Character Selection Menu

Whatexists

Are there any good tutorials for creating a menu to handle selecting which character to play as? e.g. for picking your character at the start of the game (Or, alternatively, just for selecting which party members are in your active group or not.)

I'm trying to figure out how to do a carousel of full-body shots of the potential characters that you can cycle through (with the ones that are not unlocked blacked out), with stats and descriptions to one side. But I haven't created a menu like this before and wouldn't mind a few references or a little help.

gamingislove

This sounds more like a job for some custom scripts ... at least for the carousel stuff.

In ORK, you could either use a Choice type dialogue for selecting stuff, or e.g. have an event ineraction on each of the displayed characters that start the selection process (e.g. adding the combatant to the player group to display the stats and showing some dialogues to confirm/select stuff).

Whatexists

Alright. I seem to have misunderstood my artist slightly. It seems that a more normal log type menu, with a number of options that you can click on and an info box that gives you different info based on which option you've clicked on (like the log menu you set up in t. With a few exceptions:

Can the options be listed horizontally instead of vertically? (seems like this can be done by setting the GUI boxes settings for choices to position instead of list and custom choosing the positions)
Can the options be represented by images instead of text, and can those images change depending on whether they are the currently selected one?
Is there a way to set it so the currently selected choice always moves to the top of the list?
Is there a way to include a portrait that changes based on the currently selected one in a log type menu?

gamingislove

1) Yes, that's done with the Choice Settings of the GUI box. You need to set the number of Choice Columns you want to have and set the Column Fill to Horizontal (column fill is only available when more than 1 column is set).

2) Images can be used, e.g. just set up an icon for that choice, or use text codes to add an icon/image. Different image if it's selected is not possible, though.

3) No.

4) No.

Also, a log menu doesn't really allow you to choose anything and just displays information - so you can't really have any character selection results from that.

Something you could do would be setting up an event with a series of dialogues. Based on what you selected in a dialogue, you could display it again with the previously selected choice using a different image (#2) and having it on top of the list (#3). Displaying the info for that selected choice can be done by showing another dialogue (before showing the choice dialogue again), using type Message and disabling Wait. Make sure to use a Close All Dialogues node when selecting a different choice (and at the end of the event) to close the dialogues that are kept open.

Whatexists

I can give that a try.

Also I realized after posting that that log type menus weren't really what I was going for. It'd have to be more like a combatant group menu, or group selection menu. One of those can be used to let the player pick who is a member of their active battle group right?

gamingislove

Yes, a Group menu screen part can be used for that.

You can also use a Combatant Selection Dialogue node, which uses selected data. You'd first add combatants that should be available to selected data, the dialogue will store the combatant of the selected choice into another (defined) selected data for further use in the following nodes.

Whatexists

That's potentially very interesting. Do you have a worked example or a tutorial that's similar for doing that?

gamingislove

No, not really - it's pretty straight forward, though.

First, use Select Combatant nodes to add combatants to a selected data key (e.g. combatants could be on actors that are already in your scene, via Add Combatant component, or added to the player group).

Next, use a Combatant Selection Dialogue that display the combatant form that selected data key and stores the selected one in a different key.

Afterwards, use the selected combatant in other nodes, e.g. to join the active player group.

Whatexists

Thanks! I'll give that a try and the group menu a try and see which one I like more for long term stuff. The game is probably going to need a group menu anyways for adding and removing party members later. But am I right that I'll need to add all of the potential characters to the Player Group first, either way?

gamingislove

Either that, or add them to game objects in the scene and add them via actors.