More on GUI

hi
in the last weeks, i was working on the gui, it is more complicated then i thought but i'm now supporting almost all the features. the best way to explain what this .gui file can do is by giving an example so here is one:
windowDef Desktop
{
rect 0,0,640,480
backcolor 0,0,0,1
visible 1
windowDef raven
{
rect 120,40,400,400
visible 1
background "gfx/guis/mainmenu/raven_1"
matcolor 0,0,0,1
}
}

the system based on nested windows and events. there is one top level window called 'Desktop' then one or more windows that are 'children' of the desktop, then zero or more windows that are children of the children, etc... (every window/event has it own params)
here we define the top must window 'Desktop' positioned at 0,0 with size of 640 n 480 (width and height), we set his background color to black and make sure he is visible.
we then create a second window, which is child on desktop positioned at 120,40 with size 400,400, make sure this one also visible and also set his background image to some texture.
'matcolor' is texture color, so here we set it to black so later we could create a transition effect so it fades in and out.
the lines below define transitions on texture color of raven window (they should be inside 'Desktop' brackets)
windowDef anim_credits
{
rect 0,0,1,1
visible 1
notime 0

onTime 0 {
transition "raven::matcolor" "0,0,0,1" "0.839,1,0.658,1" "1000" ;
}

onTime +3000 {
transition "raven::matcolor" "0.839,1,0.658,1" "0,0,0,1" "1000" ;
}
}

ok, i said we could define some events so here we define the 'onTime' events which runs the actions/sets inside is brackets every T+ milliseconds, the timeline isnt static so we reset it with 'resetTime' command.
inside the first 'onTime' we set new transition, transition linearly interpolates a variable from one value to another over time (in milliseconds), so what i do here is to interpolate between texture color of raven window from 0,0,0,1 to new color 0.839,1,0.658,1 over 1000 milliseconds (one second), after 4 second we create new transition which linearly interpolate between the new color to black. you can also define some local variables inside each window so instead of writing and duplicate certain values you could define some at first and use them later, for example: you can define those vectors as global by declaring them on 'Desktop'
definevec4 "new_color" 0.839,1,0.658,1
definevec4 "org_color" 0,0,0,1
then you can write:
windowDef anim_credits
{
rect 0,0,1,1
visible 1
notime 0

onTime 0 {
transition "raven::matcolor" "$desktop::org_color" "$desktop::new_color" "1000" ;
}

onTime +3000 {
transition "raven::matcolor" "$desktop::new_color" "$desktop::org_color" "1000" ;
}
}
when you have a lot of transitions this is more readable and generic if you want to change the color to some other value, you just change the variable value and the rest works fine.
note the $ sign, this tells the system its a reference to some variable.
ok, this was a crush course about some of the cool things you can do with .gui files.
what i have left to do is some fixes here and there and also adding other events and controls such as sliders and lists.
here is some screen shots:

GUI files

hi
this week i added GUI so i could use it for displaying hud/weapons ammo/power ups etc.
id uses .gui files which basically a script that allows you to define elements to display on the gui such as windows/text boxs/images etc, you can also set there properties like rect, color, text, font and more - this is very easy and fast way to create GUI's.
after you have the GUI script you can render the GUI on a 3d surface in the game.
for example: you can use it to display player info like health, power ups (on 2d screen), or on 3d surface of a weapon to show ammo info.
here is a screen shots of .gui files from id quake4 folder that i'm loading from my engine, for now its rendered on the screen, but next time i will show it inside the game.

railgun.gui

machinegun_inview_scope.gui