Gooey: GUI Object-Oriented Enhancement, Yo (WIP module)

[SupSuper]

No, it's not actually an acronym.

I've always been of the idea that GUIs should always look as good as the game. After all, if the game is beautiful, why shouldn't the interface be? Even if it's just a GUI, having it look all animated and fluid gives it that extra touch. You don't want players to be taken back by the grey boxes whenever they save a game.

Therefore, I've decided to start working on a module for AGS to fix this. Granted, AGS GUIs can already look nice, to an extent. But they could be so much more! Currently I've implemented the following features:

- Button views: Buttons can have Normal, MouseOver and Pressed sprites. But now, they can have views instead! And not just the former, but support for Normal, MouseIn, MouseOut, MouseDown and MouseUp! You can also hook this up with sounds or, if you need, have your own code run with these events.
- GUI transitions: instead of just having GUIs pop onto the screen, now you can have them fade, slide, and whatever else you want.
- Popup GUIs: Currently you can have GUIs pop up from the top of the screen, but with this, you can have them pop up from any side of the screen, as well as change it during runtime. I might also combine this with transitions.

But I'm probably not the only one wanting to improve the GUI, so I figured I'd post here to get some feedback on what other people wanna do with their GUIs, what do you think of my ideas, or even if it's not that useful.

[SinSin]

Seems a good idea to me and you are right the Guis should be as beautiful as the game
Here is an idea with sliders
On theme park World the bars which tell you how hard your scientists are working indicate what image is shown in the scientist expression slot, If your scientists are not working too hard it shows the face as lazy yet when  you crank it up a bit the picture changes to show the scientist face get more and more stressed if you will
eg
1= lowest and would show this 
2=
3=
4=
5= 
6= :'(
7= :o this is where they would be working their hardest

Now on to what i was saying
If you have a slider for sound you could encorporate a speaker getting progressively louder as the slider is pulled along to its loudest frame.

[SupSuper]

Woo, month-long ressurection. But it's my topic. :p

Just wanted to ask you scripters out there, what do you think would be the simplest way to provide "custom controls" (like comboboxes, spinners, etc.) in a module? Simplest for users of the module, of course.

Here is an idea with sliders

Couldn't you just have something like onSliderChange { ButtonScientist.Graphic = Slider.Value } ?

[subspark]

Brilliant! For a long time this is just what AGS needs and your absoluyely right. A good game is not just about gameplay or fancy backgrounds, it's about the experience as a whole. A game blessed with beautiful background art should indeed be blessed with an equally fascinaing interface. Thank brass monkeys somebody mentioned it before I did. I'm an Artist and wouldn't know where to start.

I have manually developed an interface / hud similar to Loom that fades in with an icon when you move the mouse over something of interest. It fades out when you move the mouse off the item. This sure would have been a lot easier and enjoyable if all this could have been graphically designed with minimal scripting.

As an artist, the design of the interface and how it works is just as important as how it looks. I would suggest a graphical approach to designing an interface through views and such to minimalize the impact on artists and indie developers when it comes time to script.

As for the name of this module, how about Graphical, Object-Orientated, Interface Enhancment (GOOIE)?


Cheers and best of luck with this!
Paul W.  8)