I'm making a GUI API (in C++) for games which uses Allegro 5 as a backend. I looked at how GuiChan works and noticed that they intend for the user to override the paint event and do all the drawing yourself.

Since I felt that in general, there's a decent standard to how widgets behave, I have a static theme class in each widget class (static ButtonTheme buttonTheme; etc) and the parameters set in that theme are used to construct that widget (from there, the parameters can be changed individually for specific widgets). These sorts of things are: padding, font color, border color, is drawing border, back color, size, min / max size etc).

Where I also differ from GuiChan is in the fact that instead of default drawing being rectangles, the widgets have bitmap pointers and if they are NULL, it draws rectangles like GuiChan, if not, they are drawn with bitmaps: ex: button has default, hover, clicked. And if hover is not provided, the switch case will just use default for hover. Each theme has corresponding bitmaps. I also have bitmaps for focused and disabled.

The user can always choose to override the paint event and do it from scratch.

Is this a good idea or a terrible one to use themes and theming? Should I stay generic like GuiChan?

As game developers , which would you prefer, (no themes, partial themes, partial themes + bitmaps)?

Thanks

I'm making a GUI API (in C++) for games which uses Allegro 5 as a backend. I looked at how GuiChan works and noticed that they intend for the user to override the paint event and do all the drawing yourself.

Since I felt that in general, there's a decent standard to how widgets behave, I have a static theme class in each widget class (static ButtonTheme buttonTheme; etc) and the parameters set in that theme are used to construct that widget (from there, the parameters can be changed individually for specific widgets). These sorts of things are: padding, font color, border color, is drawing border, back color, size, min / max size etc).

Where I also differ from GuiChan is in the fact that instead of default drawing being rectangles, the widgets have bitmap pointers and if they are NULL, it draws rectangles like GuiChan, if not, they are drawn with bitmaps: ex: button has default, hover, clicked. And if hover is not provided, the switch case will just use default for hover. Each theme has corresponding bitmaps. I also have bitmaps for focused and disabled.

The user can always choose to override the paint event and do it from scratch.

Is this a good idea or a terrible one to use themes and theming? Should I stay generic like GuiChan?

As game developers , which would you prefer, (no themes, partial themes, partial themes + bitmaps)?

Thanks

I'm making a GUI API (in C++) for games which uses Allegro 5 as a backend. I looked at how GuiChan works and noticed that they intend for the user to override the paint event and do all the drawing yourself.

Since I felt that in general, there's a decent standard to how widgets behave, I have a static theme class in each widget class (static ButtonTheme buttonTheme; etc) and the parameters set in that theme are used to construct that widget (from there, the parameters can be changed individually for specific widgets). These sorts of things are: padding, font color, border color, is drawing border, back color, size, min / max size etc).

Where I also differ from GuiChan is in the fact that instead of default drawing being rectangles, the widgets have bitmap pointers and if they are NULL, it draws rectangles like GuiChan, if not, they are drawn with bitmaps: ex: button has default, hover, clicked. And if hover is not provided, the switch case will just use default for hover. Each theme has corresponding bitmaps. I also have bitmaps for focused and disabled.

The user can always choose to override the paint event and do it from scratch.

Is this a good idea or a terrible one to use themes and theming? Should I stay generic like GuiChan?

As game developers , which would you prefer, (no themes, partial themes, partial themes + bitmaps)?

Thanks

I'm making a GUI API (in C++) for games which uses Allegro 5 as a backend. I looked at how GuiChan works and noticed that they intend for the user to override the paint event and do all the drawing yourself.

Since I felt that in general, there's a decent standard to how widgets behave, I have a static theme class in each widget class (static ButtonTheme buttonTheme; etc) and the parameters set in that theme are used to construct that widget (from there, the parameters can be changed individually for specific widgets). These sorts of things are: padding, font color, border color, is drawing border, back color, size, min / max size etc).

Where I also differ from GuiChan is in the fact that instead of default drawing being rectangles, the widgets have bitmap pointers and if they are NULL, it draws rectangles like GuiChan, if not, they are drawn with bitmaps: ex: button has default, hover, clicked. And if hover is not provided, the switch case will just use default for hover. Each theme has corresponding bitmaps. I also have bitmaps for focused and disabled.

The user can always choose to override the paint event and do it from scratch.

Is this a good idea or a terrible one to use themes and theming? Should I stay generic like GuiChan?

As game developers , which would you prefer, (no themes, partial themes, partial themes + bitmaps)?

Thanks