nifty-gui

Nifty plays well with others and of course with slick2d too

// September 13th, 2009 // 5 Comments » // design, docs

Nifty can be used as a standalone GUI. So when your game enters its menu or option screens Nifty is all there is on the screen and all user input is handled by Nifty.

When using Nifty together with Slick2d this is represented by the NiftyGameState class. Using this class your Slick2d StateBasedGame can easliy switch from your in game state to the NiftyGameState and display the GUI.

But this is not the only way Nifty can be used. You can easily use Nifty to render your in-game GUI too! Nifty plays well with others (as long as they use OpenGL/lwjgl for rendering that is).

It’s not complicated at all and I wanted to write example code that demonstrates how easy it is for a long time. Motivated by a question at the Nifty Forum at souceforge.net I did now

What’s demonstrated in the new slick example is, how you can use Nifty to render a GUI on top of a normal slick GameState.

Here is a screenshot of the example which renderes Text from within Slick that changes color when you press the keys 1-3. On top of this it renders a Nifty GUI that responds to mouse events. Additionally if you press 1-3 the colored Nifty boxes start to shake

Slick Overlay with Nifty GUI

You can try it out with the Webstart:

http://nifty-gui.sourceforge.net/webstart/nifty-slick-overlay-demo.jnlp

and you can find the example in svn or you can browse it online here:

http://nifty-gui.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/nifty-gui/nifty-examples/trunk/src/main/java/de/lessvoid/nifty/examples/slick/niftyoverlay/ (Java classes)

http://nifty-gui.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/nifty-gui/nifty-examples/trunk/src/main/resources/slick/niftyoverlay/overlay.xml?revision=534&view=markup (Nifty XML for the Screen – overlay.xml)

Keep reading the full Article to see the details on how we get this to work and what you need to consider.

(more…)

Updated Slick and Lwjgl Library Versions + More Maven Love

// March 14th, 2009 // No Comments » // bubble, docs

I’ve now updated the Nifty Dependencies in SVN (for the Nifty 1.0 Release) to the following Versions:

• Slick #239
• Lwjgl 2.0.1

Besides that I realized that I’ve already had setup a Nifty Maven Repository at Sourceforge. This was meant to store Nifty releases to allow other Projects that use Maven and Nifty to easily access the Nifty libs. So for instance you just need to add:

<repositories>
  <repository>
    <id>nifty-maven-repo.sourceforge.net</id>
    <url>http://nifty-gui.sourceforge.net/nifty-maven-repo</url>
  </repository>
</repositories>

to your applications pom.xml and it will automatically find the Nifty dependency So far so good.

BUT

Today I realized that I could use the same approach to get Lwjgl and Slick2D easily under Maven control. So when switching the Versions to Slick #239 und Lwjgl 2.0.1 I deployed both libs to the Nifty Maven Repo at Sourceforge!

So what does this mean for you?

It means just one thing. It’s now easier then ever to build Nifty! Just “svn co” it from Sourceforge and execute “mvn package” and it should automatically download all required libs without any changes!

Nifty!

Nifty Slick Integration in Nifty Version 0.0.4

// August 3rd, 2008 // 8 Comments » // bubble

Slick 2D is a great library for game development. With the upcoming release of Nifty GUI 0.0.4 there will be an even easier way to integrate your Nifty GUI into your Slick application.

The current Nifty GUI Version 0.0.3 can already be used with Slick but it might become a little tricky to save/restore OpenGL state when switching between Slick and Nifty rendering. The basic approach would be to call niftys render() method after you’ve rendered all of your Slick graphics. This “manual” rendering is the usual way for Nifty integration and is shown in the Hello World example on the Nifty Project Website.

With the Release of Nifty Version 0.0.4 there will be a Slick GameState implementation available for easy of use. If you’re new to Slick GameStates there’s an article in the Slick wiki about the basic principles. With Nifty 0.0.4 you get a NiftyGameState class that extends the Slick BasicGameState. So you can simply use an instance of this new class (or a subclass) and voila you have the ability to add a Nifty GUI to your Slick app in no time

Example:

public void initStatesList(final GameContainer container) throws SlickException {
  NiftyGameState state = new NiftyGameState(MENU_ID);
  state.fromXml("mainmenu.xml", new ScreenController() {
    public void bind(Nifty nifty, Screen screen) {
    }
    public void onEndScreen() {
    }
    public void onStartScreen() {
    }
  });
  addState(state);
}

Nifty!