I'm going to mostly ask about if my code can be cleaned up and if my ideas are at all feasible. I had a pause menu idea for my game, and had something kinda working how I wanted. For an example of what I'm aiming for in terms of presentation... a SLIGHT idea of what I'm aiming for, I worked something out in this .cap in this topic.
But what I want to ultimately do is something like this:
<img src="http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j42/Dreamer_Kisai/PauseMenuExample1-Normal.jpg">
If you try out the .cap, you'll see I have a basic video gamey menu selecting going on there. That highlighter thing changes size, and even moves from item to item. I'm pretty sure the way I'm doing it is WAY messier than something someone else can come up with.
But, moving on, we see here...
<img src="http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j42/Dreamer_Kisai/PauseMenuExample2-CharacterSelectio.jpg">
We press "confirm" on "Character" and we see the list of characters we can switch to mid-gameplay.
If we were to scroll down to "Weapon" and press "confirm"...
<img src="http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j42/Dreamer_Kisai/PauseMenuExample3-WeaponSelection.jpg">
The character selection closes up, and the weapon selection opens up. These are just... placeholder icons... whatever. Just to give you an idea of how things would go. And the highlighter thingy automatically highlights the first weapon in the list, since there's no reason for it to be highlighting "Weapon" anymore.
If we press up, the highlighter hovers over "Character". Press down, it highlights "Items". And if it returns to the weapons, it just highlights the weapon choices.
<img src="http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j42/Dreamer_Kisai/PauseMenuExample4-ItemsSelection.jpg">
Here's where I think things might get REALLY complicated. An expansion of the menu into options the player might not have access to! I thought about this for awhile, and came upon the realization that in Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy games, if you go into the Item menu, there's several pages of blank lines that you can put the cursor over... But there's nothing there. I realised the programmers were making things easier by having an Item menu that has a set size, big enough to accomodate every possible collectable item in the game.
I would have to do the same I guess, by having a preset amount of blank spaces, and enough blank spaces to hold all the possible items.
Of course, how I'll do this in such a way that the items can be in ANY order, depending on acquisition, is beyond me. But then again, this whole plan is beyond my abilities. ;_; Hence why I'm asking if it's even POSSIBLE. —@
The highlighter thingy, as expected, highlights the first available item now, and its shape changes to accomodate the text size of the items as well.
<img src="http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j42/Dreamer_Kisai/PauseMenuExample5-OptionsExpansion.jpg">
Nevermind that the text would scroll down past the border. I'll do a little "erase" trick deadeye showed me for that.
But here, we not only have an expansion for OTHER selectable things... but...
<img src="http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j42/Dreamer_Kisai/PauseMenuExample6-OptionsExpansionE.jpg">
It becomes even more involved when selecting one of the possible customization options, expanding even further.
I'm not sure if these ideas are even possible, and my ideas get worse. —@; Before that though, I assume that there will need to be some preset re-positioning of all the text below whatever is currently selected. For example, you select "Weapon" and an event will need to fix the position of all the text below it a lower position.
I have no idea how I'll have the game keep track of... any of this... But here's how my idea gets worse...
For one, did you see "Resolution" there? I like full customizablity, so I'm going to allow the player to change the resolution of the game, weather it's full screen, or windowed, to a number of preset resolutions, and even allow for a custom resolution option, typing in whatever they want.
This would mess up this little pause screen window severely, either making it too big, or too small, so I wanna do something where the modal layout's size changes to that of the edges of the screen, and the borders of the menu change size AND position to match that, meaning there'll be an event to always say, "Put the borders and modal at THIS position and size porprotionate to the window.", keeping track of that "window edge" stuff or whatever.
And lastly, as if changing that highlighter thing's size and position to match the text wasn't bad enough, I wanna do a graphic with rounded edges, which probably means a seperate background tile for each corner, and each edge, and will have to move to the edges of the text, and expand in size as well, to make it look like an option is highlighted...
But that's enough for the MORE complicated stuff. This along sounds crazy as is. —@; Does anyone think this might be possible? Or should I just give up or something. ;.; If all else fails, I might end up having to ask someone to try making this for me. ><; But that can't work... What if there are any changes in the game design? New additions and whatnot? The menu will have to be tweaked to go with that!
But really, a menu like this, drop down options and stuff like that... Possible?
And as far as my more complicated ideas to go with this... Possible? I have no idea. ;_;