UI Window management

UI Window management

This sample also includes a way how to manage different UI windows and their lifecycles. Window can be everything in the application - settings view (graphics, audio, etc.), scoreboard, new game settings etc. To manage all that WindowManager was created under the UI directory. UI directory also contains BaseWindow.h all the created windows should inherit this class. BaseWindow application contains basic methods which will create main UIElement which would contain all the sub-elements for particular windows.

How to create new window?

Let's assume that you would like to create a new window - SettingsWindow. You would create new subdirectory in the UI directory, then you would create 2 files - SettingsWindow.h and SettingsWindow.cpp.

SettingsWindow.h

#include <Urho3D/Urho3DAll.h>
#include "../BaseWindow.h"

class SettingsWindow : public BaseWindow
{
    URHO3D_OBJECT(SettingsWindow, BaseWindow);

public:
    SettingsWindow(Context* context);

    virtual ~SettingsWindow();

    virtual void Init();

protected:

    virtual void Create();

private:

    void SubscribeToEvents();
};

SettingsWindow.cpp

#include <Urho3D/Urho3DAll.h>
#include "SettingsWindow.h"
#include "../../MyEvents.h"

/// Construct.
SettingsWindow::SettingsWindow(Context* context) :
    BaseWindow(context, IntVector2(300, 300))
{
    Init();
}

SettingsWindow::~SettingsWindow()
{
}

void SettingsWindow::Init()
{
    Create();

    SubscribeToEvents();
}

void SettingsWindow::Create()
{
    UI* ui = GetSubsystem<UI>();
    Text* text = _base->CreateChild<Text>();
    text->SetText("Close me");
    text->SetStyleAuto();
    text->SetAlignment(HA_CENTER, VA_CENTER);
}

void SettingsWindow::SubscribeToEvents()
{
}

When creating new window BaseWindow class excepts 2 parameters for the constructor

BaseWindow(Context* context, IntVector2 size = IntVector2(300, 200)) :

Second parameter size is the size of the window that will be created.

When that's done, you should register this Object, you can do this by adding the following line in the UI/WindowManager.cpp

void WindowManager::RegisterAllFactories()
{
    // Register classes
    context_->RegisterFactory<SettingsWindow>();        // <--------------
}

If everything worked as expected, you can now trigger event to open/close this window

Opening window

C++ and AngelScript

VariantMap data;
data["Name"] = "SettingsWindow";
SendEvent("OpenWindow", data);

Closing window

C++ and AngelScript

VariantMap data;
data["Name"] = "SettingsWindow";
SendEvent("CloseWindow", data);

Closing all active windows

C++ and AngelScript

SendEvent("CloseAllWindows");

When the window is actually closed via the WindowManager, it will send out WindowClosed event with Name as a string parameter. You could listen to this event to change your game state accordingly. To see a live example, check the in-game level: https://github.com/ArnisLielturks/Urho3D-Empty-Project/blob/master/Source/Levels/Level.cpp which listens to pause menu close event.

C++ and AngelScript

void Level::HandleWindowClosed(StringHash eventType, VariantMap& eventData)
{
    String windowName = eventData["Name"].GetString();
}

These events will be called by WindowManager and it should take care of the rest.