Building/Switching menus, best practises

LittleGiant · Post by **LittleGiant** » Fri Apr 15, 2005 2:22 am

Alright, essentially i'm looking to figure out the best way to do things.

Say i have a main menu then a character menu then game, so whats the best way to switch between them?

Should i add all then remove all before i switch betwwen any of the differnt states... if so is there an easy way to do this?

Or should i just be hidding all the unused elements? (seems like unneeded overhead especially during game running)

Midnight · Post by **Midnight** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 2:57 am

As far as I understand when something isn't visable it's not being drawn..

I imagine even though it's not being drawn there is something going on in the background but unless you're programming for a 333mhz computer I think you'll be ok.

Not to sound like a (insert swear word here) but I'm pretty sure this is what game collage would teach you. and since I havent gone to collage I wouldn't have a clue personally.

however I believe niko has and his example of switching through "menu's" using different classes like in the techdemo seems to work very well and be the best way.

anyone care to prove me wrong? be my guest I'd like to know the answer to this question my"uneducated"self.

Now that I think about it I'm not even sure niko wrote the techdemo.
One thing I've learned from working with Irrlicht and other projects is how little the people that usually end up helping you know themselfs.

O well I trust someone with more experience will give there 2 cents and make me look a fool but it's all good... it takes all kinds.

keless · Post by **keless** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 3:55 am

*shameless self plug*
easy answer is to take a look at ICE 3.0

http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... php?t=6297

Midnight · Post by **Midnight** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 7:24 pm

ice is the worst example of using the "Best" scene switching with "low" resource.. since it's a whole addon for irrlicht.

however he is right it would be a good reference to copy from and to make project specific.

jox · Post by **jox** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 7:37 pm

The techdemo uses a whole separate (software) device for the menu. It creates a new one for the actual demo.

A good idea would be to create an invisible (transparent) gui element (e.g. GUITab) for each menu and place the elements on them (make them children). You only need to switch visibility of those tabs then.

Regarding overhead, it will be one call to each invisible tab that returns immediately because of the invisibility. The child elements will not even be looked at. So no deal.