New manual chapter that introduces editor and states, more manual and website updates, "Register Lazarus Packages" button

[michalis]

I am deep in making big updates to the manual, to document the usage of editor and other concepts that become important during the CGE 7.0 development.

We start with new 1st and 2nd manual chapters:

1. Installation and building your first application

2. Designing user interface and handling events (press, update) within the state

Go ahead and read them now, whether you’re a seasoned CGE user or a new one 🙂

Details – what and why:

• The manual beginning is now much simpler than it was, replacing previous Getting Started (was needlessly complicated), Opening the window (unnecessary), Window events (obsolete, as you should now use TUIState events). The new pages focus clearly on doing things the way we advise — which is using our visual editor.

  In particular Designing user interface and handling events (press, update) within the state chapter is actually an introduction to using the editor, from zero-knowledge. It shows how to modify the design, add images, and then access them from code and use basic TUIState methods.

• While doing it, I also introduced new utilities TCastleUserInterface.ContainerToLocalPosition and reverse TCastleUserInterface.LocalToContainerPosition. It became apparent they are useful, both for internal and outside usage.

• I also introduced a button “Register Lazarus Packages” in the editor preferences. This button simplifies one installation step, which allowed to make chapter Installation and building your first application shorter 🙂

• The installation of castle_components package, and in general dealing with TCastleControlBase in LCL, has been deemphasized, and moved to new chapter Engine control to put on Lazarus form. Nothing changes with regards to our support (you have a choice between TCastleWindowBase and TCastleControlBase), but the manual is now more focused on the advised approach for “normal CGE applications”, which is to use TCastleWindowBase as set up by our templates.

• I made a link to our Castle Game Engine YouTube channel much more prominent, putting “Videos” right on the website menu bar.

• I also made some other minor website changes. New font (Inter), better size of the download icons, better news list (directly show the sharing buttons, and link to forum without an extra click).

[ultidonki]

Yay! That chapter about setting up a TUIState is much easier to read now. As a beginner trying to learn the engine the last few months, it contains pretty much everything I wanted to learn.
Previously, the information was all there, but spread out over several pages, and I had to look at the example projects a lot. I think the page looks much better now.