I'm making a simple windowed game and I want a standard system cursor instead of SDL's black one. Is this possible without manual creation of cursor?
This is not possible as far as I know. Because SDL works on all major platforms, even those without default cursors, SDL creators decided to always use a custom cursor. Drawing the default system cursor shouldn't be that hard though - just load the .cur file and paint it as a bitmap.
It is possible for you to to display 4 types of default SDL cursors with the help of SDL_CreateCursor. The SDL documentation provides this information:
http://www.libsdl.org/cgi/docwiki.cgi/SDL_CreateCursor
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I'd like to use UrhoSharp to build a command-line tool that draws some stuff and saves the output to a PNG file.
I've figured out how to draw what I want in a window, and I can save it (after waiting for a couple of updates) with Graphics.TakeScreenshot. But I'd prefer it to run without showing a window at all, so that I can use the tool in my build pipeline without windows popping up all the time.
I've also figured out that I can start the Urho engine in headless mode by adding AdditionalFlags = "-headless" to my ApplicationOptions. But I can't figure out how to trigger the 3D engine to run in this case, or where the output goes. It looks like the graphics subsystem may not be initialized at all in this mode.
Is there a way to make UrhoSharp render into an offscreen buffer of a specified size? Alternatively, it might be okay if I simply keep the window hidden; is there a portable way to do that?
After some digging through the UrhoSharp and Urho3D source, it looks like this is not possible:
In headless mode, no GPU context is created ("headless" means no GPU, not just no window)
In normal mode, an SDL window is always created. SDL has no portable mechanism for creating a windowless GPU context
I can create my own window before initializing Urho and pass in the OS window handle; but:
For a start that needs some OS-specific code
It has to be an SDL_Window, not any kind of offscreen buffer
I think the best that can be done without modifying Urho and/or SDL is to hide the window as soon as possible. I'm not sure if I can avoid having the window flash onscreen briefly. If I can figure it out I'll comment further here!
I'm trying to figure out how to create a graphical interface, in X11, which exists outside of a window manager's/desktop environment's standard window frame. For example, when Thunderbird finds new mail, it shows a special alert in the lower right hand corner of the screen which is shown without any frame (no close/minimize buttons, etc.).
I'm specifically interested in doing this in QT with C++, but if someone knows a solution with a different graphical library, that would be helpful too.
For QT pass Qt::FramelessWindowHint as a window flag when you construct your top level widget.
See here for more info:
http://doc.qt.nokia.com/main-snapshot/qt.html#WindowType-enum
You can do this with X as well although I haven't done so in a long time.
http://www.xfree86.org/current/XCreateWindow.3.html
With GTK you would use gtk_window_set_decorated(), which would probably be Gtk::Widget->set_decorated() (I think, I don't use gtkmm).
http://developer.gnome.org/gtkmm/unstable/classGtk_1_1Window.html#a67adb1d8051a38e0e5272f141bb8778c
I've seen things like this and I was wondering if this was possible, say I run my application
and it will show the render on whatever is below it.
So basically, rendering on the screen without a window.
Possible or a lie?
Note: Want to do this on windows and in c++.
It is possible to use your application to draw on other application's windows. Once you have found the window you want, you have it's HWND, you can then use it just like it was your own window for the purposes of drawing. But since that window doesn't know you have done this, it will probably mess up whatever you have drawn on it when it tries to redraw itself.
There are some very complicated ways of getting around this, some of them involve using windows "hooks" to intercept drawing messages to that window so you know when it has redrawn so that you can do your redrawing as well.
Another option is to use clipping regions on a window. This can allow you to give your window an unusual shape, and have everything behind it still look correct.
There are also ways to take over drawing of the desktop background window, and you can actually run an application that draws animations and stuff on the desktop background (while the desktop is still usable). At least, this was possible up through XP, not sure if it has changed in Vista/Win7.
Unfortunately, all of these options are too very complex to go in depth without more information on what you are trying to do.
You can use GetDesktopWindow(), to get the HWND of the desktop. But as a previous answer says (SoapBox), be careful, you may mess up the desktop because the OS expects that it owns it.
I wrote an open source project a few years ago to achieve this on the desktop background. It's called Uberdash. If you follow the window hierarchy, the desktop is just a window in a sort of "background" container. Then there is a main container and a front container. The front container is how windows become full screen or "always on top." You may be able to use Aero composition to render a window with alpha in the front container, but you will need to pass events on to the lower windows. It won't be pretty.
Also, there's a technology in some video cards called overlays/underlays. You used to be able to render directly to an overlay. Your GPU would apply it directly, with no interference to main memory. So even if you took a screen capture, your overlay/underlay would not show up in the screen cap. Unfortunately MS banned that technology in Vista...
I'm making a non-rectangular dialog, modelled over an image from Photoshop (the image is the background of the dialog, and the user will see trough the transparent part of the image). I'ts like a dashboard-style window for a media-app with a few custom-drawn controls. Most of the background-image is either opaque or 100% transparent - but in between there is a thin area of partially transparent pixels, ment to blend the image smootly into the background. This works great for web-graphics, but I have not found a way to make this work for Windows windows. I'm using the Windows Template Library (WTL), msvc 2008 - and the app must run on Windows XP as well as Vista and Windows 7.
Currently, I'm simply using the opaque part of the background-image to create a GDI clipping-region, but this gives pretty rough edges.
Does anyone know about any API functions to accomplish this (part of WTL, or reachable from WTL)?
Perhaps you could use layered windows? I haven't tested these with WTL but you should be able to get the effect you want. To the best of my knowledge I don't think you can add controls to a layered window so you'll need to attach it to another (non-layered) window to use controls.
Not sure how this interoperates with WTL, but have a look at the AlphaBlend function. You'll need to select your partially transparent bitmap into a DC and copy that to your dialog's DC in your paint function.
This article shows how to use layered windows with WTL and the Gdi+ API which is available on all your target platforms.
I'm coding a short game in C++ and Win32, and I want to be able to make it in fullscreen with a fixed size. I also want the user to be able to switch focus between the game window and other windows as much as he/she wants without any weird screen glitches.
So far I know of the ChangeDisplaySettings function and creating the window with the WS_POPUP style at initialization to make it fullscreen. To detect the user switching focus to other windows by way of alt+tab or otherwise, what messages should I be handling on the window's WndProc or should I be using another function? When loss of focus is detected should I only call ChangeDisplaySettings(NULL, 0); or are there other functions I should call as well? And what method should I use to handle focus back into the window?
Also can anyone give me some info on how to make it work smoothly for different screen sizes?
Thanks for any help.
If you want an exclusive full screen window, use DirectX.
But I don't recommend it. Changing the display mode causes glitches, rearranges the users icons and so on. Whether done by you, or Direct X.
Rather create a normal window at your native res, and let the user maximize it if wanted.
You could also use the GDI+ library of Windows XP (and newer) to use hardware-accelerated stretching (draw in 640x480, let GDI+ resize it to the native resolution). Then you don't need exclusive mode of DirectDraw nor ChangeDisplaySettings.
Also drawing into a 640x480 big background buffer and bit blitting it on the drawing surface via StretchBlt can be a performant solution.