Operating system (multiple windows with same shell)

12padams

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 19, 2010
Messages
48
Programming Experience
Beginner
Ok basically i am making a game (personal/share with others for free)

The idea of the game is its 1998 and you have windows 95 and you have to someone obtain windows 98... then slowely new operating systems are released... 2000, xp, vista, 7 and you have to continue to upgrade.

The game in played in a simualted real environment of the windows operating system. The idea is that you have access to the real programs that came with windows 95... (or whatever operating system you have ingame) and you have access to my fake webbrowser which has a bunch of fake websites (offline) in the game. You can either try to illegally download the operating system (viruses can infect you like this (fake ones)) or you can buy it off microsoft but to get money you need to do hacking jobs....


Anyway thought i should give you some back story to what i am actually making. (This project is more a test project since i am only 15 and have only really just started using visual basic for a few months.)

OK now i have so far got it looking almost completely like windows 95 and functioning like it to...

Hey just for the record... here are some nice pictures of it running :)

First of all heres what it looks like when you are doing selecting which program to open with the start menu:
screen1nh.png


This next picture is of notepad in my program:
screen2yn.png


Ok now this picture shows perfectly the active window has become inactive when rightclicking (or normal clicking) the desktop
screen4.png


Next picture shows the display properties windows... not that fasinating yet since i have not finished it and it does not accually do anything yet... its just for looks right now and scrolling through the theme names.
screen5r.png


Now this is another tab from the properties window (the screensaver tab) you can't do much here :( apart from looking at the names of the screensavers)
screen6p.png


Ok heres another pic from another tab in display properties... (this shows how you can pic a color to change the background in the display window (clicking apply makes your background of the destop in the fake os accually change)
screen7.png


Ok this image in the same window as the previous one shows how you can select to change different things colors (i only got active titlebar and desktop changing right now...)
screen8u.png


This image shows the active titlebar color change...
screen9x.png


This screenshot shows the settings tab of the properties window
screen10v.png


This screenshot shows windows help (main purpose here is just to show the colour change has taken effect)
screen11j.png


Ok last of all this just shows that the maximize button works
screen12wq.png


NOW THE PROBLEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I CAN ONLY HAVE ONE PROGRAM OPEN AT ONCE

basically this is because i have a panel called program and in that a another few panels such as the active window titlebar...

Now i basically have it so that the programs are all in the pannel programand when you "open" a program all the other panels in this window are closed and the one you "open" is docked... and the label (programsname) is chnged to the name of the program.

Here is a picture of the visual editor if you don't get me...
makingwindows95.png


As you can see there are weird little things in program1 (forget program 2 that is a thing i was trying to do ages ago with my old crappy shell)

these weird things are my programs which get docked to the size of the program panel when you click to open a program...

This method works well but only if you have one program at a time.

A solution i thought of was to copy and paste the shell (program panel) and then just put each program in a seperate shell... this would work... but then i can't open 2 of the same program e.g. have 4 notepads running at same time. I am also having heaps of trouble with the taskbar (there in a button on the task-bar which changes text when the programs name changes)

Anyway i am going to post my full program here (code and all) just download if from this rapid share link.
EDIT: the file was 5 meg and now is 3 meg so that should be easier to download
RapidShare: 1-CLICK Web hosting - Easy Filehosting
and then run the solution file or whatever

Please show me some code that will get me be able to run infinite windows of same type and different type...

Do whatever you have to do (just make sure you make sure it works on your side before resending the project back to me.)

Also i don't have a rapid share account so this file can be downloaded up to 10x.



I appreciate any help :)

Thanks from Philip Adams (12padams)
 
Last edited:
The only thing I have to mention right now is you've included the compiled files in your zip file, which is discouraged on the forum here. If you delete the bin and obj folder's from the project before zipping and uploading it you'll be fine, we can always open and build the project ourselves and the compiled files will be re-created.

The other reason is the file size will be far less than 5MB which is why it's so huge right now.
 
Ok i have shortened the file size to 3 megabytes...

Now can anyone please!!!!!!!! help i really need thing asap!
 
Hey everyone don't worry i got this worked out i changed the panels to new windows forms which means i can open unlimited of any programs now :)
 
Try not to bump old topics...

But wow, these were the early days of the game "Histacom" which involves in game time travel within 5 different virtual windows environments from 5 different time periods. The game looks way better now than it did in these early screenshots. I ran intro copyright issues with this game though so I began working on ShiftOS a few years later.
 
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