Black borders around BG and GUI transparency [and verbcoin question]

[Ginny]

I have two main questions:

1) Is it possible, when using GUIs that cover up the whole screen, to have part of the gui transparent (the one with the background behind it, specifically) and cnot clickable, and the borders clickable with buttons, etc.. If it is possible, is it worth the bother or should I just use 4 border GUIs?

2) On a different note, if I have a background that doesn't fill the whole space left for backgrounds, can I make the mouse cursor invisible and disbale the verbcoin gui? Is it even possible to disable just one GUI? I was thinking of doing this using hotspots. Or I could use SetMouseBounds andsimply stop the mouse from moving somewhere else. Hmm..

P.s. Also another question, to which I'm pretty certain the answer is yes, just making sure- Do verbcoins work on top of other GUIs, like inventory?

[Darth Mandarb]

I can only help on one of the questions ...

1) Is it possible, when using GUIs that cover up the whole screen, to have part of the gui transparent (the one with the background behind it, specifically) and cnot clickable, and the borders clickable with buttons, etc.. If it is possible, is it worth the bother or should I just use 4 border GUIs?

I did something like this in JP & Cosmo ... the main GUI has buttons that aren't transparent at all, but the background is 50% transparent. I just layer two GUIs on top of eachother, making the one on bottom transparent (whatever value you want).Ã,  This method can also be used to create drop shadow effects.

[Scorpiorus]

1) Is it possible, when using GUIs that cover up the whole screen, to have part of the gui transparent (the one with the background behind it, specifically) and cnot clickable, and the borders clickable with buttons, etc.. If it is possible, is it worth the bother or should I just use 4 border GUIs?

Not via the editor but you can do some tricks like checking a mouse position in the repeatedly execute and call SetGUIClickable(GUI, cliclable) with clickable set to 0 or 1 depending on the current position. But having four different GUIs will make it faster for AGS to draw them, since if you are with a single GUI it has to have a fullscreen backround covering the whole screen. And the engine would have to draw that background despite its having large transparent areas.

2) On a different note, if I have a background that doesn't fill the whole space left for backgrounds, can I make the mouse cursor invisible and disbale the verbcoin gui? Is it even possible to disable just one GUI? I was thinking of doing this using hotspots. Or I could use SetMouseBounds andsimply stop the mouse from moving somewhere else. Hmm..

You can have those four GUIs resized acordingly to the background surrounding area, thus a verbcoin won't pop up. To disable a single gui one has to disable each of its objects with SetGUIObjectEnabled.

P.s. Also another question, to which I'm pretty certain the answer is yes, just making sure- Do verbcoins work on top of other GUIs, like inventory?

It can be made to work. You then, though, have to catch mouse clicks on the GUI_MUP event through the on_event function and to have a separate code calling inventory interactions by means of RunInventoryInteraction.

[Ginny]

Darth-That's not what I meant, I meant having, for example, half a GUI fully transparent, and half full opaque. That's a nice tip though, it may well come in handy later .

2) On a different note, if I have a background that doesn't fill the whole space left for backgrounds, can I make the mouse cursor invisible and disbale the verbcoin gui? Is it even possible to disable just one GUI? I was thinking of doing this using hotspots. Or I could use SetMouseBounds andsimply stop the mouse from moving somewhere else. Hmm..

You can have those four GUIs resized acordingly to the background surrounding area, thus a verbcoin won't pop up. To disable a single gui one has to disable each of its objects with SetGUIObjectEnabled.

Well, in this case I don't have those four GUIs, but I prefer the idea of using SetMouseBounds.

P.s. Also another question, to which I'm pretty certain the answer is yes, just making sure- Do verbcoins work on top of other GUIs, like inventory?

It can be made to work. You then, though, have to catch mouse clicks on the GUI_MUP event through the on_event function and to have a separate code calling inventory interactions by means of RunInventoryInteraction.

Ah, ok, so that's a bit more complicated thanI thought. I just assumed that it recognised inventory items too. Are Inventory item names shown when using an @OVERHOTSPOT@?

Thanks for your help

[Darth Mandarb]

Darth-That's not what I meant, I meant having, for example, half a GUI fully transparent, and half full opaque. That's a nice tip though, it may well come in handy later .

Well I hope it helps out then!Ã,  Sorry for the misunderstanding ... I'm on a lot of medication

Good luck!

[Scorpiorus]

I just assumed that it recognised inventory items too.

Objects/characters/hotspot interactions are usually triggered with the ProcessClick function but it doesn't simulate a GUI click but acts as there is no one (EDIT: no gui, I mean ).

Are Inventory item names shown when using an @OVERHOTSPOT@?

Yep, they are.

[Ginny]

I see, because it's on a GUI, it can't recognise it as a click to interact like it does with hotspots. Thanks .

[Scorpiorus]

Yeah, and thus with ProcessClick you might get funny behaviour when by clicking on a GUI a hotspot (or something) interaction is triggered instead.

[OftenK]

Darth-That's not what I meant, I meant having, for example, half a GUI fully transparent, and half full opaque. That's a nice tip though, it may well come in handy later .

When you make the sprite that will be used as the background image for the GUI, just make it a solid color so when it's imported into AGS, that color is made transparent. Or, if you're not using a background image, just set the foreground and background colors to the magic pink color (I believe the number varies depending on the color depth of your game. For 32-bit true color, its 63519.)

Hope that helps!