deleted. I will probably make a more organized example that looks cleaner...

Panels and buttons are still all that work, but now I am using 2 custom shapes from classes I converted and modified from C++ code: Rounded Rectangles and Ellipses. Rounded Rectangles can do normal rectangles too, Ellipses can do ovals, circles by setting same width/height, and n-sided shapes (triangle/octagon) by setting the radius points. The highlights for the mouse over and mouse down events are the same shape as the control, but the control bounds are still set to a rectangle surrounding the width/height of the control. The radial gradient only works properly with a rounded rectangle set with a corner radius, otherwise it looks like an oval inside a rectangle outline....I may be able to fix this...but I am lazy about getting to this. I may remove radial gradients and just stick with vertical and horizontal ones. Photoshop and Gimp can create a radial gradient image to use, and a slough of other gradient styles including more than 2 colors. The shapes of the controls are what is more important for the purposes of this control library. The graphic images need fixed to allow stretching, but they are working with images set to the same size as the control right now. Graphic images can be any shape and not rely on the custom shape classes. My last post had the banner gradient graphic that was made with a ConvexShape. I want to look into adding a banner shape class, but it honestly may not be needed....would be neat though. Bitmap text is still a strong possibility for this project. Glyph images are also a strong possibility for the buttons. I am also looking into having an animated image on the buttons, that either plays on a loop, or plays on a mouse over event. I am looking into making a separate GUI library that reads colors, images, text, and layouts for each control from an XML file. This will make it easier to group specific controls for each menu, and use a theme to easily change appearance properties, sizes, and locations for all the controls so everything is more consistent. No idea how this will work, or how to do it yet...ideas are welcome Edit: I changed to rounded rectangles to being able to draw rounded corners on the top only, so groupboxes can be allowed to have a header with a flat bottom. Edit2: Added top/bottom rounded corner examples today.

There was no other place I noticed that this would go. Not sure if these are intended to be this way or not. Example: Private Sub DrawSomething() DrawAwesomeStuffs() End Sub The background on the forum and in the messages is the same color, which makes distinguishing difficult. Not sure if it is possible to change the background color just a few shades of gray darker, which would remain within the forum's theme colors. I also noticed it doesn't appear in a block with scrollbars, so a long snippet of code takes up a lot of space. I know that is a bit of work to implement, so a different color background would alleviate a use for them.

And textured rounded rectangles are finally a thing. I am awesome. That is all for now...more updates coming soon once I clean everything up.

Quick update... I added 2 more control that I want to make for this on the previous reply. I'm open to suggestions for other standard controls. I have had a bit of backtracking to do on this, so only the panels, group boxes, and buttons are working at this time...but as you can see the progress has been better: The control base I am using for all the controls will allow controls to have the appearances - solid color, vertical gradient, horizontal gradient, radial gradient, or an image. I am open to suggestions for other drawing options too, but the options will be applicable to all the controls in the library. Everything except for the image is done when the control is created through code. The outline is optional and can be turned off. The panel on the left is a vertical gradient done through code, and the group box on the right is a png image. Instead of a button graphic that displays the same button with 3 different interactions(normal, mouse over, mouse down) this simply uses 1 single button image and overlays a highlight to show the mouse interactions. Please note - setting up the visual appearance of each setting for each control is all done through code. I do not know a way to make this simply drag-and-drop because it is done 100% with SFML using .NET Core. Setup for each button in the picture is between 7-9 lines (not counting the addhandlers for the events), and the group box is 17 lines to change the default values. However, I am still working out the kinks of the best way do go about this. Next on my list is rounded corners for the base control class. More than likely I will overhaul the text drawn to the screen and use a sprite sheet for the letters, which from what I read is faster than drawing actual text to the screen.

I'm going to necro this thread because it is my thread, and I am still working on this...or have picked it back up . No sense in a new thread for same thing. Previously when I was working on this I had so many issues trying to fire events for controls. No joke, there is crap information on how to fire events for objects drawn to the screen. If you search for how to do this, you find me asking on various forums how to do this, and failing to find an answer. And no, I could never get any of the existing control libraries to work with vb.net properly. Regardless, here is my progress so far: Right now it's still buggy: The scrollbars are calculating the values correctly, but the slider button isn't displaying correctly with those values. Slider does not work when the mouse is dragging it or the scroll wheel on the mouse is used. The NumericUpDown control is no longer increasing/decreasing the values. The multiline for the text box causes the scrollbars to get drawn at the top left of the window. None of the text is editable yet. Graphics are drawn, but images are not able to be used yet. As seen in the horizontal scrollbar, it isn't wanting to release the state of the control if you mouse over/out too fast. But what IS important is I have the events for each button firing from 1 event for each button in the main window. There is still a lot of if/then checks that have to be pushed from events for the form to show the mouse state, but I am hoping to correct that soon. Sadly, this was designed with a different understanding of how to get the drawn controls working as actual control objects, and I have to completely redo a bulk of code so it is cleaner and more efficient...so it's going to be a minute before I release a compiled dll file. I'm probably going to wait until it is 100% before releasing the source so it is easier to support after making all the corrections to issues that are going to come up. Along with this I am going to be releasing the code for a base engine working with SFML that can be used to test out how to use the library for drawn control objects. This will make it easier to show how to create and modify a custom control, and not have to support making this work with each other engine wanting to use this and end up breaking their codebase with what they are wanting to do. List of controls currently planned: Panel (Working) Button (Working) GroupBox (Working) Label (Working) TextBox (multiline will likely be separate control) NumericUpDown Vertical/Horizontal ScrollBar ComboBox ListBox CheckedListBox Dial/Knob CheckBox RadioButton ProgressBar Switch TrackBar Gauge TabControl I'm still mulling over a list of the properties I want for each type of control... This is going to be 100% SFML, and not import anything with Windows.Forms...I'm not clear what the last post is referring to...unless it's talking about drawing objects in Base64, then no, that defeats the purpose (and ease) of dropping images into folders. Feel free to add thoughts on properties and functionality.

Thanks, that answers what I was asking. I ran several websites before, using a web host for the space and domain name, but nothing for an actual game server. I am not looking to rent out anything anytime soon, just get everything planned out properly. If I was wanting a website that would list players online, and show if the server was up or not, would that be renting out web hosting separately from the private/dedicated server, or could that be ran on the same environment?

I am not explaining this properly... For testing purposes, I can launch the client and server and use them this way if I don't have a working database, or using sqlite. I can even use my local xampp install to allow the client.exe to talk to the server.exe that is on my same computer, or on the local network, to manage a mysql database. Now let's say I finish client and server, make sweet game for it...I rent webspace from provider to put the server on so the client can connect to the server... Regardless if I am using flat files, sqlite, or mysql, nothing is going to work, because the server.exe is still on my local computer, and not installed on the physical server. Like, where does the server.exe get installed on the physical server? i.e.: People that use JC's service to host their servers...what is the location they are installing them to?

I'm still not clear on where the game server program would actually go on the webspace, and how you're supposed to launch it. I have done several searches, and manually looked through a lot of posts throughout here and that is one thing I have not come across any steps for getting setup.

I don't really know what exactly I am looking for so I am hoping someone here knows how this works together. I am working to port everything for Revamped over to using a MySQL database instead of flat files. Currently I have XAMPP setup and running Apache and MySQL modules on my computer. I do not have a database setup (yet), and am working on a basic schema for it. The client and server both work, but I am not really sure how to make the server work on a test server...like where does it go, and how to start it? I would like to set the client up so it checks the status of the server on the website, then is able to connect to the server when it is up and running like normal. Possibly show the players online on the test website at some point...but I want to stick with the basics of getting some interaction working at this time and am lost on what to do.