When I first came to Panda3D it was because I had written the basics of a 2d gamemaker (drag and drop) in Gambas. But the graphics was slow, so I decided to find a faster engine and came to panda. Of course I knew nothing about python or Panda so I embarked on learning both and I am making progress.
AFter writing a few small learning apps and developing a small 2d zombie prototype game in Panda, and though I am very much a noob, I have proven to myself that Panda3d will indeed do what I want in powering a 2d drag and drop engine.
But I am left with one problem- that of Gui wrapping.
In a 2d drag and drop gamemaker dialogues, buttons, and treeviews are the main interface the user would use. So that by using these gui’s python code could be generated to be executed through Panda3d. Yet I am struggling with the best way to implement the gui.
I have noticed that TreeForm has created a gui, and of course there are the Direct objects.
But what I am really wondering is should I even try and make the gui for the gamemaker in Panda- Or should I use something better suited to overall gui apps like wxPython or Gambas and use Panda to just run the end games?
well every modern game got sorta of a quite elaborate gui - the lack of at least a solid demo to show how to build a common user interaction with a panda app it feels a lot. That’s why I was looking with big eyes what enc did with his WIP game. I hope someone will have time to share sorta of usable code snippet someday, maybe myself too.
and I downloaded and tested out, but actually that piece of code shows so little to call it a GUI and I guess is hard for common n00b to build a GUI off that basic stuff without huge effort and study. What I meant is to have a real GUI snippet with some basic interfaces as we see in real games.
I have been playing Dragon Age and I must say that the Gui though it looks nice- but functions terribly. It sometimes takes me almost thirty seconds to switch out a spell beceause you have to be so precise in your placement or it will not place it. And you can accidently erase your menu items.
The reason I bring this up is that many times the GUI is a afterthought to a project and this was a big name production (BIOWARE) and they screwed the GUI up. I suspect it was the same issue for them- the Gui came second.
ONE of the reasons for my 2d Gamemaker was to be able to create GUI’s for 3d games by a drag and drop method as well as make 2d games. SO as I am designing this app I am coming to see that there is a big desire for python game makers to have a Visual Gui editor that does not require additonal libraries beyond Panda or Python.
Well I guess I’ll start on this today and see where it leads me.
I enjoyed a lot playing DAO for quite some time and you’re right on that flaws, but they gotta beautiful extremely complex and rich GUI so, adding that you may pause the action as much as you want, that was a forgivable issue.
Anyhow about what you’re going to do, beside is very spartan, I suggest you to peek into the enc code I cited above cos it have some primitives, especially for d&d, that you may find useful.