Hi all.
I want to introduce a tool which I'm working one for more than 2 months.
The tool is called GUID and means "Graphical user interface designer". This tool is especially made for GameStudio. Some of you may know that it is really hard to program a good menu in 3DGS and often needs many time because you don't have any real preview or something else.
But may this tool can help
Well, now I will try to show some of the features of the tool by showing some screenshots:
This is the interface of the tool. On the left and on the top you can see rulers which can help you to set objects at the right positions. On the right you can see an interface with different tabs. Currently showed: Creating of Panels/Buttons.
On the Bottom there is another bar with the 10 different menu pages. (The page without a number is a global page, that means panels at this page are visible on every page, for example backgrounds). There are also 5 different color fields (for picking colors and use them later)
In the center you can see the current menu project. As you see, there is now a grid (you can set the size of this) and there are also some ledger lines (which you can also place and delete/hide however you want).
On the right the configuration tab is opened. As you may can see, you can set you're favorite script editor. (To edit the on_click functions)
Now on the right side is displayed the "project manager". The project manager displays all panels which are currently in your project. By clicking with the right mouse button you can directly choose something what you like to do. For example, Copy the Panel into the "tool clipboard", remove it or edit the on_click function.
Now you can see that a different menu-page has been opened. Just for example, I've made a "Start Game" menu-page. On the right you can see the color picker. If you use it, you can pick the color of every position in the tool. If you don't want to pick a color, you can also enter a RGB-Color or Web-Color (hex).
The panel positioning system is also very complex. You can set the alignment of the panel (left, right, center, top, ...) and also change it's relativ position to this alignment position. That means you can center your menu or you can set some panels at the upper right corner or something else. The tool does also gives the ability to export the menu that it always fit the current screen size ("Scale menu to full screen").
Well, there are still some more features, for example you can create simple images (like color-fades) directly in the tool. There is also an Text-Render plugin to render text buttons.
By such a lot amount of functions you may can imagine that the handling of the tool can become complicated. But I've tried to make the handling as easy as possible (draging of panels, left and right mouse functions, etc.)
Of course the tool does also crash sometimes. But normally it can restore your project without any lost of data.
Unfortunately, a way to implement text objects is not supported. You have to do this manually, if you want to. But you can use the tool to find the right position
A downloadable version is not available yet, because I want to fix some bugs first and don't want to release a buggy program. But if you're interested in beta testing it, you're welcome to pm me
But enough text for now
I hope you didn't got bored by reading it all
Comments, constructive critics, feature suggestions, etc. are welcome. And I hope that such a tool would be very usefully
P.S.: If you want to see more about the functionality, let me know it. May I can record a small video showing the tool at work
You can also find some information at
www.tsgames.de/?item=227Regards
TSGames
