Talk:Plan for main menu customization

Bob the Hamster: That was me. Forgot to log in.

The Mad Cacti: Horray, this is finally happening. Lets pin down the feature list; I think all of these are reasonable:

Wasn't there a plan to have menus attachable to textboxes? Or the other way around? If so, it would be nice to have the ability to have scripts running while the menu (and associated textbox) is up. For compatibility, there'd have to be an option whether or not the game pauses during the menu, or just force the game to pause on the main menu. Menus attached to textboxes could display under the textbox (like the choice menu).

Anyway, if scripts can run during a menu, then we should have script hooks for the menu opening and moving the cursor, and add a bunch of commands to edit the currently displayed menu (for example, there might be unselected items showing pieces of data, or even something as complex a menu to select 3 heroes out of a set, where a script disables everything else once you have 3) (This reminds me of a feature request: a general bitset to have all NPCs stop walking while a textbox is up)

What about display features for menus? Things like the position of the menu (left and right aligned text?), and having rectangles, sprites, textboxes on screen. Most of these will have to wait for later, I guess we should ignore for now.

And it would be nice you could set items to change appearance (colour) based on tags. Think of a list of bitsets (see below): the bitsets would change colour depending on a tag, and would still be hideable disableable with another tag. Also, I don't see any reason we can't hope to eventually allow a menu and one of its sub menus to be onscreen at once. A menu builder for this might be kind of complex.

Also, more suggestions: menu items to set tags, and an option for whether the menu should close as soon as you choose an item (selecting a submenu and then quitting from that menu wouldn't go back; this would let you create both a menu of toggleable bitsets and a multichoice menu which sets tags).

Bob the Hamster: I do want menus to be callable from text boxes, and for text boxes to be callable from menus.

I had forgotten about allowing scripts to continue to run while the menu is up, but I can allow for that. It shouldn't really make it any harder to implement.

As for display features, I won't implement special formatting of menus just yet. That can wait for the rectangle collection editor

As for more than one memu on screen at a time, I will keep that in mind. I don't think we need it right away, but I will try to avoid design decisions that will make that more difficult later.

Setting tags on selecting a menu item, noted.

An option to choose whether a menu item returns back to the menu when you are done, also noted... *thinking... thinking...* I guess that won't be too hard.

The Mad Cacti: How are you meant to create an item that sets a tag but otherwise does nothing (or closes the menu, depending on that bit)? Will labels with the set tag bit be selectable? Prehaps the best solution is to have both selectable and unselectable labels (as different types?)

Also, perhaps we need two different options: toggle tag, and set tag. Menus of toggleable options aren't really possible otherwise. I don't think it would make sense to allow both to be used at once, though.

Mystic You mention that menu items that are disabled should be invisible or shouldn't show up at all, but how about ones that look completely normal, only the cursor skips over them? I would like that, personally.

The Mad Cacti: That's a very natural feature to have and has been requested often. It's not straightforward to add, but it is on the TODO list (though I don't think it's actually filed on bugzilla?).

Bob the Hamster: It is on bugzilla: Bug 573 Option to skip over non-selectable menu items