This may just be a terminology issue for me... My next task on our game is to make a screen where the player can see some information on units and do some manipulation if he wants. The various information should be grouped an arranged in an easy-to-understand and clear method. And that method will need a style which fits the game and isn't hard to read.

Now, I'm thinking there has to be library out there already for this kind of stuff. It can't be as inflexible as making a separate png or jpg for each and every sub-window on the screen. Certainly there's a way to say this style(like a font), rectangle, in this dimensions. It's possibly simple, but even if it's not it is certainly frequently necessary. So I google for...GUI's? I'm not sure that's right, because when I do I get ugly office stuff like this (not.jpg), and not things like (yes1.jpg)(yes2.jpg).

It may be worth checking xWinForm and Ruminate, both C# afaik. Can't really tell you how much trouble it would be to break down the appearance of the interface created with these.

If you want a really specific look, you may end up having to writing one yourself.

The two interfaces that you showed would need to be created using art assets. Something like http://sourceforge.net/projects/primitives2d/ may help though.

XNA has a drawString ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb447673.aspx ) method you can use for drawing text. Those graphics could be using bitmap fonts as well. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2007/04/26/bitmap-fonts-in-xna.aspx

Do some gui, screen manager, event and button tutorials for your preferred language so you understand how you can get things done. It's not really hard to make a simple but effective system on your own. If you can make a descent game you are more then capable of creating a menu. Again there are many ways to go about this i'd suggest you create a base Menu class and a base Button class and derive all your different screens and buttons from there. If you have not done so learn some about inheritance, especially with menu's it is very practical to use this knowledge since menu's function very repetitive.

Do some gui, screen manager, event and button tutorials for your preferred language so you understand how you can get things done. It's not really hard to make a simple but effective system on your own. If you can make a descent game you are more then capable of creating a menu. Again there are many ways to go about this i'd suggest you create a base Menu class and a base Button class and derive all your different screens and buttons from there. If you have not done so learn some about inheritance, especially with menu's it is very practical to use this knowledge since menu's function very repetitive.

I know I could do it, but that's the point of libraries and sharing, isn't it? To not spend time recreating basic components over and over again. Now, if making segregated windows/areas within the game screen is something people only do for themselves and don't share, so be it. I can save myself some time and stop looking for it. But I don't see such a development being so awesome that one would be competitive about it and not share it.

"I have silver, round-cornered boxes to group my on-screen info. My boxes will bring all the players to my yard!! And the other developers will just have to figure it out on their own! Muahahahahahah!!!"

Yeah, I just don't see it nor understand it.

The two interfaces that you showed would need to be created using art assets. Something like http://sourceforge.net/projects/primitives2d/ may help though.

XNA has a drawString ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb447673.aspx ) method you can use for drawing text. Those graphics could be using bitmap fonts as well. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2007/04/26/bitmap-fonts-in-xna.aspx

How would you get the boxes out of a font?

It may be worth checking xWinForm and Ruminate, both C# afaik. Can't really tell you how much trouble it would be to break down the appearance of the interface created with these.

If you want a really specific look, you may end up having to writing one yourself.

Yeah, I dl'ed Ruminate yesterday, haven't gotten to look at it much yet, busy all last night.

I guarantee those "rounded boxes" were drawn by an artist and are likely a png file with transparency. Each game has a different look and feel. Now you can use the xWinForm toolkit you showed that looks like office, and skin it to match the look of your game, however you still need the art skills to make it look how you want.

GUI toolkits mostly handle the technical side of things such as handling user input, storing data structures for the widget, ect. The look of the widget is typically a matter of style. For instance Qt (a popular widget toolkit for making c++ apps) has stylesheets. Even in HTML you have CSS to style websites how you want..