Hello,

I want to make a button, that's not a square.
The only problem, however, is, that i want to be able to move over it, and so change the bitmap. But ONLY when you move over the 'not-overlay' part.

For example, a button that's a red circle.
When the mouse moves over it, it has to become yellow, but ONLY when it moves over the circle, NOT over the black (square) area around it.

How can i do this? (just set the overlay flag doesn't work)

Thanks,

Roy

Hi,

Not sure how to go abouts doing that, but you can try this.

Put a window over the button panel, so the box just fits inside cirle, and make it so that your pointer has to be in the window in order for the click to work.

I don't think that works, because
- Windows are rectangles too.
- The shape i want to use is not a circle (that was just an example), but a far more complex shape.

well you could try using more panels with varying angles, panel A angle=0, panels B angle=45 and onwards, maybe repeat this to fill all the gaps... sounds plausible to me

use panels and check alpha channel of the panel image on mouse position then if it's on non-transparent parts of the panel change the panel image to "over" image and use panel clicked event... instead of a button.

not tetsten but it need to be somthing like this

Um... Transparent parts of a button are NOT detected by the mouse. All images are squares, because your screen is a quadrangle (rectangle/square). You can't make a circular image, unless you've got some kind of special software (which I have no clue where to get, or how much it costs). But you don't need that anyway...

Make SURE that the transparent parts are FULLY transparent. If it's 99.99% transparent, the mouse will still detect it. But anything fully, 100% transparent is not detected. I think the best thing would be to use targa (.tga) images, instead of .bmp or .pcx. Targas are of better quality anyway. But it will allow you to have REAL transparent parts, instead of using black for transparent. And you won't need to use "OVERLAY" either, just "flags = SHOW;" (or "VISIBLE" for older versions). I'm assuming you have something like Gimp or Photoshop... God forbid you're using MS-Paint!

But trust me, I've made many a button. You DON'T need a "circular image", or any "alternately shaped images" for your button. A regular .tga with real transparencies is the best thing. Try to avoid using other formats with black RGB(0,0,0) for transparent with the "OVERLAY" flag. It often makes ugly looking buttons with jagged, misshapen edges anyways. I know this info is correct, because I've even used text for a button before. The mouse wouldn't detect the button unless I was directly over a letter, a non-transparent part. So I would make a background layer, and set opacity to 1%, so you couldn't see it, but the mouse would still detect the button between letters.

P.S.- If you're using your own mouse cursor bmap, you might need to set mouse_spot. See manual. You can define which part of the mouse bmap is the "hotspot". Maybe irrelevant for your project, but maybe not...

A cheap method is to "slice" up the button into several
parts (lets say 6), and create 6 buttons, that
do the same function.

Its not perfectly round, but closer to a circle, and
you dont need a seperate function to calculate a distance,
-> so you can use the standard buttons.

you can then further blend in a panel-image, to simulate
the "highlighting" of the button, when clicking it.

There's really no need. That's a bunch of work for nothing.

I tested my remarks a minute ago. It is correct. You can make a .tga image 2048x2048 pixels that has only a tiny dot in the center, with the rest transparent. Nothing will happen while you're over the transparent parts, but when the mouse is over the little dot, you can click the button and activate the function you assigned. I can do the same thing with a dollar sign, a cross, a sombrero, or a leprechaun button. It doesn't matter. The mouse does NOT detect the transparent parts of a button. Please, just use .tga images with transparent parts... It's soooo easy...

NO need for a "circular image", NO need for window(s), NO need to "slice" up anything...

Jaeger, if youve still got that test code there, cant you try it again
WITH THE OVERLAY FLAG ON. I know its not needed, but I think it interferes
with the alpha-transparency detection is it is on...