Gum Forms

Introduction

Gum Forms provides a collection of standardized, fully functional UI elements. MonoGame Gum includes the following types:

• Button

• CheckBox

• ComboBox

• ListBox

• ListBoxItem (used by ListBox)

• PasswordBox

• RadioButton

• ScrollView

• Slider

• TextBox

We can use all of the types above by adding instances of components which map to these controls.

public class Game1 : Game
{
    private GraphicsDeviceManager _graphics;
    GumService Gum => GumService.Default;
    public Game1()
    {
        _graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this);
        Content.RootDirectory = "Content";
        IsMouseVisible = true;
    }

    protected override void Initialize()
    {
        var gumProject = Gum.Initialize(
            this,
            // This is relative to Content:
            "GumProject/GumProject.gumx");
            
        var screen = gumProject.Screens.Find(item => item.Name == "TitleScreen");
        
        var screenRuntime = screen.ToGraphicalUiElement();
        screenRuntime.AddToRoot();
        
        base.Initialize();
    }

    protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime)
    {
        Gum.Update(gameTime);
        base.Update(gameTime);
    }

    protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime)
    {
        GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.CornflowerBlue);
        Gum.Draw();
        base.Draw(gameTime);
    }
}

Verifying Forms Components Have Been Added

If you have followed through the tutorial series, then your project should already have Forms components. If not, you need to add Forms components to your screen by using the Add Forms Components menu item.

For more information, see the Setup tutorial which provides step-by-step instructions for adding Forms to your project.

Adding Forms Instances to a Screen

The previous tutorial showed how to add a Button instance to our screen. We can add other functional controls by drag+dropping instances into the TitleScreen. This tutorial shows how to interact with a ListBox, so you should drag+drop a ListBox instance into your screen. You can also add additional instances of other types if you would like to see them in action, such as CheckBox, ComboBox, Slider, and TextBox.

Our forms controls already have some functionality even before we write any code in our game.

Interacting with Forms Instances

We can interact with any of the Forms instances by using GetFrameworkElementByName. For example, to interact with the ListBox that we added in the previous section, add the following code to your Initialize method to add items to the ListBox:

protected override void Initialize()
{
    var gumProject = Gum.Initialize(
        this,
        // This is relative to Content:
        "GumProject/GumProject.gumx");      
        
    var screen = gumProject.Screens.Find(item => item.Name == "TitleScreen");
        
    var screenRuntime = screen.ToGraphicalUiElement();
    screenRuntime.AddToRoot();

+    var listBox = screenRuntime.GetFrameworkElementByName<ListBox>("ListBoxInstance");
+    for(int i = 0; i < 50; i++)
+    {
+        listBox.Items.Add("Item number " + i.ToString());
+    }

    base.Initialize();
}

Forms types such as Button are associated with Gum components based on their category. For example, the following components can be used to create Button instances.

Although the prefix "Button" suggests that these controls are Forms Buttons, the name can change and these would still create buttons. At runtime the type of Forms control associated with a component is determined by the state categories defined in the component.

For example, each of these components has a state category named ButtonCategory.

Although we won't cover the details in this tutorial, you can customize the existing components or create new components which will map to the Forms types so long as they have the appropriate category. See the next tutorial for details about Forms control customization.

Additional Documentation

Forms component instances can be added and modified just like any other instance, but at runtime these types provide common properties and methods. To learn more about working with Forms in code, see the Forms documentation.

Conclusion

This tutorial showed how to create Forms instances in a screen, interact with them in code, and how to work with the different forms types.

The next tutorial covers how to generate code for custom components.