Progress on the Main Game UI

A really brief update on the UI that will be used in the gameplay screen. Nothing very special to report, I am working my way through XNA and I must admit that while some stuff is extra cool, some bits are getting a bit annoying like trying to use the SpriteBatch class with custom effect. This is more complex than it should be and although you can find some way around the issues and it is rather documented on te web, you just get the feeling that it could be easier than that. It is woth mentionning that I am still using XNA 3.1 and maybe these issues are fixed in 4.0. I'll upgrate to the latest version a some point in time but so far I am glad to be able tu keep using VS 2008 as I am really used to it (XNA 4.0 doesn't install on pre VS2010 to my knowledge).
Also, I am getting a bit worried by the performances, mainly because of the gaussian blur shader that I use in a few places. I could repalce that by a Poisson disk blur filter which I may do after the game is implemented. The way I use the SpriteBatch also seems really inefficient so hopefully there will be plenty of room for optimization without struggling that much.

Here is a video of how it looks so far:

-m

More work on the UI

Some visual improvements, plus another, more complex UI page.
This is all coming along very well and I am uite pleased and excited :)

-m

First version of the Game UI

I have been working on the UI system for my XNA game since most of the added value will be a neat presentation layer. I came up with a fairly simple UI system that builds up on my state machine class I talked about last time. The whole thing is rather straightworward to use. Here is a quick video of it in action:

One of the interesting thing about this UI framework is the ability for any widget to specify its neighours, so when the focus moves, the UI page can figure out who should recieve the focus. Here is a snippet from the UIWidget class which is base for all widgets:

   public class UIWidget : StateMachine
   {
       ...
       public UIWidget LeftNeighbour
      {
           get;
           set;
       }
      public UIWidget RightNeighbour
       {
           get;
           set;
       }
       public UIWidget UpNeighbour
       {
           get;
           set;
       }
       public UIWidget DownNeighbour
       {
           get;
           set;
       }
       ...
   }

Widgets are laid out on UIPage objects. A UIPage keeps track of the focussed widget and processes pad inputs. When recieving a pad message, it picks the right neibour from the focussed widget and transfers focus to it. Note that multiple controls can have the same neighbour for a particular direction, so you can create rather complex layouts with a bit of work.

That's all for today!