This tutorial shows how to use the built in User Interface of the Irrlicht Engine. It will give a brief overview and show how to create and use windows, buttons, scroll bars, static texts and list boxes.

The program which is described here will look like this:

As always, we include the header files (conio and curses for getting user input from the console), and use the irrlicht namespaces. We also store a pointer to the Irrlicht device, a counter variable for changing the creation position of a window, and a pointer to a listbox.

#include <irrlicht.h>
#include <iostream>

using namespace irr;

using namespace core;
using namespace scene;
using namespace video;
using namespace io;
using namespace gui;

#pragma comment(lib, "Irrlicht.lib")

IrrlichtDevice *device = 0;
s32 cnt = 0;
IGUIListBox* listbox = 0;

The Event Receiver is not only capable of getting keyboard and mouse input events, but also events of the graphical user interface (gui). There are events for almost everything: Button click, Listbox selection change, events that say that a element was hovered and so on. To be able to react to some of these events, we create
an event receiver. We only react to gui events, and if it's such an event, we get the id of the caller (the gui element which caused the event) and get the pointer to the gui environment.

class MyEventReceiver : public IEventReceiver
{
public:
	virtual bool OnEvent(const SEvent& event)
	{
		if (event.EventType == EET_GUI_EVENT)
		{
			s32 id = event.GUIEvent.Caller->getID();
			IGUIEnvironment* env = device->getGUIEnvironment();

            switch(event.GUIEvent.EventType)
            {

If a scrollbar changed its scroll position, and it is 'our' scrollbar (the one with id 104), then we change the
transparency of all gui elements. This is a very easy task: There is a skin object, in which all color settings are stored. We simply go through all colors stored in the skin and change their alpha value.

case EGET_SCROLL_BAR_CHANGED:
	if (id == 104)
	{
		s32 pos = ((IGUIScrollBar*)event.GUIEvent.Caller)->getPos();
					
		for (s32 i=0; i<EGDC_COUNT ; ++i)
		{
			SColor col = env->getSkin()->getColor((EGUI_DEFAULT_COLOR)i);
			col.setAlpha(pos);
			env->getSkin()->setColor((EGUI_DEFAULT_COLOR)i, col);
		}
	}
break;

If a button was clicked, it could be one of 'our' three buttons. If it is the first, we shut down the engine.
If it is the second, we create a little window with some text on it. We also add a string to the list box to log
what happened. And if it is the third button, we create a file open dialog, and add also this as string to the list box.
That's all for the event receiver.

       case EGET_BUTTON_CLICKED:
              if (id == 101)
              {
                 device->closeDevice();
                 return true;
              }

              if (id == 102)
              {
                 listbox->addItem(L"Window created");
                 cnt += 30;
                 if (cnt > 200) 
                   cnt = 0;

                 IGUIWindow* window = env->addWindow(
                       rect<s32>(100 + cnt, 100 + cnt, 300 + cnt, 200 + cnt), 
                       false, // modal?
                       L"Test window");

                 env->addStaticText(L"Please close me", 
                       rect<s32>(35,35,140,50),
                       true, // border?,
                       false, // wordwrap?
                       window);

                 return true;
              }

              if (id == 103)
              {
                 listbox->addItem(L"File open");
                 env->addFileOpenDialog(L"Please choose a file.");
                 return true;
              }

              break;
          }
       }
       return false;
    }
 };

Ok, now for the more interesting part. First, create the Irrlicht device. As in some examples before, we ask the user which driver he wants to use for this example: