[openmw] MyGUI field report (Google Groups recovery)

A generic talk on the OpenMW project.
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[openmw] MyGUI field report (Google Groups recovery)

Post by lgromanowski »

Lordrea wrote: This is a recovery from the apparently deleted Google Groups.

Topic: MyGUI Field Report (2/24/09)
[email protected] wrote:So, I've looked around briefly for a GUI system for OpenMW. I also rediscovered an older thread about the subject (which I had of course bookmarked and then forgotten):

http://groups.google.com/group/openmw/b ... 7a56417bc8

The first (and only, so far) system that I've actually tried out with OpenMW is MyGUI. You can see some _very early_ screenshots here:

http://openmw.snaptoad.com/guitest1.jpg
http://openmw.snaptoad.com/guitest2.jpg

As you see, MyGUI works "out of the box" with Ogre. It is also pretty much "finished" and in a working state (although there's always room for improvement), and that's why I think it's a good choice for us.

Some highlights:

* works out of the box with the current Ogre/OIS setup
* supports buttons, combo boxes, scrollable text areas and all the other stuff we need for the basic gui (including drag-and-drop support)
* has very easy to use transparency (as you see from the screenshots above)
* can also be used for simpler stuff like HUDs - notice the new fps counter in the upper right
* can be totally reskinned. All configuration is done with XML-files
* has a built-in graphical layout editor, which I haven't played around with yet

Drawbacks:
* not a lot of documentation, and some of it (including forums and even code comments) is only available in Russian.
* no native support for bitmap fonts (that I've found)

I'm working on the font-problem. I guess we'd like to keep the original Morrowind fonts as defaults (but allow user fonts too of course). I've decoded the MW .fnt / .tex formats, but the fonts are in bitmap format (not truetype), which is a bit harder to put into MyGUI. I'm working on it. (Shouldn't be THAT hard, since MyGUI seems to convert truetype fonts into bitmap fonts internally for performance reasons anyway.)

I think I'm going to keep working on this, so if anyone is violently against using MyGUI in OpenMW then now is the time to speak out ;-)

Nico
[email protected] wrote:Hm. I may just point that morrowind uses 3 difrent fonts - Gothic, Magic Cards and Deadric Runes. This fonts can be found on the CS cd in the "books art" folder... in trutype format. Is it may be helpfull?
[email protected] wrote:I'm violently for using MyGUI, it seems to be what is needed for OpenMW, and the configuration in XML will allow a lot of flexibility, maybe that mods will have the ability to change the default look of the GUI system?

A for the lack of documentation, maybe you could ask the developers to add some english doc, or maybe the code is enough self-documented :)
[email protected] wrote:I was going to point out the fonts are available in other formats, but sirherrbatka already has. They load fine in mde (using freetype). I recall finding an improved version of the daedric font somewhere (the one on the disk doesn't contain all the letters), I can see if I've still got a copy somewhere if it's useful.

As for the GUI, I was thinking having to use it via a C wrapper would be a pain, but if you've got around that then fine. I'll still continue with mine, but no problem if you already have a GUI; I realise I've been making slow progress with it.
[email protected] wrote:These fonts have support for other languages (russian for example)?
[email protected] wrote:If russians got russian letters in russian version morrowind books, then there is version for russian launguage.
[email protected] wrote:Yes, it has. I simply could not find a file with fonts on a disk. But has found them in folder Data Files/ in installed Morrowind
[email protected] wrote:This aren't truetype are they? Truetypes are stored probably in bsa archive... or they are only on CS cd...?
[email protected] wrote:OK i just checked morrowind.BSA. Truetype fonts are found only on CS cd. Not good. Bethesda can get pist off when we will start copying they fonts :-/

Or this is not bethesda property...?
[email protected] wrote:Why can't we use '.fnt' or '.tex' files provided by installed morrowind? BTW, that font are ugly =), IMHO.
[email protected] wrote:Well, that actually would solve the entire problem :) The problem is that we'd either have to ask users to copy the files manually, or include them in the download and hope that Bethesda doesn't notice/care. I'm not too happy about that.

As for the Russian version: The font file I looked at didn't have any Russian letters. I think the actual font files included in the Russian version are different. Which is another problem if we include the font files in the download - we'd have to include every version of the files. Perhaps the best would be to use the tex/fnt pair after all.

Nico
[email protected] wrote:That's good. It's far from impossible that we'll switch GUIs later anyway, if it turns out to be better. I'm planning on abstracting the actual interface as much as possible anyway, so this wouldn't be too much work.

Nico
[email protected] wrote:OK, we'll see what happens in the end later then.

Btw wouldn't an alternative for the fonts just be to find some other free similar fonts? I know there's loads available on the internet, although probably of varying quality. E.g. daedric: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Image:Obliviontt.zip
[email protected] wrote:This is a good idea, mostly because this font contains the missing Y and X characters that the original font in the game lacks. Dongle (the creator) has given permission to use the font for any non-commercial purpose, and as he was quite the modder when he was still around I can't imagine he'd be against you using his font.
[email protected] wrote:It looks that border's texture is still stretching but not tiling when window is resizing. Window's caption looks fine.
Lordrea wrote: As a note I couldn't find the thread linked in Nico's first post.
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