How to set up GUI's to mimic a GK2 style game. [SOLVED]

[Kain_V]

Hi everyone, I am trying to develop an adventure game in Gabriel Knight 2 style.
So what i want to know is how can we display (when the game runs) the room in a smaller window, on a picture with the GUI controls. See the example.

Example:


Any help would be appreciated!
Thank you in advance!

[Ghost]

I suggest you create three GUIs, and put them on the screen as shown in this little graphic:



That way, you can
- display location info on the top bar (orange)
- the interface on the bottom bar (green)
- and simply display the sidebars(yellow)

Ttake care to make the side bar GUI non-clickable though, otherwise no clicks on your location will work!

Easy as pie, all you need to take care is to align the GUI graphics so that they look like "one piece". Best thing would be to create a complete image (copy the one from your screenshot) and then cut and fit the single elements into three GUIs.

The beauty of this system is that scrolling will never be a problem- the GUI elements will always cover the room, so all you need to pay attention to is fitting everything into the (rather small) height of the "window"- hope that helps.

[Kain_V]

Hi Ghost and thank you for your quick reply!
I just tried to add a full pic (without cutting it to 4 pieces) as one GUI and set the background color to zero.
This way I am able to see the GUI and the room  when i run the game.
What I cant find out how to do is to make the background room size be adjusted to the inside transparent rectangle of the GUI pic...

What do you suggest?

[Trent R]

I think you're gonna need to cut it up in to pieces. Otherwise, you won't be able to send clicks to hotspots, characters, etc in the room. But if you set it as non-clickable (which will send them to previously mentioned) you won't be able to click any of the buttons on the GUI.

As for your new question, I believe you're just gonna have to redo and reimport your backgrounds.


~Trent

[Kain_V]

Hmmm, ok then I'll try it your way and I'll post back If there's an other problem.
Thank you very much for your time! 

[Ghost]

As I said and as Trent noticed, you need to make the "side bar" GUI non-clickable but the top and botton GUIs clickable.

As for your locations, well- a single screen location in a 640x480 game, with your "frame" GUI around it, would still need to be 640x480- but you can simply leave all parts of the image that are covered by the top/bottom/side bars black or whatever. For a scrolling room, well, you can still keep the top/bottom black.

AGS can't scale backgrounds at all, so they are, basically, alway at least the size of your game res. I suggest you use the complete GUI picture as a template, draw your location, erase the GUI and save that image then; that way you always know that your room will be the required size and position.

[Kain_V]

Ok, I have already start remaking!
Thanks both of you a lot!