I will preface this by I am new to XNA and I realize what I am asking for doesn't exist.
However I am curious if I wanted to create something similar to a menustrip from winforms in XNA, how would I do that? Is there a best way? Or even a way?
I appreciate it, thanks!
Well, if you're only targeting windows, you can always render XNA in a winforms project or wpf app. Once you do that, you can use the built-in controls to render the menu.
If however you're looking for something that will work on xbox or windows phone, you will have to do the work of rendering and positioning the menu yourself using whatever rendering techniques you are familiar with (ie. SpriteBatch, etc.)
I found a possible solution, that will need further investigation:
http://neoforce.codeplex.com/
This should give me UI control w/o having to recode everything, unless I can just add an XNA pane to my winforms app
Edit:
neoforce appears to not work well with c# 2010. I did however find this: http://create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/sample/winforms_series_1 which does work, to do as Joel Martinez mentioned of drawing an XNA form inside of a winform. It is not trivial but this example code should be enough for a jump start.
Related
I am just a hobby programmer.. and even tough I know how, I don't want to mix windows forms and XNA for my level editor.
Has anyone done this before? Are there any examples around how to create "Windows like" controls for XNA, including events like mouse over, click and double-click and even accept keyboard input(if possible using language specific keyboard input)?
Below you find the basic layout of my editor but it needs so much more.
Yeah.
I'm now creating something like that.
See my project on Bitbucket.
I'm making own lib and voxel engine for Minecraft-like game. Just for fun.
So, in GameHelper lib you can fing folders Input (keyboard and mouse input) and GUI (forms and controls with events). I will be happy if it helps you, but there is almost no comment :P
Examples of use you can find in the Player class in main project (see ProcessInput method).
If you need I can give you better examples :)
I'm currently working at a application that helps people understand how to do there job. You can see it as a personal coach that guides them trough all the steps they need to do that no normal person could keep remembering.
In my previous application we had the ability to show the user up to 4 pictures (what proves to be more then enough). The application would load the data and see how many pictures where in every instruction and then sort out the picture in the best fitting way without messing up the scale and resolution of the pictures. This all was done with GDI+ and worked very well.
Ofc, change is something that always happens, my bosses came up with some great ideas. So they want to be able to see movies on the screen, animated gif's, 3D models that can rotate or animate. So I think we had pushed GDI+ to it's limits and it's time to look for something different.
I have heard and readed about WPF but have no experience with it. Is it even possible to do all what I ask in WPF? And what about the old picture-merging thing I wrote, can we also get it done in wpf? I tried to make some things working but I didn't went as smooth as I hoped.
I'm also concerned about the fact that the interface needs to be dynamic, the one moment it should be showing picture with some text above it, the other moment it should be showing another text with a video under it.
I would love to hear some opinions here and if you got some other suggestions I should look into pls tell me. Thnx in advance
PS: If WPF is the choice, should I convince my boss to change to .net 4.0?
Although my answer can be termed subjective, I find WPF better than GDI+ anyday. You can do everything you can in WPF which you have done/could do in GDI+ (apart from pure games/game engines). If you can afford the steep learning curve of WPF, I think it will be better investment as this technology is not going anywhere soon.
As for .Net 4.0, WPF 4.0 does introduces some important functions in 4.0 (specially easing functions for animations) but there is nothing you cannot do without if you are using 3.5. I won't recommend 3.0 though mainly because of performance in animations.
WPF is up to the task, but you could also check other options.
You could go web based, and have either an XBAP (WPF in the browser), or Silverlight/Flash app.
Silverlight/Flash doesn't require that much from the client (to install), and is easily updatable, and both can do the job.
What I am using:
Visual Studio 2010
Windows Media Center
Language C#
The Program
A part of my program needs to display movies by their covers and be able to scroll through them, much like netflix. I was told that directx would be good to accomplish this. Basically I just want it to be easy to view, use, and flow nicely.
Help?
Any Ideas as to what to use. (I was also looking into writing it as a pluggin for windows media player, but i read somewhere you can only have html based menus?)
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks
-Scott
Have a look at the following.
http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/scobleizer/Charlie-Owen-Your-first-Media-CenterVista-application-and-a-look-at-their-secret-room
The problem with using Direct3D for an application like this is that you have to start creating your own window manager.
You don't have the default events available to you and you will have to basically create your own GUI which is easier in WPF as those events and helpers exist.
I'm still learning C#, and I know don't know about WinForms yet but I will very soon. However I want to know how I would create an application which shows a customized notifier, like Growl on a Mac. Here's a mock up:
http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/3793/41151387.jpg http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/3793/41151387.jpg
Could anyone point me in the right direction? And I know I should learn more about C# before trying this, but I've always liked to peek on complicated stuff.
Take a look at this third-party WPF NotifyIcon control, I think it does what you want out of the box, hopefully something like this will be part of WPF in the future. I have used this one before for the exact same reason, and it is really good: you can use standard tooltips or "toast" popups, or create your own which could be just like the one in the example you posted if you wanted.
WPF would be a great place to start. you can make UIs in pure XAML without even touching C#
Here is an example of an "notification" implementation using WPF
Here are some reference links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Presentation_Foundation
http://windowsclient.net/wpf/
You should probably look into WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) to design some of the nonstandard UI stuff.
However, I would recommend becoming familiar with UI design in general before diving into nonstandard stuff.
Since you are starting from scratch, I would consider learning WPF rather than Winforms.
Here are two examples are a pop-up notifier in WPF:
WPF Taskbar Notifier - A WPF Taskbar Notification Window
PopUp window on a specific time in WPF?
WPF is Definitely what you are looking for if you want something like the image you provided. My project uses notification popups similar to that in the screenshot. Its really simple to get the wanted results after looking at a few samples of others who have done it. If you would like some help, you can send a message my way.
I was just wondering if there are ways of creating my own custom winforms controls?
I've been plundering with Visual Studio 2008 now trying to do some c# apps. And the GUI end up looking terrible because of the standard winforms limitations.
And I noticed that I can add images to buttons for example, but ther's no hover effect. Or, the hover effect makes the whole button area gray. I don't want any of that, I just want to either create my own graphics for the controls or find some free (opensource perhaps) controls that already exist.
Any light on any of this, anyone? :)
You can write complete Winforms controls from scratch, doing all the painting and input processing yourself - you just create a class derived from 'Control' and get on with it.
There's a fair bit to making a first-class control which integrates nicely with the VS designer, so people tend to derive their custom control from an existing control which has most of the behaviour they want.
Here would be a good place to start: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/6hws6h2t.aspx
I'm puzzled, you are doing WinForms development, yet in comments say you have done many months of WPF development, but WPF is not good enough because it is not cross platform.
How is WinForm more cross platform, and have you seen how ugly WinForms looks under mono on a Mac as it's draw via X11.
If you want style and cross platform, go for Flex or Silverlight, as your already know WPF I'd go the Silverlight route.
It's cross platform, and has all the beauty of WPF, but at the cost of reduced functionality out of the box.
First - may be more pragmatic to look at WPF, or hosting some WPF elements inside winforms (which is supported - like so). Other than that - you can do all your own painting if you want; but it is a lot of work.
Any reason why you don't use WPF? You have much more more UI control if you went down the route.
If you must go with WinForms then there are many commercial solutions like DevExpress. If you really want you own look and feel it'll be alot of work.
Yes. You can create your own controls. It is called a User Control. Just select Add->and User Control.
WPF is a good alternative if you want your windows form to look fancy.