Zugg Software :: View topic

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 8:42 pm

I think this is going to be a pretty popular new feature in the next version of CMUD. In fact, this might finally be the *killer* feature that brings over all of the zMUD users.

Remember the "Panel number" option for buttons that determined which of the 4 pre-defined panels your button was placed within? Well, in the next version of CMUD, you can set this to zero to place the button within the main MUD window instead of within a button panel.

That's right...you can now place buttons *anywhere* on the main MUD window. The auto-position still works as expected, but if you uncheck the auto-position you can set the Left and Top values to anything you want within your MUD window. If you use a negative value for the Left, then the button will be aligned to the right-edge of the mud window. If you use a negative value for the top, then the button will be aligned to the bottom of the mud window.

Transparent buttons are not supported in this mode...the button will always have a background color. Supporting transparent buttons requires a lot more low-level changes in the screen output code.

So forget about the restrictions of the old button bars. The possibilities for this new feature on your MUD UI design are almost endless. Remember that buttons can be status items (with updating captions), gauges, and drop-down menus (multistate buttons). Positioned anywhere on your screen on top of your MUD output.

OK, how's that for a killer CMUD feature??

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 10:19 pm

Sweet, once again Zugg is rockin the house.

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 5:42 am

Sounds pretty sweet... now I have to figure out all the cool ways I want to use it. Quick question how does it work when you enable/disable free floating buttons? Not sure I'd want to try (but I know someone will ask) so is it possible to create them progammatically?

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 11:44 am

Assuming this works how I think it will, this is actually a kick-ass feature. Button-wrangling was pretty frustrating with a complex layout with capture windows and stuff all over the place. Hopefully this'll make it much more enjoyable, with the end result being a much prettier UI :)

Newbie Joined: 02 Apr 2009 Posts: 7

Very cool!

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 5:11 pm

Enabling/disabling free-floating buttons works the same as with docked buttons. When you disable a button, it is removed from the screen. When you enable it, the button is displayed on the screen again. The only downside I can foresee with this is that there might be flickering on the main screen as buttons are added and removed.

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 7:54 pm

At least it wont come with it reprocessing the scrollback buffer each time the last button on a panel gets turned off or the first turned on.