Getting Raven
To get started with Raven, you'll need to download it from the Raven GitHub Repository. Once downloaded, you can import the repository into GameMaker as a project or package. This will make the Raven assets and scripts available for use in your project.
Initializing the UI
After setting up Raven in your project, navigate to the obj_raven_init object. In the Create Event of this object, you'll find a "//GET STARTED HERE" section. This is where you'll initialize the UI components and start building your interface.
Creating the Core Struct
The cornerstone of Raven is the core struct instance, which manages the UI elements and interactions. You can create the main/core struct using the following code:
raven = new RavenMain();
The above code instantiates a new RavenMain struct, which will be our main/core object, serving as the controller for any Raven-driven UI.
Adding a menu
menu = new RavenMenu(0, 0, 64, 32, 32);
overview_button = new RavenItem("Overview", noone);
global.open_new_page = function open_new_page(){
url_open("https://url_to_a_new_item");
}
new_button = new RavenItem("New", global.open_new_page);
menu.AddItem(overview_button);
menu.AddItem(new_button);
The above code results in a menu with several items in it. While we are working on this menu, we can also customize it by adding an outline:
menu.SetOutline(true);
Now that we have our menu, we just need to add it to our main struct:
raven.SetMenu(menu);
We've now established this menu to be updated and rendered during runtime.
Now that we have established a menu and main struct for our project, we might want to add a panel/tab somewhere. To do this, we can make a container:
Using containers
container = new RavenContainer(0, 0, global.resolution_x, global.resolution_y, true, false);
container.SetLock(true);
We've created a container and locked it. This means the container cannot be resized, dragged, etc. We have not yet added our container to the main struct, so let's do that:
raven.AddContainer(container);
We can also create a smaller panel, for example, to display tooltips or serve as a sidebar or overlay:
var tooltip_container = new RavenContainer(200, 200, 600, 600, false, true, gui_render_mode.VLIST, 3);
var container_menu = new RavenMenu(0, 0, 64, 32, 32);
tooltip_container.SetMenu(container_menu);
As you can see in the above code, each container can also have its own menu. All that we are missing now is some text to display in our tooltip container:
tooltip_container.AddItem(new RavenTextItem("This is a TextField", 0, 16, fnt_dsansmono16));
tooltip_container.AddItem(new RavenTextItem("Let's write a paragraph! The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.", 0, 16, fnt_dsansmono16));
And we finalize by adding our tooltip container to our main struct:
raven.AddContainer(tooltip_container);
That's it for getting started!
