New Menu

[JRawkSteady]

Is it possible to create an event where when your PC checks his/her computer and a new screen pops up where he can check email, do to pre-approved websites, look at the weather, and other things?

I'm assuming I would have to play with the pre-written scripts for the menus, but I'm not positive on how to put this event to work. Any ideas?

[Valkysas]

Re: New Menu

I know you can do it (something similar was done with the PDA in The Faith of One), but I've got no idea how.

[thetruecoolness]

Re: New Menu

Well in short, yes but you will have to do a lot of menus and setup some kind of good text display (either through VFX or Text Boxes more than likely). If you give some more specifics on how you want this to work we could help you more, like do you want it to look like an actual website (better get well aquainted with the VFX editor if you do), or what kind of thing do you want.

If you just want menus use the menu commands and sort on User Input (I believe), then their choice is 1-however many choices you had, or 0 if they exited out of your menu. There should be something about this in the tips and tricks thread but if not I will post an example menu thread in here sometime tomorrow if you need more help.

So just give a little more about what you're going for, and how you want it to look/ how the user should interact with it. Because instead of menus you can program the square button to bring up a "menu" where the user presses a button (up, down, x, triangle, etc.) to enter a certain site / check the weather / whatever.

[JRawkSteady]

Re: New Menu

Wow, thanks so much for taking the time!

Well, I'm looking to have sort of an interface with the player's computer where you can check the news, your email, message boards... I'm not looking to go into too much detail with the websites, but I do need it to broadcast certain information that will guide the player along.

Here are two situations:

1) The player can check one of three different message boards to get up-to-date information on different aspects of the game. A post may read "I just read the saddest thing... Did you hear that a woman died while getting a haircut at Supercuts yesterday?" Supercuts will be closed until the player reads this...then he can sneak in.

2) The player is on the trail of a criminal he's been searching for. He has just recieved a password that allows him to hack into secret police files. He must go online to access the website. While he's on, he can follow the clues he has recieved to track down the criminal's name.

That's just some of the things I would like to be able to do. It seems fairly doable with the VFX editor, but I'm not sure how to make a cursor or how to highlight what I want to pick... The only thing I know will definitely work is creating a DOS OS, but that's my last resort. Also, I would like for the player to be able to re-read the messages upon revisting the message boards and email. Do you think this is all asking too much?

[thetruecoolness]

Re: New Menu

OK I see what you want to do. This is going to get a bit complicated with having a cursor but is it completely doable as I already have done a cursor in my custom menu. Now doing it is the hard part as it will require a good understanding of duplicate events and some clever layout if you want to go the VFX route. I can help you by putting up something similar to mine but don't expect this for a few days.

Of course you can just use the Multiple Choice command to do the menu if you want something that works, but won't be very good for changes.

And another way to go is with Text Boxes. A couple of things to remember is you can only have 10 text boxes on the screen at any time, so if you have a cursor only nine entries can be in your menu, unless you put all the entries in the menu. Then you can have an action script on the map which will allow the user to press up/down to move the cursor by changing a variable.

So you have an Event with a motion script which is this
--- Action Script
SB: Repeat: Flag [Off(fixed)] = Off
-SB: Repeat: Flag [menu]=On
--Input: Buttons 0F wait
--SB: Condition [User Button]= 0 (Up)
--[Cursor Pos] = [Cursor Pos] + 1
--SB: end
--SB: Condition [User Input] = 1 (Down)
--[Cursor Pos] = [Cursor Pos] - 1
--SB: end
--Script Call [Update Cursor]
-SB: end
SB: End

Then your cursor placement would be this

---Content Script (or action doesn't matter) [Update Cursor]
Close Text Box
Wait: 2F // Solves crashing issue when refreshing text boxes too fast
Sort [Cursor Pos]
-Apply if 0
-Text Box 0 (x), 0 (y) ">"
-SB: To End
-...
-Apply if 9
-Text Box 0, 30 <10 * 3>
SB: End
Script Call [Refresh Menu]

So you will need to check the Cursor Pos Variable so it either goes back to the top when it goes over, or stays at the top and bottom (basically when the cursor pos is < 0 or > 9 (or how ever many choices you have). The Refresh Menu script will redisplay all the Text Boxes for the current Menu (email, boards, etc). If you make the text box background transparent (in Game Settings I believe) you can make your own backgrounds in the VFX editor (NOTE: you will also need one for the Message window and regular game menus as well, so this might be too much work for such a small gain). So this system will be more flexible to changes since each menu entry can be chosen from a script by just changing which text box is displayed, unlike the Multiple Choice script command.

Once again any questions keep em coming, and thanks for clarifying it makes coming up with suggestions easier.

[JRawkSteady]

Re: New Menu

Thanks for your reply (sorry I wasn't able to respond sooner)...This is very very helpful!! I am going to try working on this a bit and if I have any further questions I will return. THANKS SO MUCH!