Hello,

First of, I hope this question fits in this forum. I'm posting this here because I know a lot of programmers frequent this forum but also because it seemed to fit in here best. If it doesn't, please move to the appropriate forum.

My question is, how would I go about coding a HUD? The stats have to be fixed on the table and must not be affected by mouse clicks/moves at all. It was suggested to me that I use API hooking, i.e. find the message that is fired when the table window is moved, then hook into that and update my stats window accordingly. I'm wondering if there are other, easier ways that don't involve API hooking?

I was thinking of going with C#, even though I hardly know it, because I will have to access windows and that all the time and I'm assuming a Microsoft language should make that pretty easy for me. What do you think about Java? I know it better, but if it's more complicated to use Java on that I might as well learn C#. What language would you use/suggest for coding a HUD?

Anything but Java. C# is good.

Look into Layered Windows.

C/C++ will let you call the Win32 stuff directly.

Juk

Also if you're like me and hate the win32 api, you could take a look at gtk. Then you need win32 or xlib only for finding the table window. Easy portability comes along.

You don't need the hooking api for doing a hud. You could just update the hud position from a timer and let the window manager take care of the stacking order.