7.- CREATING A MENU

Menus are time consuming but are easy to create, you just have to focus on matching the same numbers in the configurations (youll understand what I mean while you read)

Lets create a MENU in the SCENES AND MENUS panel and load the image you will use as background in the properties panel, for this tutorial I created this one:

We also establish a cursor for the MENU, I selected the TAKE cursor and also established the font (you can create specific fonts for each character and menu)

Now we are going to create the SAVEGAME-AREAS of all the 6 boxes I created in the menu image, These areas will contain the screenshots of the scenes where you saved your games.

Now we add the SAVE button object, we establish the image of the button, then move it to its final place, and create the polygonal object.

We take this time and create the action for this button, so we go to the ACTIONS panel and add an action for the LEFT CLICK , the action part will be set to LOAD/SAVE game with the SAVE option since its the SAVE button.

Create the same procedure for the LOAD and resume Buttons, but choose LOAD in the Load button action part, and for the RESUME button use the CHANGE TO SCENE OF A CHARACTER action part, so it returns to the scene again.

Now we are going to create the savegame selection areas, for this we create an image of the highlight effect with the transparent inside, we create a new scene object and name it POSITION_ON_1, load the image and place it in the first box area. Then we create its polygon area so it can become clickable.

Repeat this procedure for the other 5 boxes.

Now we are going to create 6 new objects called POSITION_(number) One for each box, and in the CONDITIONS panel we are going to create one condition for each POSITION named respectively to its number. That means, POSITION_1 will have a condition called POSITION_1_ACTIVE?, POSITION_2 will have a condition called POSITION_2_ACTIVE?, and so forth. ALL of these conditions must be Variables set as FALSE, This means the selection images well not be displayed unless they change their condition to TRUE.

Now we go to the ACTIONS panel for each POSITION_(number) and create six actions, all similar of CHANGE CONDITION POSITION_(1,2,3,4,5,6)_ACTIVE? to FALSE with the exception of the condition of the same position.

This means

.-POSITION_1 will have every CHANGE CONDITION POSITION_(2,3,4,5,6)_ACTIVE? to FALSE except the CHANGE CONDITION POSITION_1_ACTIVE which will be TRUE.

.-POSITION_2 will have every CHANGE CONDITION POSITION_(1,3,4,5,6)_ACTIVE? to FALSE except the CHANGE CONDITION POSITION_2_ACTIVE which will be TRUE.

.-POSITION_3 will have every CHANGE CONDITION POSITION_(1,2,4,5,6)_ACTIVE? to FALSE except the CHANGE CONDITION POSITION_3_ACTIVE which will be TRUE.

And so forth with the rest

NOW we select the POSITION_ON_(1,2,3,4,5,6) and under PROPERTIES we are going to establish the condition we created of the POSITION_ of the same number.

This means:

POSITION_ON_1 will have the condition POSITION_1_ACTIVE? in its properties.

POSITION_ON_2 will have the condition POSITION_2_ACTIVE? in its properties.

POSITION_ON_3 will have the condition POSITION_3_ACTIVE? in its properties.

POSITION_ON_4 will have the condition POSITION_4_ACTIVE? in its properties.

POSITION_ON_5 will have the condition POSITION_5_ACTIVE? in its properties.

POSITION_ON_6 will have the condition POSITION_6_ACTIVE? in its properties.

Now, to load the MENU we are going to create a KEY for it, so go to the GAME panel and in the KEY ACTIONS tab create a new action for the F1 key.

The action part should be SHOW SCENE/MENU and the MENU should be selected.

That is all there is to it for creating MENUS, do a SAVE-RUN and test it.