text to screen library

I'm not sure if this is the right section, but here I go. I was thinking about a way to write instructions for an app that can be accessed while in the game. I was wondering if somebody could code a simple library that would read and write a txt file to screen while in a graphics mode. It would be in the form of a text box with a background behind it, and if the text was too long it could have some kind of primative scroll bar, even if it's only operational by the up and down arrows. I don't think it would very hard to read and write a test file to screen, but I guess the text box and scrolling would get more complex. I would try and help, but I'm in the middle of another project right now.

That sounds like a good idea....

Why do you need a library to do something so trivial?

I'm too lazy to do it. And I think that it would be nice to have 1 common method that user can get used to. I think it would eventually vet more complicated that just printing text to the screen. Maybe we could have some kind of ini file that would properties like the color of the font, size, font, style. In conclusion I just think that having one function call would be nice.

fopen()
fread()
fclose()
printf()

4 function calls; It's extremely simple, do it yourself.

Writing an entire library for this would be very silly considering that it would be nigh impossible to make it compatible with all of the different libraries (libwiisprite, GRRLIB, libwiigui, MLib, SDL, freetype, freetypeGX, ftimage, etc.) out there that users are running. Even if you could, you'd wind up with highly inefficient and redundant code at best, and unpredictable crashes as well at worst.

Perhaps this is an issue of you don't know how to do it so you're trying to get someone to do it for you? If so, just ask. No reason to cover up like this.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/21/2010 01:21AM by Arikado.

I was asking because as I was creating my current app I thought it would be nice to have one universal way to write ingame instructions.

Quote
g_man
I was asking because as I was creating my current app I thought it would be nice to have one universal way to write ingame instructions.

So pretty much like the "Operating Manual" in Wiiware and Virtual Console games

Yah, kinda

all wiiware and VC games are made with the official SDK. when you click the button for the manual, it uses libraries that the SDK apps share to draw the manual on the screen.

since homebrew doesnt really have a GFX framework library that is shared among them all, you would need to either make this into its own library and link it to you app, or you would need to make it compatible with all the different homebrew framework libraries. either one is not going to be easy.

I wasn't heading in the direction of something like the VC manual. I was thinking like a page from a link from the main menu of an app. Say you start the app MyApp. It brings you to a menu which says Play, Settings, Multi-player, instructions. When you click on the instructions link, it takes you to a different page, like if you hit play it would take you to a different page, this page would be called by a library function, which would write an instruction page, from a text file, to screen, with settings such as width, size of text, text font, background color/picture, etc all defined by the user, or the programmer. It wouldn't be this complex at first, but over time it would build on itself.

On a side note, VC games use html for the operations guide.

an html guide would be fine too