5 hours ago
@bplus idea is easier than IPC setup to talk between them.
Just use a text file for your comms, and watch it in a loop kinda thing. This is called a semaphore file I believe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_(programming)
It's clunky until you get it working then it'll just be something behind the scenes. Technically, this is also IPC (Inter-process communication ) because you are doing things with an intermediary (the file).
So you'd have your main program window as one program, your options as another, game play another, inventory another.
I think there might be some questions to answer ahead of the coding though given your question @justsomeguy
Is your project going to be OK with multiple windows? Because that's what it'd turn into. Window juggling on the user.
If not, and you want your entire program in the one window, it might be better to do as @a740g said and put everything in one giant InformPE form and hide/show things as needed.
In my experience, this would be very difficult to handle in the InformPE form designer though - because it would be overwhelming and finnicky to manage all of that stuff in one giant form and then have to remember what is visible where.
I don't think InformPE has a tab controller similar to VB6 for example, wherein the actual form designer hides what isn't clicked on the tab to help the designer focus, etc.
good luck with your project! You might want to mock something up if you're going to do multiple windows to determine how to wrangle them, etc. And you might also want to consider that not all OSes have the same features for the window management, so take that into consideration in your design phase!
Just use a text file for your comms, and watch it in a loop kinda thing. This is called a semaphore file I believe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_(programming)
It's clunky until you get it working then it'll just be something behind the scenes. Technically, this is also IPC (Inter-process communication ) because you are doing things with an intermediary (the file).
So you'd have your main program window as one program, your options as another, game play another, inventory another.
I think there might be some questions to answer ahead of the coding though given your question @justsomeguy
Is your project going to be OK with multiple windows? Because that's what it'd turn into. Window juggling on the user.
If not, and you want your entire program in the one window, it might be better to do as @a740g said and put everything in one giant InformPE form and hide/show things as needed.
In my experience, this would be very difficult to handle in the InformPE form designer though - because it would be overwhelming and finnicky to manage all of that stuff in one giant form and then have to remember what is visible where.
I don't think InformPE has a tab controller similar to VB6 for example, wherein the actual form designer hides what isn't clicked on the tab to help the designer focus, etc.
good luck with your project! You might want to mock something up if you're going to do multiple windows to determine how to wrangle them, etc. And you might also want to consider that not all OSes have the same features for the window management, so take that into consideration in your design phase!