Creating layers out of laziness

Ok, this title might sound a bit weird, but I have to say that this is exactly what I am trying to do.

A bit of context

I recently started working on a project of mine that I've been planning to do for a very long time and that I spent a lot of energy preparing. In fact the only reason Spritefont Deluxe, Skin it and a few other free addons I made even exist. So let's say that I put a lot of thought into this. Way more than the healthy amount.

Anyway, as I started working, me and my friend and collaborator started discussing the technical part of the UI. The "how", now that the "what" was cleared out.

There are tons of ways to make UI elements for your game, but one of my favourite ways is to use a given 3rd party addon pack that makes the whole process of creating UI a lot easier.

That addon pack, as awesome as it is has a few issues that come with its ease of use. When creating a dialog window, you need to set it on its own layer. This is so the addon can know which objects are on the dialog box or not (aka every object from the same layer is on it). This is great, but this means that in a complex UI environment where I need a few dialog boxes I need to add as many layers to every layout that uses that UI.

I don't know you, but adding lots of global overridden layers to every layout that needs my menus on them sounds like boring stuff to me. So boring I'd rather find a solution that might break the engine than actually doing this.

Break the engine?

Yeah don't worry about it.

Basically here's the catch. I'm too lazy to add the layers to every layout, so I'd rather have a system doing that for me. I can't make a system that adds the layer in the editor, and nothing in the SDK indicates that this is even possible.

So it's not possible?

Listen. I'm not adding those layers by hand alright? Who do you think I am? Some sort of hard working indie game developer?

I knew that doing very advanced stuff with the engine was possible thanks to Toby and his amazing Preloader plugin. Follow him on Twitter btw: twitter.com/TobyReeno and check his plugin on the store: scirra.com/store/construct2-plugins/mmpreloader-layout-preloader-3620

His plugin meant that through some unconventionnal use of the available SDK, some deep digging in the runtime code and some patience, it was possible to do some pretty cool stuff.

So I started doing just that. I started reading the engine's code.

It's possible then?

Yes. No. Kind of? I managed to create new empty layers and copy layers from other layouts just fine using this code:

var layout = this.runtime.running_layout;
var layer = this.runtime.layouts_by_index[1].layers[0]; // whatever method you use to get other layers.
//You can also create a new layer by calling the constructor in cr
layer = new cr.layer(layout, layerData) // With layerData being an array containing all of the layer's base info. You can get a look at what it looks like by logging the variable m in the Layer's constructor in layout.js
layer.number = layout.layers.length;
cr.seal(layer);
layout.layers.push(layer);