BlitzMax 1.35 and ifsoGUI

Pick 'Em
Monday Night
Survivor

[TaskMaster]

I will be making ifsoGUI work with the new v1.35 DX9 driver.

I am also going to see about making ifsoGUI work with the new Virtual Resolution stuff.

Compatibility with the new DX9 stuff should be easy and quick.  I have no idea yet, what it will take to make the virtual res stuff work, so I can't say how long that will take.  I will have to check the BM source and see how he implemented it.

[TaskMaster]

I have updated ifsoGUI to work with the DX9 driver, but it seems that ifsoGUI is being affected by the bugs being reported at the BlitzMax website.  The gadgets are not being drawn correctly, it seems to have something to do with the Alpha channel.  I will look into it more, but we may have to wait until the next fix of BlitzMax is released.

[TaskMaster]

It turns out that new DX9 driver does things a little differently than the DX7 and OpenGL drivers.  And, for no apparent reason, as far as I can tell.

But, with a bit of work, I think I will be able to get ifsoGUI working with the DX9 driver.

[TaskMaster]

OK, the problem with DX9 that ifsoGUI is suffering from is caused by the GrabImage bug Mark Sibly say she has fixed in the forums.  So, until that fix is available, ifsoGUI will not work with the new DX9 Driver.  Well, it works, the graphics are just smeared due tot he Alpha problem with the GrabImage function.

Anyway, now I can look at the Virtual Resolution stuff.

[TaskMaster]

ifsoGUI works with the DX9 Driver in BlitzMax 1.35rc5.

The bug that was causing the drawing to be messed up has been fixed.

I will play with the Virtual Resolution a little bit before I release a version of ifsoGUI with DX9 support, to see if I can get it to work.

[TaskMaster]

It turns out that Mark Sibly made some pretty major changes in BlitzMax 1.36  to the way he handles the UV texture coords which breaks ifsoGUI.  It is going to take a bit of work to fix it.

I will post the next version of ifsoGUI when I get it worked out.

[TaskMaster]

Well, it wasn't as bad as I was expecting.  I got it all fixed up.  Now, let's see if I can get that virtual resolution stuff working.

[TaskMaster]

Wow, the virtual resolution stuff just works.  I didn't have to do anything.  I find that hard to believe.

Stuff gets blurry though, I do not understand why people would want to write their programs that way.  I would think a better thing to do would be to make your game support multiple resolutions, by including graphics for multiple resolutions.

Anyway, I am going to put in an option to not use Virtual Resolution with the GUI, even if you are using Virtual Resolutions with your program. This way it will be optional, so your game can use the virtual resolution, but the GUI won't, and will draw the gui graphics without anything being stretched and getting blurry.

Set the GUI.SetResolution() to the virtual resolution if you wish to use it and set it to the actual physical resolution if you do not wish to use the virtual resolution for the GUI.

[Corum]

Sure, graphics for multiple resolutions aren't bad to see, but is a little expensive or time-consuming to make.
I'd rather like to have a user scalable UI (just as World of Warcraft offers) instead of a scalable graphics feature for my game. ;-)