Arsonide's Forum Posts

  • <center><img src="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1032313/256.png" border="0">

    <font size="4">GUI system aimed at games</font>

    </center>

    What is GWEN?

    GWEN is a collection of easy to use widgets for use in easily designing graphical user interfaces for either games or applications. It can be fully skinned, it performs well, and it has many more options than the vanilla alternatives.

    Why do I need GWEN over Construct's normal interface options?

    Construct offers a lot of objects designed to help you make a game, but it doesn't quite cut it for many situations. Many of the objects, like list boxes, or edit boxes, or combo boxes, cannot be hidden or destroyed in Construct. They all look exactly the same, because they are based on the Windows API, and for the same reason, they all behave exactly the same and have the same bugs.

    A quick example of this - make a list box in vanilla Construct. Now try to hide it, or make it transparent. Your only option is to move it off screen, which is not an ideal solution. GWEN uses Construct's innate rendering capabilities, not Windows. It is much more flexible because of this.

    GWEN's widgets are all created at runtime directly on the event sheet, where they can be organized into groups and collapsed. This means they won't be cluttering up your layout in the editor. You can have hundreds of buttons and still easily navigate around in your layout. This doesn't mean GWEN is difficult to use - I have designed GWEN to be as easy to use as possible. You can crank out a professional interface in minutes.

    Tired of counting pixels and calculating percentages? GWEN can do all the measuring for you, meaning absolute coordinates aren't necessary - widgets can be docked, ordered, and aligned based on relative positions rather than absolute coordinates, taking a lot of math off your shoulders and giving you flexibility. This means that if a window is resized, or a resolution is changed, it's no longer your problem. You don't have to shuffle the interface around, GWEN will do that for you.

    Lastly, GWEN has a lot more interface widgets than Construct. Some examples are context menus, toolbar ribbons, tree lists, rpg inventory screens, and tooltips. There's more, but listing them all would take up half the page, instead, just check out the free demo!

    These are only a few of the many benefits, but it gives you an idea of how massive GWEN is and how much it can help you. I personally use it in my current projects.

    I need video evidence.

    I currently have two good videos, I'm working on many more.

    Subscribe to Construct videos now

    Teaser Two

    I would like to try GWEN for free.

    There is a free demo available, it is not time limited, and it is just as powerful as the full version, but it has a DEMO watermark on it. This should let you play with the plugin as long as you like without purchasing it. It comes with a fully commented example cap.

    Download the GWEN Demo HERE!

    This is pretty awesome! Where do I get the full version?

    The full version of GWEN is $9.99.

    Buy GWEN HERE!

    What's the license look like?

    Basically, you can release whatever you want with the demo version. With the retail ($9.99) version, you can release independent games. I classify independent as free games, or games that gross under $3500 income. If you get lucky enough to make it to that point, I'll ask for $90 for the super duper commercial unlimited license. I don't have the legal power to enforce this license, but I struggle to make enough cash to eat, and I work at Walmart every night, so shame on you.

    GridTree and Noise were free, why are you charging for GWEN?

    GWEN's complexity, enormity, usefulness, and sheer awesomeness put it leagues ahead of my previous plugins. I released those with an optional donation option, and it didn't work out so well. GWEN took a long time to develop, and I put a lot of care into it. My financial situation isn't so great - I work at Walmart every night and develop in my spare time, so I am inclined to sell it. I apologize for the inconvenience, but trust me - it'll be worth your while, and I will support the plugin post release until it's as bug free as I can make it. All future updates will be free.

    I'm confused!

    Luckily for you, I am working on an array of Youtube videos outlining every aspect of GWEN from how to install it to how docking a widget works. Unfortunately, they aren't quite ready yet! This space is reserved for links to them as I complete them.

    I found a bug.

    These are the currently known issues:

    • GWEN looks weird, ugly, or different from the screenshots. - If GWEN cannot find a valid skin, it will default to using basic colors. Make sure that you have your skin property pointing at a valid skin.
    • Button behaves oddly when mode is not set. - Known issue.
    • Property List incomplete - Working on this.

    Did you find something that isn't on this list? It's much easier to get my attention via private message, so PM me the details, and I'll fold a fix into the next update. Thanks for your help!

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  • http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1032313/GWEN_DEMO.zip

    Here's the demo, working on a proper release thread as we speak, but this will let you guys play.

  • Tonight I will release a free demo so anybody on the fence can see GWEN in action.

  • http://screencast.com/t/E0sLG0WKH

    That seems to be what you want. It makes all the conditions fire as expected on this end. Despite buttons being pressable by default, forcing the mode makes the conditions work. I'll fix this in the first patch. Thanks for the report.

  • Alrighty, I have released GWEN. After a few weeks of implementing feature requests, fixing a few known issues, and fixing issues that people find, I will release an update to it. Please keep that in mind. All the legal stuff is written in ENGLISH in the readme, not legalese. Also keep in mind that you will need a skin file for GWEN in the same directory as your CAP. A default skin is provided in the zip file.

    GWEN makes beautiful, powerful interfaces. I've already used it in a few personal projects. You won't regret your purchase. For more in depth information on GWEN, read its project page here: http://code.google.com/p/gwen/

    Benefits of using GWEN over Construct UI elements: GWEN uses CONSTRUCT to render itself, not Windows, meaning it is much more flexible. All of GWEN's interface elements are created, modified, and maintained in the event sheet - meaning instead of cluttering up your layout, they can be organized into groups and minimized. GWEN can do all the measuring for you, meaning absolute coordinates aren't necessary - elements can be docked, ordered, and aligned based on relative positions rather than absolute coordinates, taking a lot of math off your shoulders and giving you flexibility, and meaning that changes at runtime (whether the user resizes something or the resolution changes) are reacted to instantaneously and smoothly. GWEN has a lot more interface options than Construct. Context Menus, toolbar ribbons, tree lists, inventory screens, etc. These are only a few of the many benefits, but they are the ones I like the most.

    Subscribe to Construct videos now

    Video Two! (Shows off a lot more widgets than video one. The program in this video was made fairly quickly with GWEN, despite the complexity.)

    I will be recording and releasing Youtube videos outlining (in great depth) how to use each widget in the coming days/weeks. I will also create a proper release thread in the completed addons forum. However, for now:

    Buy GWEN!

  • Twas not forgotten. I will be releasing it later today and releasing tutorial videos and updating the plugin as time goes by. As it stands, the plugin is $9.99 including commercial use.

  • So I took a two week hiatus for Diablo 3, but I'm back. The good news is that the plugin is nearly done, and I'm removing the commercial license. The plugin will cost $14.99, but that will include commercial use.

  • So far, the plugin has 85 actions, 45 conditions, and 25 expressions, and I'm not done. It's a doozy folks, but don't let those numbers intimidate you - it's very well organized. Everything you need to find is categorized for your pleasure. If you don't believe me, here's a screenshot!

  • I could probably arrange a demo plugin, with less widgets available. However, any caps made with that version probably would not work after buying the full version, as the ACE table would drastically change, messing up all the demo cap's events.

  • The library that Noise uses already has support for polar noise generation. I just didn't add it into the plugin because I never thought it'd be utilized by a Construct user, as it's more of a 3D thing. I can look into adding it to the plugin at some point in the future, but I've got kind of a full plate right now.

    libnoise is actually *much* more powerful than Noise, with all kinds of options and post processing stuff. I only implemented things I thought might be relevant to a Construct user.

  • Procedural you say...I'm interested. I also like survival games. I can assist with events as well as plugin work. PM incoming.

  • I am appending this message at the end of all of my threads. A recent discussion with a friend has led me to a conclusion.

    Many of you know that my girlfriend went through a very rare form of cancer this year. One which only manifests in 1% of cancer patients, and is four times more likely to kill you. She survived it somehow, but recently the treatment center she was treated at has lost some rooms. If it weren't for that treatment center, she'd be dead right now. We are getting married in two weeks.

    A combination of things, including my readings into Buddhism, and my discussion with this friend, has led me to the conclusion that any further donations to any of my plugins are going directly to cancer charities.

    Most of you have noticed a few patches recently, and that will continue. I'm patching up the plugins I released this year, and then I'm releasing MUSE. After MUSE I am going to develop a toolkit cap designed to help people make roguelikes much easier, by utilizing all my plugins, as well as helper functions and examples. You can also bet your ass that I'm going to port all of my plugins to Construct 2 when it gets an OpenGL runtime.

    So your donations will encourage this further development, and assist in cancer research. Right now the link to donate isn't in this thread, but it is in the threads for GridTree and Noise. There will be one here when MUSE releases. That is all I have to say.