The game interface is split up into GUIs. Each GUI is a rectangular region on the screen which is drawn on top of the background scene. Each can be set to either:

• be always displayed (for example the Sierra status-line)
• pop-up when the mouse moves to a certain position (eg. Sierra icon-bar)
• pop-up on script command only

Go to the "GUIs" node in the main tree. Under this all the GUIs in the game are listed -- double-click one to edit it. To create a new one, right-click on the main "GUIs" node and choose "New GUI".

Once you've opened up a GUI, you'll notice the GUI itself in the main window, and its settings can be edited in the Properties grid. This allows you to change the background colour of the GUI, set a background picture, and set the location and width/height amongst other things.

The "Visibility" property allows you to set when the GUI is displayed. The default is "Normal", which means that the GUI will initially be visible, though you can turn it off with a GUI.Visible=false command in game_start if you need to.

The "Popup modal" option means that the GUI will be initially off and must be turned on by a script command. With this option, the game will be paused while the GUI is displayed, during which time the on_mouse_click and on_key_press functions will not get run.

The "Mouse YPos" option means that the GUI only appears when the mouse vertical position moves above the y-coordinate set with the "Popup-YP" option.

"Persistent" is like "Normal", except that this GUI will not be removed during a cutscene when the setting "GUIs turn off when disabled" is set in the general settings. Useful if you want most of your GUIs to turn off, except a status line or whatever.

The "Z-Order" setting allows you to set which order the GUIs are drawn in - ie. when there are two GUIs that overlap, which is drawn in front. The Z-order setting is an arbitrary number between 0 and 1000. AGS draws the GUIs in order, from the lowest numbered at the back to the highest numbered at the front.

The "Clickable" setting allows you to set whether the GUI and buttons on it respond to mouse clicks. This is on by default, but if you turn it off and the player clicks on the GUI, the game will actually process the click as if they clicked behind the GUI onto the actual screen. Useful for transparent GUIs which are only used to display information.

You'll notice that the GUIs have names. These can be used in the script in the same way as character names. For example, if a GUI is called "gIconBar", you can use scripts such as:

gIconBar.Visible = true;

In this section:

GUI buttons
Interface text
Customized Text Windows
Custom inventory
Sliders
Text Boxes
List Boxes