In Game Messaging

[Don Cullen]

I agree-- that's why I suggested it. Is anyone up to it?

[Blaze]

I thought of that too.  StarBoxViewer a program that displays ingame stats uses the api:

Code Select Expand


Public Declare Function TextOut Lib "gdi32.dll" Alias "TextOutA" (ByVal hdc As Long, ByVal x As Long, ByVal y As Long, ByVal lpString As String, ByVal nCount As Long) As Long



Heres the program I made to display ingame text and its source.

http://blazenet.servebeer.com/site/Downloads/StarcraftText.zip

[Warrior]

Ugh that flicker is horrible :p

[Blaze]

Well, thats the re-drawing of my vb app and starcraft.

[Don Cullen]

Mmm. BWCoach doesn't use that- they use SC's text display directly, and SC even dings when it displays the text. So I don't think they're using that API... I think they most likely figured out the internal function SC uses to display the text, so it'd be a matter of reverse-engineering BWCoach to find out what internal function BWCoach calls upon in order to pull it off.

I'm thinking maybe set up a program to monitor when BWCoach accesses any file inside the SC directory, and if the program catches BWCoach accessing those files (for API, or whatever), trap what location it's accessing from, and also trap the incoming/outgoing data transfer between BWCoach and the file. This would enable one to determine what internal function of SC BWCoach uses, and how to use it also.

[Kp]

Not intending to offend, but that's a rather silly (and probably ineffective) way of approaching this.  There is a function in Starcraft which posts new text to the internal ring buffer; the ring buffer is rendered by Starcraft's draw loop as visible text.  BWCoach merely needs to call the appending function with appropriate arguments, and Starcraft will do the rest.  IIRC, the function takes a timeout, a color, and a char*.  That should be enough to get you started.

[Warrior]

Heh theres hope yet!

[Blaze]

Thank Kp, that should help a lot.   Yeah, my method is ineffective.

[NicoQwertyu]

I suck too much to debug Starcraft. Everytime a bp triggers, I get stuck in SC and can't even view the disassembly. 

[UserLoser.]

I suck too much to debug Starcraft. Everytime a bp triggers, I get stuck in SC and can't even view the disassembly. 

Couldn't you run Starcraft in a window, or run multiple desktops at once?

[NicoQwertyu]

I suck too much to debug Starcraft. Everytime a bp triggers, I get stuck in SC and can't even view the disassembly. 

... or run multiple desktops at once?

Never thought of that. 

[Blaze]

http://www.valhallalegends.com/skywing/files/DxWnd/DxWnd.zip

[NicoQwertyu]

What can I use to run multiple desktops? I went and got VMware, but that doesn't seem like it's what I want.

[Don Cullen]

http://www.valhallalegends.com/skywing/files/DxWnd/DxWnd.zip

can you give a screen shot of sc in a window? i'm curious as to what it looks like. im not home right now, still at work, but I plan on trying that- it'd be very benefitical if i could get sc to run in a window- it'd allow me to multitask much easier...

[R.a.B.B.i.T]

It's big, so clicky.