Stu's Rusty Bucket

Fishguts I : Menu System

Started work on the menu system last night. I’m opting for a AGI like menubar at the top when you hit a key so you will get a

Screen will be dimmed and along the top will be a white bar with black text and several main actions (Game, Action, Options, etc)

Game
-> Save
-> Quit
-> Quit & Save
-> About

Action
-> Items
-> Magic
-> Inspect
-> Transact
-> Attack
-> Board/Disembark
-> Yell

Options
-> Toggle Sound
-> Button Config

Button Config will let you re-arrange whats mapped to the main buttons

L1          R1
      X
    A   B
      Y

Select   Start

by default

b - attack + direction
a - transact + direction if more than one transactable player is adjacent to you
y - use item
x - spell + spell quick-combo button + optional direction
L1 - Equip/Unequip item
R1 - Spell List
start - popup menu in game menu
select - popup menu in action menu

Because I’ve gone for larger tilemaps for a handheld (which for the sequel perhaps I’ll go back down to 16x16 size instead of 24x24) I dont want a windowed interface ala Questron II/LoA/LoB.

Ive been playing some Questron II on the vice C64 emu to see how it looks on the small screen, and its interface looks just fine considering its size.

Right now the main map is 9x13 tiles (top row is used for status info) which his 4 vertically either side of the player, and 6 horizontally either side of the player.

Button Config may go away as an option or not…

Ive also go a good idea for implementing the talking…

bottom half of screen will be split in two panes, on left will be a list of ‘known’ keywords (keywords that characters give you in their text) and on the right pane will be a keyobard that you can enter your own words in.

If the keyword implementation works as well as I hope I program it, they keyboard option may go away. Maybe list of most commonly used keywords on the left in a narrow list, and on the right, an expanded alphabetically sorted list of keywords you know.