Creating a HUD In Direct3D / C#: Part 1 - Text

• Download source files + engine - 27.4 Kb

Introduction

In this series of tutorials, we will create a HUD (Heads-Up Display) in DirectX - this ranges from text, to statistics (FPS, time etc) and then onto more advanced controls such as buttons and textboxes.

Background

The code from these tutorials has been either taken from my Tac-Man game project or created specially for this siste

Using the code

You may use all of the code I provide as how you see fit, except to create another tutorial. You can use it as a sturdy(ish ;)) framework for your own applications, or print loads of copies off so that when I'm rich and famous you can sell them for $100 each ;)

Prerequisites

To do this series of tutorials, you will need:

OK, you will need to have completed the base tutorial series or at least have framework capable of setting up Direct3D. It is strongly advised that you at least read the first couple of tutorials from the "Beginning 2D game programming" section to get an understanding of some of the concepts I assume you understand in this tutorial.

Displaying Information

.NET provides a plethoria of GUI objects such as buttons, checkboxes and even calendars etc. However, in DirectX applications, not only are these ugly in a game, but it is also impracticle if not impossible because of DirectX's inability to share... So, most game-developers create their own HUD's, specially designed and coded for that application. In this tutorial we will simply learn how to create a class to display a string to our screen.

First, we obviously need a new class to go in the engine.

In DirectX, we use a sprite to render text, using a font object to define how the string is displayed. We also have other variables defining the text's style (bold, italic etc), size (defined within a rectangle) and color.

So, our class must contain all of the data used to display one "message", and the methods to initialise and render it. In this way, it will be similar to our Sprite class (assuming you have done the 2D tutorials).

public class hMessage
{
//The text to be displayed by the message
public string Text;
// The 2D location (on screen) of the message
public System.Drawing.Point Location;
//The actual font object to use
public Font Style;
public System.Drawing.Color Color; // The color of the text
public hMessage ( Device dev, System.Drawing.Size size, 
                  FontWeight weight, string fontname, 
                  string text, System.Drawing.Point loc,
                  System.Drawing.Color col )
{
Style = new Font ( dev, size.Height, size.Width, weight, 0, false, 
        CharacterSet.Default, Precision.Default, FontQuality.Default, 
        PitchAndFamily.FamilyDoNotCare, fontname );
Text = text;
Location = new System.Drawing.Point ( loc.X, loc.Y );
Color = col;
}
public void Render ( Sprite spr )
{
  Style.DrawText ( spr, Text, Location, Color );
}
}

So, not an overly complicated class, we have the text to display, its location on the screen, the style of font to be used and the color. As you can see, the render function is a wrapper for the Font.DrawText() method, which simply uses a sprite object and other variables affecting a font and displays it, very similar to the Sprite.Draw2D method, except the sprite is taken as an argument instead of being the calling object.

With this class implemented, build your engine and create a new windows application called HUD_1. Do the usual stuff, delete the designer file, have the window class inherit from Engine.gameWindow instead of the standard System.Windows.Forms.Form and change the simple Application.Run() to: 

using (Form1 gameForm = new Form1())
{
  Application.Run(gameForm);
} 

device.BeginScene ( );
device.Clear ( Microsoft.DirectX.Direct3D.ClearFlags.Target, 
               Color.Black, 1.0f, 0 );

device.EndScene ( );
device.Present ( );
this.Invalidate ( );

gameForm.aMessage = new hMessage ( gameForm.device, 
         new System.Drawing.Size ( 48, 40 ), 
         FontWeight.Normal, "Ariel", "HELLO \nWORLD", 
         new System.Drawing.Point ( 50, 400 ), 
         System.Drawing.Color.Yellow );