A static menu test for creating units.
A dynamic menu test for adding and subtracting whatever you desire.

Words cannot describe this. Please try it.

Questions, comments, and praise are all welcome.

/arrogance

Attachments:

I'll wait for people to comment to download it

I've seen this already, but very nice implementation.
Problems are that it isn't totally user-friendly (There are some pretty slow people out there on B.net who will DEFINATELY not understand the menu and how it works), and that you cannot see messages from other players when in the menu.

And while the starport can produce more units, I suggest that you can make it a bit more user friendly by:
- Having a green arrow (<----) Pointing toward the choice from the right side, and
- Replacing the Starport with a gateway and a Nexus. (Or a Nexus and a barracks). It's easier if you have the 4 directionals on one hotkey, and then the (Select me!) Button on another. Try it, you'll notice that you're faster at it.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 13 2009, 4:38 am by Pyro682.

I have considered this but not implemented. Any message will be pushed to the top of the menu.
The menu only refreshes every 23 deathcounts.

I have not tried different ways of displaying the selected items.

I do not fully agree with you on this one.
There are five commands I need, three directional, one for opening and closing, and one for selection.
The starport fits perfectly imo. Why hotkey more when one will do?
I will try it though just to see.


If this has been done before how come no one uses it?
This is a great idea for just about any map needing selection, especially rpgs.

Congratulations! You've won a prize award for the most well-made test map!!! A joke.

A nice idea.

In addition to 23 DCs wait, I'd suggest using EUD key presses detection to have a button which toggles menu text display, so that players can quickly turn it off when someone messages them.

Also find a way to use a leaderboard text to implement a short-menu for advanced users. For example the current selection could be displayed in leaderboard.

One more note. Less buttons you have easier the navigation is.
You need only 3 buttons:
1. cycle through submenus
2. cycle through items in submenu (make it cyclic too)
3. select an item
Disable other units that player can only build 3. Also, with an eud keypress detection to display/hide menu you dont need the open/close button or you can use 'lift off' as an action to open/close.

EDIT: Probably I'm not very clear. What I mean with EUD keypress detection is that the menu is always open but the button only hides the text. That means one can navigate through menues without looking and recalling the text only to chek whether he is on the right way. Leaderboard display current item will help much with this.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 13 2009, 7:23 am by Wormer.

How many strings does it use?

Also, I glitched yours somehow. I was using the turd as a weapon and then equipped shield 2, and I had the turd both equipped and in my inventory, then I tried to reequip it and the whole thing went funky-cha-cha on me. Pretty cool, but if it uses a bazillion strings, not practical for an rpg. Especially the spells. If I need to click the hotkey, then wraith, then battlecruiser 3 times, then dropship, then dropship again, to use the spell/potion I need I might be dead first. Of course, I could have the menu open already, but then I can't see what people are saying, or I might have been doing something else at the time and wasn't immediately at my spell. Still pretty cool though.

But wormer, if he uses liftoff to toggle open/close, how will he get the stupid thing to land quick enough? If you replace the whole starport with triggers, he'll need to re-hotkey.

Oh really, haven't thought.

It glitched for me too


I dont know about this implementation, but it does not rquire to use bazillion of strings. You can compress it very well. Obviously, you need a sring for each submenu, but you can use units names as labes for items and you can handle the current selection like this:

    item 1
>
    item 2
    item 3
    ...

or you can have the currently selected item always on top.

That is true. Probably here you need a second factory for 5 "hotkeys" which could be assigned to items in menu. Also an idea of having the menu always open (without displaying text) will give you an additional "hotkey" (a use button for current selection) in the menu factory itself.

EDIT: A random idea. Cycling only through non empty slots will help.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 13 2009, 7:42 am by Wormer.

My original intention was to put this in a turn based battle system RPG.
Instead I ended up making this test map just to see it in action. I know that
it is kinda buggy because this is my first big project with lots of death counts.
Also, adding binary count-offs will be required. Those glitches are probably from
doing stuff too quickly which will break this system as of right now.

I will not use EUD's because they can be patched out and macs will desync.
Only problem with "cyclic" is if you over shoot what you want to select.
Then you have to go all the way back around. I will look into the leaderboard
thing and I have an idea for allowing messages to be seen.

Vrael got it right with the re-hot keying. I tried it and found that out.

Rough guess on string count for the dynamic inventory is around 30 for this demo.
Each item after that will use 2.

Wormer how did you get that glitch to happen?

I plan on doing a complete re-haul of the functions because well really
its one big jumbled function right now.
Expect version 2 next week. Give me all the ideas you can think of.

EDIT: Non empty slots is a great idea. Now that i think of it
how many inventory slots should a person have? How bout
assigning hot keys to favorite items regardless of where they
are in the inventory.

That does not matter anyways.

You see... the way I am suggesting to use EUDs is only for display text. Display text is not synched between players, so they wont ever desync. The problem with EUDs in multiplayer is that you cant do almost anything practically sutable. Their usage for display text is one of those few thigns you can do safely. If you're interested in EUD keys detection consider the topic: http://www.staredit.net/133156/.

How often do you overshoot things? To my mind simplicity is prime in this case. Non empty slots cycling will also help with this.

No idea It seems I simply pick up the "Bottle Shard" thing, used it... probably used spell, and then this happened. I've not done really much.

This really depends on an RPG and what you want to get. Instead of "slots", you can restrict bag's maximum "size" and make items occupy different space.

Yup, a nice idea. As I've already said I think this should be a separate factory only with "hotkeys".

EDIT: Well if you dont want to use EUDs one more button is accepable. But in my opinion it should *just* turn text off without actually closeing the menu.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 13 2009, 11:05 am by Wormer.

I will look into EUD conditions and hiding the display text.

Without going into the map, it sounds very much like the kind of selection system that Tuxedo-Templar used in "Trigger Happy D."

I found it useful, but it was not anywhere close to newb friendly.

So essentially this is a constant-display menu system, right? I can't open the map (no SC and editor) so I don't know how it works exactly. This has been done before by several people (including myself), so if you need any help, feel free to PM me. You might find this useful.

I made a Vessel in while "Use" was selected, and the vessel didn't disappear.

Here's a way to save strings:
Use a display text for every line rather than the whole text, and just clear the screen and display the lines of text in the order and color you want.

Very very nice.
Bug = I equiped shield 1, then found and equiped shield 2, shield 1 went to my inventory, but then i equiped shield 1 again and shield 2 didnt went anywhere and dissapeared : o

Wow! I just realized how to save strings space for this system even more! It is bad editors don't support such a function yet

You need 2 strings for each item. One colored and the other with no color. You place the next string data in the strings data area: "<03>Item". Now you have 2 strings, first is colored and starts from the the '<03>' byte and the second is uncolored and starts from the byte with the letter 'I'. Both strings reuse the same string data bytes.

Someone should tell SI to insert such an option to manually choose the place where the string starts...

EDIT: or better use an effect of gray color: "<05><06>R<04>a<03>i<02>n<0E>b<03>o<04>w <11>I<0F>t<19>e<1F>m", when one points the first byte the string is just gray, when points the second byte it becomes colored.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Mar 21 2009, 9:56 pm by Wormer.

Those colour characters take up bytes.

Yes, they do. So what? Haven't got the point of your answer.

Display the menu current selection string in leaderboard! I mean the string: "[items] spells effects" That will be so cool =)

I really don't like how you made this by using buildings. It's a nice idea, but you should take notes from JaFF who posted in this topic the link to a map with a kick-ass menu system. And also, his only consumes less than I think 25% of strings, which isn't a lot for how dynamic his menu is.