In-Game Menu and Game Logs

Newbie & Debugging Questions
#1

Hi guys,

Been a while since my last post, life is busy.

I am building a tiles-based game, you can download a .JAR of it from the link below (nothing big yet):

I want to implement a log menu at the bottom of game screen where, say, when the user open a door it will write that a door was opened. I imagine that to do so I have to add a layer to my tiled map with screen shown, is that the right way? Specially that I will later have to move the camera with the player movement to show the rest of the map.

The other thing is the implementation of in-game menu like a menu that pops-up when I open a chest containing the items inside it (the map have to be still shown). Should I make 2 layers for such thing with one containing the menu structure and one with the objects (because I want to hide the tile of the object when the player take it.

Thanks in advance.

#2

As the questions are quite vague, the post kinda seems like you want someone to write the code for you. I doubt you meant it this way, but that’s probably why you haven’t gotten any replies.

Programming isn’t one size fits all, whatever works for your project is the right way :point: Anyways, are you using a library? If so, which one? Assuming you are using libGDX, I would either add another camera that stays stationary, and draw all of your GUI inside of that, or you could look into scene2d which would make drawing text(and general GUI stuff) much less painful.

#3

Well, some times people get me wrong most probably because English isn’t my first language.

I am a beginner using libGDX, so in my questions I try to use the experience of more advanced users to understand what structures are more likely to operate flawlessly for some function or something.

Check the below picture:

1366×733 380 KB

I wanted to add to my game a pop-up menu and a log menu like in that picture, my question was is this implemented by adding a layer to the tiled map that contain them? Or should I build actors and so on using scene2d to do those menues to allow for them to be dragged and controlled better?

#4

No, because then you would probably end up offsetting the GUI geometry on the CPU, which would add a lot of unnecessary complexity to your code. I would probably go with scene2d and improve it to support whatever you need, because its got so much tedious code already written. If you really want to roll your own GUI, I would make a separate camera for that only and do your drawing in there, not in another tilemap layer.