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DS development > Rendering Game UI in DS, help!

#151360 - myintkt - Sun Feb 24, 2008 12:22 pm

Hi All,

I am new to DS development though I have some exp in PC game development. I am currently using Homebrew and PALib to port my game to DS console. But the problem is I don't know how to handle game menus which include buttons, checkbox, statusbar, textbox and a lot of other UI components. In PALib, I can use background or sprite to draw things on screen. But background is limited to just 4 and sprite has limited size. Though Sprite seem more preferable, I think it is better use for game characters and not for menu graphic. Is there any other method to draw UI in DS or should I use Sprite for rendering game menu? Plz help. Thanks in advance.

Myint

#151367 - chatterbug89 - Sun Feb 24, 2008 6:10 pm

If you are using PAlib, there are some UI functions included (see the PAlib docs). There are also a couple libraries that people have done for UI that be found on these forums...unfortunately, I'm not sure of their names. A little searching should help you (or maybe someone more in the know will reply).

#151372 - tepples - Sun Feb 24, 2008 8:35 pm

You could use bitmap modes, along with your own implementation of rectfill(), blit(), and textout(), to build your own GUI widgets. Or you could borrow libfb or Woopsi.
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#151393 - myintkt - Mon Feb 25, 2008 4:06 am

Thanks guys for your answers. I am going to try both libraries you mentioned but I like to write my own functions if possible (but I am new to DS dev and I guess I have learn more to do that :))