[TEC] Menu Editor

[karamazovnew]

INTRODUCTION


Well, the devs have kindly given us this new puppy. For old GUI modders this will be a joy to use. In one word the SH3, SH4 and SH5 are all based on similar rules. I see no reason experienced modders can't use this tool to even tweak the SH3 and SH4 interface themselves. This tutorial is only about how to create the graphic 2D interface. At the moment I don't know how to link items to commands, scripts, or dials. Just because you create a new pretty animated "KILL THE WHALES" button in the Editor, doesn't mean that it will do anything when you click on it. A separate thread is required to explain each item type. My aim is only to help you make your way through the Menu Editor.

Now let's start the tool:
First go to the My Documents SH5 folder (in W7 and Vista it's C:\Users\xxxxx\Documents\SH5\data\cfg and open up the main.cfg file.

Uncomment (delete the semicolons) the DEVELOPER lines:

[DEVELOPING]
Modding=Yes
MenuEditor=Yes
DebugScripts=Yes

Now start the game and you'll see a dialog box:



If you select No, the game will start normally. If you select Yes the Menu Editor will open.





The Editor is composed of a Preview Screen and a Control Panel. A the top of the Control Panel you see a list of all the items in all the screens of the 2D interface. They are all linked inside a hierarchy of parents and children. In simple terms, all items are put inside groups. Moving a group will move all the included items.

If you Right click on the menu bar of the Preview Window you'll be able to start any of the other modding tools. Windows 7 users, as far as I know this is the only way to access these tools.





Navigation and selection:

You can select any item in the Preview screen and it will be outlined by an animated yellow border. As you move the mouse you can also see in a red outline which item will be selected if you click.



Some Pages contain a LOT of items (not as bad as SH4 tho). It might be hard to focus on one particular group and select the correct item. So let's use the Control Panel.
Green items are invisible Groups (or pages). By default you can only parent objects to these (unlike in SH3 and SH4). All other items are shown in black with a indication of what that item is (a button, an image, a movie etc). THe selected item is shown in red.



Below you can select 3 checkboxes:
- B.boxes: will draw bounding boxes around all visible items
- Rev.sel: will enable the animated yellow box around the selected item
- Full page: will show ALL the items in that page OR focus on a particular group in the page and hide all other items in that page. You need to select a group first and then uncheck the Full page option.

The Background is a great feature that allows you set the color of the Preview Window background. Enter the RGB value of the color you want. "A" is for "alpha" but I don't really know what effect it has. The background color has no effect in the game.

All of the above options are not saved when you close the Menu Editor.



UNDO

Before we start making changes it's important to know how to undo them. The Editor will only save changes when you press the SAVE button at the bottom of the Control Panel. You can't press CTRL-Z to undo, but you can press the UNDO button just below the item list. You'll be happy to know that you can quickly jump to any of a maximum of 20 backward steps.