Silk Games HUDs & Onscreen Text - Silver Version

by Silk Games
Silk Games HUDs & Onscreen Text - Silver Version
Learn how to make HUDs from the team who made them popular on BYOND!

Silk Games HUDs and Onscreen Text Demo

ID:109271
 
Feb 8 2011, 9:45 am (Edited on Feb 8 2011, 10:33 am)
Keywords: resources
The hallmark of any Silk Games project is a slick and intuitive interface. From Acheron's Awakening (unreleased) to Proelium II and NEStalgia, we have been fine tuning and perfecting our onscreen Heads Up Display menus and text for years. It's been a long wait, but we'd like to finally share what we've learned and provide all BYONDers with the core of our trademark HUD systems.


Silk Games HUDs and Onscreen Text Demo

This is the first of what will hopefully be many "Silk Games Learning Series" demos and tutorials. From the hub page:
The Silk Games HUD system uses a hybrid of screen objects and images. If you're unfamiliar with those terms, look up screen var (client) and image objects in the BYOND Reference browser.

Screen objects are generally more versatile and easier to work with, but images are faster. Our system uses screen objects to construct the menus and images to draw the onscreen text.

All menus are created only once (when the world boots up) and are stored for easy access. Opening or closing a menu is as simple as adding/removing a list from client.screen, with virtually none of the slowdown typical of other HUD systems on BYOND.

To define individual menus, you simply set a menu name and the anchor points for the top-left and bottom-right corners. The same goes for clickable buttons on your HUD, as well as drawing text onscreen. There is no real effort required -- all that you need to do is to decide where you want to position your HUD elements.

Everything from the look of the menus to the text font is easily customizable; this system can be adapted to fit any game.

This core demo is the "Silver Version" of this system. Sometime in the next few weeks I'll be releasing a separate and more complex version of this HUD Demo (the "Gold Version") with many extra features, including customizable RPG-style dialogue boxes.

If you find any bugs or having any questions or concerns about this HUD Demo then please leave a comment. This is my first time releasing something like this, so there may be a few kinks to work out. Enjoy!

Hub Page: http://www.byond.com/developer/SilkGames/SilkHUDsSilver

Feb 8 2011, 9:51 am
This is really great.
Feb 8 2011, 9:54 am
Yesss.

This is an amazing demo sir, good work.
Feb 8 2011, 10:00 am
Why did you cast fireball on fire rod?
Feb 8 2011, 10:02 am
Obviously the fire rod would never predict something like that happening, duh. It's all about the element of surprise!
Feb 8 2011, 10:13 am
I can dig this demo. Looking forward to the Gold Version. I've always liked the way your menus were designed.
Feb 8 2011, 10:59 am
I'm happy to hear that people like it :)

I noticed a couple typos in the comments of 'Demo.dm' in the descriptions of which screen_locs were being set. Nothing major, but I uploaded a new version to fix the typos.

I didn't change the version number on the hub, so if you downloaded this already and want a typo-free version then go to My Hub > Edit in your BYOND Pager and uninstall the demo, then re-download it.
Feb 8 2011, 11:05 am
So cool that you're getting into the tutorial stuff. Makes me wanna take another look at learning DM.
Feb 8 2011, 11:09 am
you should add a subscription to the tutorials. like, this is just for basic huds but $5 a year will unlock advanced professional huds for experts, you know what i mean?
Feb 8 2011, 11:21 am
Caer_Death wrote:
So cool that you're getting into the tutorial stuff. Makes me wanna take another look at learning DM.

Right on! There are likely many more small tutorials like this on the way. My ultimate goal is to release some sort of Action RPG framework (essentially "Make your own Acheron's Awakening)... but I don't want to get too ahead of myself just yet :)


EmpirezTeam wrote:
you should add a subscription to the tutorials. like, this is just for basic huds but $5 a year will unlock advanced professional huds for experts, you know what i mean?

Funny you should mention that: I do intend on charging for the "Gold Version" of this system (although it's important to note that this "Silver Version" will always be free).

I'll post more details about my plans for the Gold Version later. Breaking this system up into two different releases is my way of trying to provide free help for budding DM developers while also trading value for value for the more advanced knowledge that I've put a lot of time and effort into acquiring.
Feb 8 2011, 3:33 pm (Edited on Feb 8 2011, 4:23 pm)
This is a well-written demo. I especially liked the presentation. If you don't mind, I have a few suggestions. They are nothing major:

- If I didn't miss anything, since the drawing procs actually only interface with the client (its screen, to be specific) and not its mob, it is more logical to place the procs under /client rather than under /mob.
- This is a nitpick, however, you can use the 'DRAW Text' button before the menu is actually open (which would make it open with the text already drawn), but the menu automatically clears itself when it closes. This is just a little bit awkward from a consistency perspective, but I'm mentioning it because the demo is so polished otherwise.
Feb 9 2011, 1:05 am
Nice demo..
Feb 9 2011, 7:27 pm
I started coding in DM just recently for fun, and I went directly for the developement of such a system. I absolutely did not know what I was doing at first, but I managed to learn the ropes quickly.

Now I'm amazed to see that I basically did all what your tutorial described, with only a few minor differences !

I have a question though, I use /obj for text, are they really that slower compared to /images?