How to use the UI characters from the font?

Pulp
1

Using the typical alphabet is easy, we just type what we want to see in game exactly as we want to see it..
but how do we use the UI characters?

I'm building a menu system where some items in the menu will open another window and others won't. some might toggle the item on the list, or disable it, etc.

I'd like to use the < and > like characters from the UI section of the font. are these available for use in text entry? perhaps there is a character code i'd need to use?

2

They should work just fine, which characters are you trying to use in particular?

say "Some text <with> \"special\" (characters)!"

The code above works for me, note that you have to escape double quote marks with a backslash otherwise it would end the string.

Screen Shot 2022-02-11 at 8.16.52 pm
Screen Shot 2022-02-11 at 8.16.52 pm1232Ă—398 743 Bytes

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3

thanks for the response :slight_smile:

i'm looking at these UI characters:
image

Part of my current experiment includes some fancier-than-expected menus. for example, menus with items that:

  • open a sub-menu (i'd like to place a downward arrow next to this)
  • toggle a feature on/off (i'd like to place the double arrow next to that and update the text once clicked)

i haven't experimented with tiles for this yet, but it feels wonky to consider drawing a tile on to of the native menu implementation. i doubt it would work?

If there might be an escape code to drop these UI widget characters into a normal text string, that would work best for me.

4

Those UI tiles are kind of off in their own tile pool so they can’t be embedded in text. One option is to export the font from Font mode and import the png that produces as regular tiles in Room mode. Then you can embed them in a string as you would other tiles.

Maybe this might save you some work though: menu calls can be nested. Background menus already maintain their cursor position and change its icon to represent its background position in the menu stack.

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5

wait - i had no idea i could embed a tile in a string? do I just put the tilename in {'s like another variable?

huge facepalm here! i thought i tried this and found it wouldn't work!! DOH!
ok, this might save me a LOT of time. thanks!

is there any way to change the contents of the menu at runtime though? my current menu structure includes something like this:

on drawMenu do
    frm = frame
    setup="setup_mnu_{frm}"
    draw="draw_mnu_{frm}"
    call "{setup}"
    call "{draw}"
end

on setup_mnu_0 do
    opt_0_halt="Halt" // player selects to halt their robot's running code
    if g_mode_auto==1 then
        opt_0_mode="Mode:Auto"
    else
        opt_0_mode="Mode:Manual" // player selects to toggle between manual and automatic
    end
    ...
end

on draw_mnu_0 do
    menu at x,y,len,items then
        option "{opt_0_halt}" then
	    mnu_pending = 1 // re-enter menu level 0
	    g_prog_running = 0
	end
	option "{opt_0_mode}" then
	    mnu_pending = 1
	    if g_mode_auto==1 then
	        // we were in auto mode, switch to manual and cancel any running program
	        g_prog_running = 0
	        g_mode_auto = 0
            else
		g_mode_auto = 1
	    end
            ...
end

if mnu_pending==1 then, on the next frame, player.draw will call MENU.drawMenu before clearing the mnu_pending flag.

With the above I can make it look like a menu stays open no matter how many things you click on; and i can modify the text within the menu. so toggling between auto and manual mode looks like it happens while the menu is still open...

for the relatively simple behavior above this might not be a big deal, but i plan to include menus in which a user can define a script of sorts, like this:

  • Prog 0 menu
    • NOP
    • NOP
    • NOP
    • NOP
    • NOP
    • NOP
    • NOP

Then, as the user scrolls through that list they can click any "no operation" NOP entry to open a submenu. from the submenu they will see a list of all the "instructions" they have access to. Picking one of those instructions will replace the original NOP. So after some interaction the above might look like:

  • Prog 0 menu
    • Select tool: Camera // user now has a camera in robot's arm
    • Use tool // use the camera to scan the block in front of you
    • Investigate: Forward // determine the type of block ahead; maybe a wall?
    • Compare: Wall // compare investigate result to "wall"; set a flag for result
    • Decide: Prog 1 // if flag is set, run another program
    • Execute: Prog 2 // if we didn't jump away, run prog 2
    • NOP // we never reach here because we jump away above
6

Embedding a tile in a string is documented under say but will be moving to a separate "String formatting” section in the next push. It looks like this:

say "You got an {embed:apple}Apple!"

As for changing menu options that are already on screen, I’m pretty sure that’s not possible. You can control which options display by nesting them inside if blocks inside the menu block, eg.

menu at x,y then
    option "Fight" then
        // make with the hitting
    end
    if spell_count>0 then
        option "Magic" then
            menu at x2,y then
                if spell_fire==1 then
                    option "Fire" then
                        // make with the burning
                    end
                end
                if spell_ice==1 then
                    option "Ice" then
                        // make with the freezing
                    end
                end
            end
        end
    end
    option "Run" then
        // make with the fleeing
    end
end

But those conditions are evaluated each time the menu is opened, not continuously while the menu is on screen.

Edit: Here’s that link to the new String formatting section of the docs.

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