instant gratification can be nice
been working on menus and finite state machines and the like. it sounds boring, but you know what? i’ve been enjoying it. here’s why:
-there is something to be said about instant gratification, and nothing gives it more than making your game’s interface. if you can make a simple timer, you can make a pretty kick ass gui system. add a 2sec timer that adjusts the height of a window, and you’ve got a slick scroll out window. add a 1 second timer that adjusts your text’s alpha, and it looks like your dialog morphs from sentence to sentence. add a smoohstep() to EVERYTHING and your interface just feels cool.
-forget about performance. during gameplay you watch everything you do. in your gui, it’s quite different. first, it’s all scripted, so culling is a non-issue…you can run it once, and (normally) be sure it will always do the same thing. also, framerate isn’t as big of an issue. as long as your sliding text looks smooth, who cares? not to mention you might actually want a slide show.
don’t get me wrong, i couldn’t do this all the time, but it’s a nice break from trying to get arbitrarily rotated boxes to collide correctly.
oh i have to add, if you’re like me, you NEED to get an artist to help you with your gui widgets. it will mean the difference between windows 3.1 and vista*.
*ech, let’s replace that with Beryl, shall we?