2 scripting questions, Button Types and keeping saved prefs.

Hi guys,

As a part of Mercury's UI rewrite, I am in need of dropdown menus. I notice that PQ and Platinum 1.50 use these in the PlayMissionGui. Would this be controlled by the ButtonType control or is the "closed dropdown = dropdwn_n, open = dropdwn_h" etc... I want to be able to click and select items in the dropdown.

Secondly, how would I make the Menu backgrounds the last played level? Would these be these a "link" to prefs.cs?

Thanks,

- theMarble

The dropdown menus in MBP/PQ are a little fancier than a normal gui control, and you can do something similar with a little scripting. The general idea is:

* The menu itself is a separate gui element (usually a GuiBitmapCtrl containing a GuiTextListCtrl), and is normally not visible
* When you click the button it shows the menu with YourMenuName.setVisible(true);
* When you choose an option in the menu, it hides the menu with YourMenuName.setVisible(false);

If scripting that is too much, you can instead make a new dialog for each dropdown, and just show it with Canvas.pushDialog(YourNewDialog); and hide it with Canvas.popDialog(YourNewDialog); You can copy one of the built-in dialogs like ExitGameDlg as a starting point.


For menu backgrounds you have to change the bitmap on every gui in their onWake functions. e.g. In MainMenuGui::onWake(), you would need something like MainMenuGui.setBitmap("marble/data/missions/beginner/movement.jpg"); You would also need to save the last played level to a variable when you change levels. I would recommend doing that in PM_setSelected in PlayMissionGui. If your variable starts with $pref:: it will be saved in prefs.cs and loaded when the game starts up. Also check out what PM_preview does, as it's the preview image and you'll want to do something similar with the menu backgrounds.

Best of luck with the scripting, hopefully this helps!