Hello Forum. I'm new here.

I am very interested in putting a design document together for a side project. Really its more of a learning experience than anything else, and I relish the opportunity to pick the brains of people that know so much about programming.

Firstly a bit of background. This will help you as a community know where i'm coming from, and where the gaps in my own knowledge might lie.

I minored in computer science in college, and at the institution, we mostly focussed on C++ and the basics of object oriented programming. It was essentiallly "Hello World" sort of stuff that quickly snowballed into inheritence, polymorphism, etc. It's been a year or two since i've gotten out of school, and I find myself having to do a lot of review. I am by no means a virtuoso or expert programmer. Just a guy who wants to learn as much as possible and will consume any learning resource presented. I am currently using Devc++.

Now to my question.

Based on the way I want this game to work, I am going to require a lot of moving UI elements inbetween more active phases of the game. I have no background in UI, and am not sure where to begin looking to fill my gaps in knowledge. From a quick google search, I only understand that the question of C++ based UI is an incredibly broad one that requires a bit of specificity on part of the person asking the question. I want to code a UI that allows for a user to quickly gauge inventory, and other game metrics, before moving on to another UI in another phase of the game. If anyone has a resource that would give me a crash course into its design and implimentation, I would be very grateful. If I am not asking the right question, I would not balk at any correction or clarification offered.

I'm open to other IDE's, I downloaded it primarily because it was the suggested IDE for one of the Jonathan Harbour programming books. I'm certainly not married to it. I've used visual studios, and still have a copy on a machine, but its not the machine that I've dedicated to code work. I've got netbeans, and will look into Code::Blocks. Thanks.

I was worried that I was being unclear, apologies for that, even the thread title is unclear but I'm not sure how to edit the mistake. The design document lead me to the realization that I need to learn UI, as that's where a large portion of the game will be played. I'm working on the full game design document, primarily in simple every day language, rather than the nitty gritty of the technical nuts and bolts. It made me realize just how little I knew of UI. I'm looking for any UI resources I can get my hands on to get my feet wet. Corresponding notes will be made in the document. I'd like to keep everything in C++ if possible, as thats the language that i'm most familiar with.