Ok, I''m looking for a few tips on tools development. First, my engine already has a tools-window where I edit some of the properties of the current view being rendered, objects, shaders, etc... ... but it was implemented with raw win32, and it is really slow trying to find examples on how to work with the treeview for example.... MFC might be a good choice, but i would like to keep my engine MFC-free, so, maybe a plugin? Also, what about C# plugins? Can I make a C# plugin that gets called by my engine, and that in turn creates a tools window? Because we all know how easy it is to create a great GUI in C#... ...and btw, we really should have something better by now for GUI creation... [Hugo Ferreira][Positronic Dreams][Colibri 3D Engine][Entropy HL2 MOD][My DevDiary]
[Yann L.][Enginuity] [Penny Arcade] [MSDN][VS RoadMap][Humus][BSPs][UGP][NeHe]
"our stupidity allways comes back to bite us in the ass... in a white-shark sort of way..." - Prozak

as far as i know you cant call functions/methods from a c# dll without using managed c++, but i could be wrong.

instead why now use managed c++? you can mix managed and no managed code in the same project.

"instead why not use managed c++?"

and redesign the whole engine? Im looking for a solution, not for more problems

Regarding C#, I didnt have much contact with the language, but I do believe that we can go completely unmanaged if we turn the "right things" off, right? In which case I would be able to get my engine to call the C# Dll and vice-versa...

... or maybe not. Small but well designed GUI wrappers, similar to MFC would be my best bet, im looking into wxWidgets right now, but it looks like a monster of a library, lol!

bit off topic: what about GUIs for graphics APIs, like OpenGL? any open-source stuff out there?

What do you guys think?

[Hugo Ferreira][Positronic Dreams][Colibri 3D Engine][Entropy HL2 MOD][My DevDiary]
[Yann L.][Enginuity] [Penny Arcade] [MSDN][VS RoadMap][Humus][BSPs][UGP][NeHe]
"our stupidity allways comes back to bite us in the ass... in a white-shark sort of way..." - Prozak

ive added support for managed c++ to some of my applications quite easily with rewriting the entire project and it usually take about 5 mins

Adding Support for Managed Extensions for C++ to an Existing Application