RPG Menu Design Question

[Forcebreaker]

To clarify, Im not asking for you to make/give/link me a tutorial on how to make an RPG Menu system (although, if you do happen to know of one, I certainly would not reject the knowledge of it , and would be most thankful indeed! )

No, Im just trying to wrap my mind about how its generally done, or maybe how you managed it. Though I imagine theres probably a hundred ways you could go about it depending on your overall product.

I just got done with a youtube tut on making a simple shooter, many of you have probably done this same one, so I wont go into deep detail, but through it I learned how some of the GML works, as well as usage of rooms and objects. Im a little surprised that the whole game is comprised of 4 rooms, which represent 4 possible out comes Start/win/lose, and then the room the game its self takes place . Before starting I would have thought the entire game would take place in one room ... (perhaps it could though, with more complex programing... dunno though, Im not the most programming savvy) , but took four for such a little game O.O .... Imagin how many there will be if the RPG is composed of more than just the maps you walk around on.

So anyway, I guess what I want to ask you all is generally how did you go about making your rpg menu system (now that I think about it, I suppose this isint really a question exclusive to making RPGs :/ . ) . Do you use alot of rooms, does the menu appear in the same room its accessed, and, like, how is the data for items stored....something to do with arrays? :[ Am I in over my head , am I a freaking delusional...new...forum person....started by making a simple 4 hour shooter, now think'in he's gunna jump right in to developing a freaking rpg, and bother'in everybody!?!?....... Thanks for the read! Lemme know T_T .

 

[Yal]

There's a really good RPG menu system in my Monster Collector Engine, and it's also got turn-based combat if you're looking for that as well.

The base idea is that you want a system that makes it easy to add more GUI elements, so you don't need to make EVERY menu from scratch. (Redoing the same work over and over is annoying). My system basically has base code that handles a 2D grid, and every menu uses that (remember, a vertical menu with five items is a 1 x 5 grid!) and then most of the code is about making the visual representation differ depending on case... for instance, one menu element reads a character's stats - the character ID is based on the cursor position - and displays their HP bar and sprite.

The actual grid contents? Function references (script IDs in pre-GMS2.3 lingo) which are called when the player presses "accept" on that grid cell. Basically, you can put any code in a menu that way. Super simple to code the menus themselves, all the difficult code bits are in scripts. (But it still gets easier that way, since you can keep the menu logic and the stuff-the-menu-does logic separate from each other)

Then, every menu frame is its own object, and there's some extra logic where a "menu daddy" (always present when a menu is spawned) reads the inputs and checks which menu has the highest priority; only that gets a signal to run code when you press a direction/accept/cancel.

 

[Forcebreaker]

Bought! Thank you very much!

EDIT: Also, I found a really helpful tut by Slyddar that went over how to set up a simple menu! here:

if anyone else might need somewhere to start!