Gum Integration

Gum Integration

Gum is a separate sibling repo (..\Gum relative to this repo, e.g. C:\Users\vchel\Documents\GitHub\Gum in this checkout), not a submodule or NuGet package — FlatRedBall references its projects via relative <ProjectReference> paths (e.g. FRBDK\Glue\GumPlugin\GumPlugin\GumPlugin.csproj → ..\..\..\..\..\Gum\GumCommon\GumCommon.csproj). Gum is FRB's UI layout/rendering library (screens, components, states, data binding) — general Gum behavior/API questions belong to that repo, not this skill.

Where things live

Glue's Gum plugin has the same "master template → generated copy" split as the [[glue-live-edit]] skill: Embedded\*.cs files (PositionedObjectGueWrapper.cs, GraphicalUiElement.Binding.cs, GraphicalUiElement.IWindow.cs, SystemManagers.FlatRedBall.cs, ContentManagerWrapper.cs) are hand-edited sources copied verbatim into generated game projects — not generator output, actual C# that ships as-is. CodeGeneration\* is the real generator side: GueDerivingClassCodeGenerator.cs (per-Screen/Component derived class), GumGame1CodeGenerator.cs (Game1 wiring), StandardsCodeGenerator.cs + per-type generators (NineSliceCodeGenerator.cs, TextCodeGenerator.cs...) and StateCodeGenerator*.cs for the property/state pipelines documented in the [[gum-codegen]] skill, FormsClassCodeGenerator.cs/FormsObjectCodeGenerator.cs for Gum Forms controls.

The .gumx project

Gum UI data lives in its own file format alongside .glux/.gluj, referenced by relative path from the Glue project (e.g. a .gluj's "Name": "GumProject/GumProject.gumx"). One .gumx (project index, GumProjectSave XML) plus one file per element under Content\GumProject\: .gusx (Screens/Components), .behx (behaviors), .ganx (animations). GumProjectManager.cs/FileChangeManager.cs (GumPlugin\Managers) load it and watch for external edits (e.g. from the standalone Gum tool).

Runtime bridging

PositionedObjectGueWrapper : PositionedObject (GumPlugin\Embedded\PositionedObjectGueWrapper.cs) wraps a GraphicalUiElement inside FRB's PositionedObject hierarchy, so Gum UI can attach to/move with an FRB entity like any other positioned object. Top-level Screens/Components loaded standalone instead get their own generated derived class from GueDerivingClassCodeGenerator.cs, extending GraphicalUiElement directly rather than going through the wrapper.

Per-Screen Gum screen (auto-created)

Adding an FRB Screen in Glue auto-creates a paired Gum screen so anything placed on it shows up automatically when the FRB Screen loads — you don't need to know this exists until you go looking for "where did GameScreenGum come from."

• Hook: FRB-screen-created event → GumPluginCommands.AddScreenForGlueScreen (GumPlugin\Managers\GumPluginCommands.cs:199-226), also triggerable by hand via right-click (RightClickManager.cs:92).
• Naming convention: strip the FRB screen's Screens/ prefix and append Gum — Screens/GameScreen → Gum screen GameScreenGum (GetExpectedGumScreenNameFor, GumPluginCommands.cs:187-197).
• It's created only if missing, then linked onto the FRB Screen as a normal NamedObjectSave/file reference (RightClickManager.AddGumScreenScreenByName) — there's no special runtime loading path. Generated codegen (GueDerivingClassCodeGenerator.cs:890-926) emits the same <name>.AddToManagers(...) call it would for any other Gum object, so the paired screen is added/removed on FRB Screen load/unload exactly like every other object on that Screen.

World-space Gum objects (health bars, icons, in-world dialog)

Placing a Gum object at fixed screen-space UI coordinates is the default. To have it track an FRB entity's world position instead (health bar over an enemy, lock icon over a door), Glue exposes NamedObjectSave.AttachToContainer — a bool property under the object's "Creation" category, only shown when the object's container is an EntitySave and it isn't a list (NamedObjectPropertyGridDisplayer.cs:330-338). A sibling property, AttachToCamera (shown only for Screen-level objects, not Entity), sticks a Gum object to the camera instead of the world.

This is not a plain FRB-attach and not pure coordinate conversion — it's a hybrid, and the mechanism matters if you're debugging drift:

• When AttachToContainer is true on an Entity, codegen wraps the GUE in PositionedObjectGueWrapper(this, gumObject) (GueDerivingClassCodeGenerator.cs:900-919), added via SpriteManager.AddPositionedObject. The wrapper itself calls AttachTo(frbObject) (Embedded\PositionedObjectGueWrapper.cs:52) so it inherits the entity's world position/rotation through FRB's normal attachment tree — but the actual GraphicalUiElement is reparented under an intermediary invisible GumParent GUE (gumObject.Parent = GumParent, line 69), not attached directly.
• Every frame (UpdateGumObject, lines 95-170): compute worldPosition = FrbObject.Position + RelativePosition, convert to screen pixels via MathFunctions.AbsoluteToWindow(...) using Camera.Main, then re-derive Gum canvas coordinates as a ratio of that screen position to camera.DestinationRectangle.Width/Height, scaled by GraphicalUiElement.CanvasWidth/CanvasHeight (lines 108-141) — this is the same ratio-based conversion pattern used for edit-mode zoom in [[glue-live-edit]], not a one-shot pixel offset, so it stays correct as the camera pans/zooms.
• GumParent.Width/Height mirror the FRB object's ScaleX/ScaleY * 2 when it implements IReadOnlyScalable; GumParent.Visible mirrors AbsoluteVisible (lines 154-169).

Known landmines (straight from code comments, not inferred):

• In normal gameplay, position tracks the camera zoom but the Gum object's own visual scale does not — deliberate, so a health bar doesn't shrink to unreadable size when the player zooms out. In the FRB Editor's live-edit mode only, entity-attached Gum content does scale with the editor's zoom control, via a dedicated layer — see [[glue-live-edit]]'s Gum zoom section.
• A layer add/remove operates on the element's contained object, not the GraphicalUiElement reference. AddToManagers/MoveToLayer register Renderables-list membership against mContainedObjectAsIpso (e.g. an InvisibleRenderable for anything deriving ContainerRuntime, like a typical health-bar Component) — never against the GUE reference itself. A raw Layer.Remove(gue)/Layer.Add(gue) therefore silently fails to remove the real registration while adding a second, independent entry, so the same content draws twice. Always move a GUE between layers via gue.MoveToLayer(...), never manual Layer calls on the GUE reference.
• No multiple-camera/multiple-layer support — explicitly flagged // todo - need to support multiple cameras and layers (line 101). If a project has split-screen or multiple FRB layers with independent cameras, world-space attachment is not guaranteed correct.
• 3D/perspective cameras are unimplemented — stubbed // todo - need to figure out 3D (line 144); the position math assumes an orthogonal camera.
• No dedicated "world-space" Gum Layer type. World-space vs screen-space is purely: which FRB Layer the entity/object belongs to, plus whether AttachToContainer is set — not a distinct kind of Gum Layer. Gum Layers are generated 1:1 per FRB Layer (GumLayerCodeGenerator.cs/GumLayerAssociationCodeGenerator.cs).
• Collision follows the wrapper, not the raw GUE. With AttachToContainer set, collision is wired through GumCollidableExtensions.AddCollision(this, wrapperForAttachment) (GumCollidableCodeGenerator.cs:39) — custom collision code must go through PositionedObjectGueWrapper, not the GraphicalUiElement directly, or shapes won't track the attached position.

Vocabulary

• GraphicalUiElement (GUE) — Gum's core runtime UI node; owns position/size/children/rendering.
• Screen (.gusx) — top-level Gum layout, analogous to an FRB Screen.
• Component (.gusx) — reusable, instantiable UI element (like a prefab/control).
• Standard element — Gum's built-in primitive types (Text, Sprite/NineSlice, Container, etc.), generated by StandardsCodeGenerator.cs.
• Instance — a placed occurrence of a Component/Standard element inside a Screen/Component.
• State / Variable — named property sets swappable at runtime; see [[gum-codegen]] for how Glue generates their skip/gating logic.

Related skills

• [[gum-codegen]] — the version-gating skip-list pipelines for standard-element property/state generation (narrower, Glue-only).
• [[glue-live-edit]] — covers Gum's dual-zoom sync (Camera.Main vs Renderer.Camera.Zoom/LayerCameraSettings.Zoom) and other edit-mode-specific Gum behavior.
• [[gum-shared-source]] — how FRB's .csprojs pull in Gum/MonoGameGum source files individually rather than sharing a project, and where the two diverge (e.g. Cursor).