Drawing/Overlaying Text Directly to screen

[jduncanator]

Hey guys,

Ok Ill cut straight to the point I know this could be to do with DirectX or something but ill post it here for now. What I would like to know is how to Draw text directly to the screen - effectively overlapping anything underneath it - but have it out side a form area! I would really like to have no user interface at all if possible I know what I wanted after recently using FRAPs. To get an Idea of what i need here is a screen shot of it in action (FRAPs):

(See the top left corner).

Thanks for any help what so ever xD

-Josh

[.paul.]

try this:

Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
    Dim gr As Graphics = Graphics.FromHwnd(New IntPtr(0))
    gr.DrawString("text on screen", New Font(Me.Font.FontFamily, 25, FontStyle.Regular), Brushes.Red, 50, 50)
End Sub

[jduncanator]

Hmmm this code seems to do nothing :O

-Josh

[boops boops]

Hmmm this code seems to do nothing :O

-Josh

Hm, I had that trouble too. Paul, is there something we missed here?

Meanwhile, Josh, there is an alternative that might suit your purposes -- show a transparent, borderless form with the text on it. Here's an example which you could code on a form with a button Button1:

	Private WithEvents TextForm As New Form
	Private Zipper As New FontFamily("Zipper")

	Private Sub Form1_Load(sender As System.Object, e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
		With TextForm
			.BackColor = Color.DimGray
			.TransparencyKey = Color.DimGray
			.FormBorderStyle = Windows.Forms.FormBorderStyle.None
			.ShowInTaskbar = False
			.WindowState = FormWindowState.Maximized
			.Opacity = 0
			.Show(Me)
		End With
	End Sub

	Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
		Static showText As Boolean
		showText = Not showText
		If showText Then TextForm.Opacity = 0.99 Else TextForm.Opacity = 0
	End Sub

	Private Sub TextForm_Paint(sender As Object, e As System.Windows.Forms.PaintEventArgs) Handles TextForm.Paint
		e.Graphics.DrawString("text on screen 12345", New Font(Zipper, 30, FontStyle.Bold), Brushes.Red, 50, 50)
	End Sub

A few notes:
1. You could also use your main form this way. Many of the properties shown here in the Load sub could be set in Designer.
2. It's a good idea to make the transparent form an Owned Form of the one underneath. In the example above, it's done by the argument in TextForm.Show(Me). You can also set the Form.Owner property in code. Making the transparent form TopMost is not a good substitute.
3. Anti-aliasing is a problem with transparent forms. The smoothing pixels show up in the form's TransparencyKey colour on curves and diagonals of the text where the colour contrasts with the background. One way to deal with this is to choose a font without curves or diagonals - for example Zipper which I downloaded free from www.FontRiver.com. Alternatively, set Graphics.TextRenderingHint to SingleBitPerPixelGridFit.
4. Form Opacity is my favourite way to switch visibility. Using 0.99 instead of 1 for the maximum opacity gives a smoother result.

BB

[jduncanator]

thanks someone told me about this, and yes its a possability but not ideal as some of the programs it will be running over will be full screened

-Josh

[.paul.]

Hmmm this code seems to do nothing :O

-Josh

on my PC it writes directly on the screen, but it's erased as soon as the desktop refreshes. that's probably the problem...

[formlesstree4]

Hey guys,

Ok Ill cut straight to the point I know this could be to do with DirectX or something but ill post it here for now. What I would like to know is how to Draw text directly to the screen - effectively overlapping anything underneath it - but have it out side a form area! I would really like to have no user interface at all if possible I know what I wanted after recently using FRAPs. To get an Idea of what i need here is a screen shot of it in action (FRAPs):
-image snipped-
(See the top left corner).

Thanks for any help what so ever xD

-Josh

What I think FRAPS is doing is injecting some code to write the FPS of the program in a specified corner (which is configurable in the application), so they're probably using some DirectX and hooking code to do so...just a bit of possible insight for you.

[Milk]

To confirm, drawing over a full screen DirectX overlay is a very different kettle of fish to drawing onto the desktop. To handle a DirectX overlay you really need access to that process and do it from there. I don't know how but I imagine it will involve a certain amount of hacky API such as WriteProcessMemory and luck.

Edit: directX overlays in windowed mode are much easier, see advice above.

[jduncanator]

Ok heres the deal, I need to write a program that will overlay on top of all the windows, I'm stuffing the full screen crap, this program will mainly be used for writing information over the top of a flash game running in a browser, makeing a transparent form, at the moment, is out of the picture, and would really love for something that is able to do it either running in the background or not... Also I have a question, if a program has a transparent form running over a flash game (running around 30-40fps) surely this would have a hit on the system??

-Josh