Overview of GUI EditorΒΆ

“GUI” stands for Graphical User Interface. It is the summation of all the controls (windows, buttons, text fields, etc.) that are used to interact with a game and its settings. Most interfaces in games consist of buttons to launch or join a game session, editing devices to change user preferences, options to change screen resolutions and rendering options, and elements which display game data to the user as they are playing.

../_images/GUIEditor.jpg

GUI creation and design is extremely important to game development. Many decent games have been crippled by inaccessible GUIs, which is why having a built in GUI editor can be a blessing. The Torque 3D editor provides drag and drop functionality, with minimal fill in the blank requirements.

Torque 3D features a WYSIWYG GUI Editor, which allows you to create, edit, and test your GUI in game with maximum fidelity. 90% of your GUI creation can be done in the editor, leaving 10% for scripting advanced functionality.

GUIs are saved as a script (.gui), which allows you to further tweak values using your favorite text editor. Additionally, you can declare variables and define functions at the end of a GUI script, which will not be written over when modifying the GUI using Torques editor.

Multiple controls which can be combined to make up a single interface. Each control is contained in a single structure, which can be embedded into other GUI elements to form a tree. The following is an example of a GUI control which displays a picture:

// Bitmap GUI control
new GuiBitmapCtrl() {
   profile = "GuiDefaultProfile";
   horizSizing = "width";
   vertSizing = "height";
   position = "8 8";
   extent = "384 24";
   minExtent = "8 8";
   visible = "1";
   helpTag = "0";
   bitmap = "art/gui/images/swarmer.png";
   wrap = "0";
};

Once the above GUI is active in your interface, it will display the following:

../_images/swarmer.png