Hi, how can I continuously render a win32 control in the engine?

Thanks.

I haven't tried it yet, but am pretty sure that DirectX won't take any care about win32 controls. So you must pause the renderer by resetting SHOW when you want to use controls.

hmmm? Can that be done currently, or does the engine have to have an 'update'? I'm not sure what you mean by 'resetting SHOW'.

Pause the engine renderer is either possible by just not calling engine_frame(); or (probably what jcl intended to say) by resetting the SHOW flag of all used views.

Well I'm doing this in lite-c, not using the SDK, so 'engine_frame' can't be used. I might be being thick here, but what view? I'm not loading a level, I'm just starting with a blank 2D window. Is 'camera' active even without a level?

Camera is active.

reset(camera,SHOW);

shall work, and prevent the engine from rendering.

The camera view is only active when a level is loaded. But for disabling the renderer you also must not show panels, texts, and background color. Reset the SHOW flags of background panels, if any, and set screen_color to 0,0,0.

ooo, it's not possible to use win32 controls and other engine objects, eg Panels, at the same time? Yet it's possible to add other win32 stuff like menus which don't affect the renderer.

I don't know much about the interals of DirectX, i thought the controls would just 'sit' on top of dx, like overlays.

Yes, this is possible (I suppose) as long as they don't overlap. Where they overlap, DirectX wins.

opacity at zero would not count as getting rendered in this case, right?