Visual Basic Overlay

[Maulth]

Hey all, I've recently begun learning visual basic using visual basic express 2008 with plans to purchase visual studio 2008 (it'll be worth it as I've used C++ for a very long time, I just wanted to learn vb and vb.net). What I'm very interested in right now is creating an application that will create an overlay while another application is running. Say I am playing a game, and I want this program to overlay my game once I enter a key combination such as ctrl+s without minimizing my game/application. Is this possible? If so, does anyone mind pointing me in the direction of where I can learn to being the structure for this. PLEASE do not hand me the source code, I really need to learn to do this myself, I would just like some insight as to if it is possible, and if it is, where I may begin learning about it. Thank you.

[GeekByChoiCe]

i've tried something similar and found out that the "TopMost" property from the application will not show the form while you are ingame. i found two possibilities.
1. create a directX/openGL (depends on your game) window to overlay your game or
2. do the easy way (which i did choose) and just write on the current game window. for this you have to look how to find the game window and using the drawing.2D namespace.

[Maulth]

1. create a directX/openGL (depends on your game) window to overlay your game or
2. do the easy way (which i did choose) and just write on the current game window. for this you have to look how to find the game window and using the drawing.2D namespace.

Thank you for both of those. I will try the first, although I'm going to have to make some sort of login hook. My goal is to create an easy lookup application for Combat Arms that will let you directly connect to a database to see if someone or a gaming clan is a known "dirty" (hacking clan/user) so that you can avoid playing with/against them.

[TomW]

You can set you form's topmost property to true, to keep it above other forms. You can set the form's opacity property by percentage to see thru your form.

[Maulth]

You can set you form's topmost property to true, to keep it above other forms. You can set the form's opacity property by percentage to see thru your form.

That would work ONLY if I was trying to make a specific form show above other forms in the SAME application, right?

[GeekByChoiCe]

that works for all applications but not if they run in fullscreen.
you might see a little flickering of your form on your game screen but thats it.