Love2D Game Menu

[AlchemistArea]

I am not a very experienced programmer at all, I just started learning LOVE2D yesterday. I used tutorials from Sockmunkee Dev, if you know who he is. However, the menu for the game he wanted to make didn't have any sub-menus, and the main menu for the game I want to make, however, has a couple of sub-menus; Options and About. However, when I try to spawn and draw buttons for either of those sub-menus, the buttons for the more general menus stay on the screen. Is there any way to fix this?

Thank you,
Maxwell

[MadByte]

Welcome to the forum!

I'm not familiar with the tutorial of sockmunkee dev. It sounds like you could use gamestates to do what you're aiming for (One for the mainMenu, one for optionsMenu, and so on). Either you choose an existing library for gamestates or you write some lines on your own.

Here is a small example program showing a way to setup gamestates using a lib.

[AlchemistArea]

Welcome to the forum!

I'm not familiar with the tutorial of sockmunkee dev. It sounds like you could use gamestates to do what you're aiming for (One for the mainMenu, one for optionsMenu, and so on). Either you choose an existing library for gamestates or you write some lines on your own.

Here is a small example program showing a way to setup gamestates using a lib.

I actually tried using gamestates, but I couldn't find an option to stop the first buttons from appearing, so they stayed under the buttons in the sub-menu. What I am doing, and what I was taught by Sockmunkee Dev's tutorials, is that I made a seperate .lua file from main.lua, and I made a function in that file: "button_spawn(x,y,text,id,mouseover)." X and Y, of course, mean the X and Y of the button being spawned onto the screen, text being the text of the button, id being the name of the button in the program itself, and mouseover meaning whether or not the mouse is over that button. After a while, I got it working to where you could click on the buttons and they could perform certain actions, such as clearing the screen or, namely, creating new buttons in a sub-menu. However, when I click on a button in the main menu, the button(s) in that sub-menu are just slapped in front of the buttons in the main menu, and the buttons in the main menu do not go away. This is the main problem.

[Plu]

Can you post your current code? It might help in figuring out what's going wrong.

[4aiman]

Try to do this:
1. Create a table:

Code: Select all

menus={{"line1","line2","line3","line4",},
 {"line1","line2","line3","line4",},
 {"line1","line2","line3","line4",},
 {"line1","line2","line3","line4",},
 ...}

Every other sub-table should contain a list of the text of menu items. Every other menu and submenu you have, should go in here. You can make it more complicated, but that's up to you.

2. Create a variable

Code: Select all

current_menu = 1

It will tell you which menu you're in.

3. Create a variable

Code: Select all

current_item = 1

It will tell you which menu *item* you've selected.

4. Now make your draw function look like this:

Code: Select all

for i=1, #menus[current_menu] do
    love.graphics.print(menus[current_menu][i], X, Y+ 20*i)
 end

This way you'll be drawing only current (sub)menu.

5. Apply controls.

Code: Select all

if love.keyreleased["up"] then
    current_item = current_item - 1
    if current_item<1 then
       current_item = #menus[current_item]
    end
end
if love.keyreleased["down"] then
    current_item = current_item + 1
    if current_item>#menus[current_item] then
       current_item = 1
    end
end

The actual way to determine current item (if needed) and/or setting it to some value may be changed. I haven't seen your code to tell for sure;)

6. The last, but the most complex (not really) would be to create a handler for those menus. Make an update function that does something like this:

Code: Select all

if current_menu==1 then
   if current_item==1 then
      -- handle item #1 from menu #1
   elseif current_item==2 then
      -- handle item #2 from menu #1
   elseif current_item==3 then
      ...
   elseif current_item==4 then
      ...
   end
elseif current_menu==2 then
   if current_item==1 then
      -- handle item #1 from menu #2
   elseif current_item==2 then
      -- handle item #2 from menu #2
   elseif current_item==3 then
      ...
   elseif current_item==4 then
      ...
   end
elseif current_menu==3 then
   ...
elseif current_menu==4 then
   ...
end

Note, that you can draw only inside of love.draw().
Note, that it's a good idea to move all your key-press detection inside love.update.
In order to make it more convenient, create your own functions menu.draw and menu.update, put everything needed into those, and call menu.draw in love.draw and menu.update in love.update.

Cheers!

P.S. You may want to see how I did something like this in MagicGems (see my signature). #NotSomeNastyAdvertisement

[AlchemistArea]

Try to do this:
1. Create a table:

Code: Select all

menus={{"line1","line2","line3","line4",},
 {"line1","line2","line3","line4",},
 {"line1","line2","line3","line4",},
 {"line1","line2","line3","line4",},
 ...}

Every other sub-table should contain a list of the text of menu items. Every other menu and submenu you have, should go in here. You can make it more complicated, but that's up to you.

2. Create a variable

Code: Select all

current_menu = 1

It will tell you which menu you're in.

3. Create a variable

Code: Select all

current_item = 1

It will tell you which menu *item* you've selected.

4. Now make your draw function look like this:

Code: Select all

for i=1, #menus[current_menu] do
    love.graphics.print(menus[current_menu][i], X, Y+ 20*i)
 end

This way you'll be drawing only current (sub)menu.

5. Apply controls.

Code: Select all

if love.keyreleased["up"] then
    current_item = current_item - 1
    if current_item<1 then
       current_item = #menus[current_item]
    end
end
if love.keyreleased["down"] then
    current_item = current_item + 1
    if current_item>#menus[current_item] then
       current_item = 1
    end
end

The actual way to determine current item (if needed) and/or setting it to some value may be changed. I haven't seen your code to tell for sure;)

6. The last, but the most complex (not really) would be to create a handler for those menus. Make an update function that does something like this:

Code: Select all

if current_menu==1 then
   if current_item==1 then
      -- handle item #1 from menu #1
   elseif current_item==2 then
      -- handle item #2 from menu #1
   elseif current_item==3 then
      ...
   elseif current_item==4 then
      ...
   end
elseif current_menu==2 then
   if current_item==1 then
      -- handle item #1 from menu #2
   elseif current_item==2 then
      -- handle item #2 from menu #2
   elseif current_item==3 then
      ...
   elseif current_item==4 then
      ...
   end
elseif current_menu==3 then
   ...
elseif current_menu==4 then
   ...
end

Note, that you can draw only inside of love.draw().
Note, that it's a good idea to move all your key-press detection inside love.update.
In order to make it more convenient, create your own functions menu.draw and menu.update, put everything needed into those, and call menu.draw in love.draw and menu.update in love.update.

Cheers!

P.S. You may want to see how I did something like this in MagicGems (see my signature). #NotSomeNastyAdvertisement

Thank you very much! You helped a lot.