[paragui-users] Making ParaGUI play nice with other SDL libraries

[Robby Dermody]

Hi,

For starters, I'm just getting into SDL programming (I mostly do network
programming and server-side stuff), so forgive me if I seem clueless on some
areas.

Basically, for a game client I'm working on, I'd like to get ParaGUI and
Kyra working together. Kyra is an isometric sprite engine. What I would
like, for example, is say  you have a screen (fullscreen or windowed) at
1280x1024. The Kyra "game-window" might take up 800x600 of that, and paragui
windows can be dragged anywhere on the SDL surface (over the kyra game
window, or outside of it. For an example of what I mean, check out:
http://www.gamesdomain.com/gdreview/zones/reviews/pc/oct97/uo01.html

Imagine that Kyra is taking care of the "world window"...while that
character window, with the character's appearance and the buttons and all is
ParaGUI.

Now, I took a look at this from getting Kyra to work with others first hand,
and it seems that if I want to do this, I would need to do some clever work
with screen updating and update order:
http://www.grinninglizard.com/kyra/kryaFAQ.html#playWithOthers

What I'm wondering, is what I need to do for paraGUI to get this working. I
would imagine that I would not use PGApplication's Run() function as well
(??), and I would need some kind of master game loop which would determine
whether the Kyra game screen or ParaGUI should be sent any user input, and
then pass it off to the appropriate library function.

Past all this, is there something I should look out for, or something I
need? Anyone know of an example application which does something like this?
(The client is GPLed so GPLed code is fine.)  I guess I'm just a SDL newbie
looking for a good starting point in integrating the two...

Much thanks for ANY help!!

Robby