Rick Posted March 12, 2010 Share Posted March 12, 2010 So I've wanted to create a drag and drop Visual Studio integrated GUI (and probably still will). I've started research on how I can do this, when I come across Visual Studio Shell. This gives you the ability to have the look and feel of Visual Studio but still allows for a huge amount of customization. You can have this as it's own stand alone VS style IDE. I was just thinking it might be cool if LE had it's own IDE. I don't know about BMax, but with this Visual Studio Shell you can support any language you like (you have to do the work though). You can have custom menus & windows. It seems like you get all the benefits of VS (compiler, debugger, etc). I need to do more research and mess around with it more, but it would be pretty cool if LE was able to have it's own IDE that supported all the different languages LE supports today and has a few more custom features to LE. The good part about this is that all the hard work of making an IDE is already done for you with Visual Studio Shell. You just add some customization and brand it. The best part seems to be that it's free. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
klepto2 Posted March 12, 2010 Share Posted March 12, 2010 The idea itself sounds good, but i doubt that anything produced with the sdk will have the same comfort as the various IDEs available. Also I believe Leadwerks should concentrate to bring the engine to the next level (new tools, features etc). An IDE for every language (or even the most supported) will only disapoint users coming from other specialized IDEs (IMHO). Quote Windows 10 Pro 64-Bit-Version NVIDIA Geforce 1080 TI Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Posted March 12, 2010 Author Share Posted March 12, 2010 But that's the point. Visual Studio Shell is Visual Studio. It's the shell of Visual Studio so it provides most of the functionality already. You can just customize it to no end. IMHO (and obviously many others) there is no better IDE than Visual Studio. I don't want to get into the discussion of resources and what should or shouldn't be worked on. This is just an idea and by putting it out there maybe some people will play around with it. I know I will. Just wanted to get the idea out there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
klepto2 Posted March 12, 2010 Share Posted March 12, 2010 I know what you mean and I also think VS IDE is the best IDE out there. And I think your idea isn't bad but why using an IDE based on VS Shell when eg for C++ or C# developers a complete set of tools is already given and are more tested? Don't get me wrong, I will be happy if you can proove me wrong Quote Windows 10 Pro 64-Bit-Version NVIDIA Geforce 1080 TI Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Posted March 12, 2010 Author Share Posted March 12, 2010 I know what you mean and I also think VS IDE is the best IDE out there. And I think your idea isn't bad but why using an IDE based on VS Shell when eg for C++ or C# developers a complete set of tools is already given and are more tested? The tools given (for free anyway) are the express edition. I'm pretty sure you can tell this shell IDE to use the existing VS C++/C# compiler/linkers. So all that would be the same, tested and proven. Then if there was a way to get BMax as an option (I know VS can handle it, just not sure if BMax is open enough to implement it). Lua can also be implemented. So now you have 1 IDE that allows you to create a project with all the supported languages. LE specific tools could then be added to the IDE also. Code snippets, etc could also all be added to this 1 IDE. For the example I'm looking at, I want to use it to create a GUI design environment. Where you have a window surface and you can drop and drag controls onto it and the actual code is behind that and works just like if you were using VS to make a .NET GUI application. That's my goal with this. How cool would it be to select a LE GUI Enabled project template, and just be able to drag a button on the window designer and set some properties and do all the coding in the same editor that is the VS editor. It also allows you to make your own language. So Lumooja can add his own language he's working on lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
klepto2 Posted March 12, 2010 Share Posted March 12, 2010 yeah, by the way: bmx is open enough to integrate it. I have written ides and debuggers for bmx so if you need a hand on this part i will of course help. Maybe it will become a good bmx ide replacement and alternative to Blide. But all in all your vision looks promising. I hope you can make it true. Quote Windows 10 Pro 64-Bit-Version NVIDIA Geforce 1080 TI Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Posted March 12, 2010 Author Share Posted March 12, 2010 Very cool. I'll keep that in mind. I just have to play around with all of this stuff and see if I can get something working. As I'm sure you are aware it's not at all straight forward. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VicToMeyeZR Posted March 12, 2010 Share Posted March 12, 2010 http://codeblocks.org It was designed with wxWidgets. but has ALL the compilers built into it. MSVC, GCC, etc.. Plus you can customize it to find your needs. Worth checking out. Plus its cross platform already. One of the nice things about this is, is is also designed to build GUI right from wxWidgets, so if you want to build a custom tool for LE, it sure is easy. Quote AMD Phenom II x6 1100T - 16GB RAM - ATI 5870 HD - OCZ Vertex 2 60GB SSD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Posted March 12, 2010 Author Share Posted March 12, 2010 One of the nice things about this is, is is also designed to build GUI right from wxWidgets, so if you want to build a custom tool for LE, it sure is easy. This seems to imply that you or someone was able to get wxWidgets working correctly with LE. As far as I know no one has been able to get this working, OR should I say, working with ease and not some huge pain in the but work arounds. [EDIT] Checked that editor out some. It seems pretty good, but not all the best. I think I'll try the VS way first and see how that works out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VicToMeyeZR Posted March 13, 2010 Share Posted March 13, 2010 This seems to imply that you or someone was able to get wxWidgets working correctly with LE. As far as I know no one has been able to get this working, OR should I say, working with ease and not some huge pain in the but work arounds. [EDIT] Checked that editor out some. It seems pretty good, but not all the best. I think I'll try the VS way first and see how that works out. O no.... Not use it for gui's IN LE, gui tools FOR LE.. If I was going to use a library for GUI, I would stick with CEGUI. I don't blame you on the VS shell. Sounds like a good plan. Just throwing and idea out there Quote AMD Phenom II x6 1100T - 16GB RAM - ATI 5870 HD - OCZ Vertex 2 60GB SSD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Posted March 13, 2010 Author Share Posted March 13, 2010 If I was going to use a library for GUI, I would stick with CEGUI. I would too if it was easy to get working with LE. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Posted March 20, 2010 Share Posted March 20, 2010 What kind of features do you think could be added to the IDE to make it more useful for programming with the engine? Quote My job is to make tools you love, with the features you want, and performance you can't live without. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Posted March 21, 2010 Author Share Posted March 21, 2010 The biggest one that I can think of, and am trying to get working, is a GUI. Being able to create a GUI via drop and drag and have it have the actual code right there in the real project would be nice. But now that you mention it, there could be far more functionality in terms of widgets/controls. Like in .NET there are controls that have no UI (database controls, timer, etc). This could also be the case with LE. It basically becomes an easier way to share code. Much like how a "Thingoid" is used today. This feature started with VS 2008 and I just got it this weekend, so I'll be hitting it hard. I already have CEGUI working with LE, and am in the process of compiling it into 1 DLL and 1 lib so it's easier for people to use. Once I get that working I'm going to work on this ide idea and see where it goes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jockmacmad Posted May 20, 2010 Share Posted May 20, 2010 If your looking to go multi-platform then using VS as a base maybe a limiting factor unless you manage to rig some cross-compiler stuff in... It's been a very long time since I did C++ (10 years) so I am not sure what the other options are you could look into these days. Thats the problem with having me gone across to Java as that every man and his dog using are Eclipse for IDE's so as I say I'm out of touch on the C++ front. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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