if anyone wants to acutally spend the time...

[Panda Bear]

if anyone actually wants to spend the time to do this, i need some help

i am pretty new to vb but am making an rpg game

i found several resources that started me off well and such, but i ran into a little problem

i need to make a menu (like in ff5 or something) that would have categories that would go to other menus like inventory, stats, etc...

i currently have a stat thing that comes up if you hit the S key (although i do not want to keep that, but rather make the menu)

i need it to use hte same display method but somehow get anotehr image (like a pointer) that would move around to different things and when they hit a key go to the sub menu for whatever the pointer was focused on

i thought of several ideas on how to do this, but they have all failed. i will need to use the same type of system in combat for selecting to use magic, and then which spell, etc.. so it is very important.

if anyone wants to help me out it would be much appreciated, although it may take quite a while so im not really expecting anyone to

the display stats thing is a sub in the module DDraw called DisplayStats

stuff that failed before that i tried are:

i tried to get the game to pause somehow when stats came up so the arrow keys could use menu, but it just got the game to close instead of just pause temporarily

after that, i tried using other keys to move around a second image around on the stat box (like right 5 pixels if they hit the A key or something) but i didnt know how to refresh the picture of the stat box, so it didnt do anything

and some other things

ive basically given up at this point unless someone can help me out

the ideal situation is when they hit the S key, a menu pops up (and probably shows the character sprite with quick stats and menus) it pauses the game, and the arrow keys controll another image (like a pointer) through some menus on the side
then the user can hit another key to go to a submenu when one of them is selected (inventory, stats [shows more advanced htings like exp], equip, and spells -- i should be able to set those up after seeing how the main menu would be set up)

im sure i probably left out some other needed information so just ask questions
and if anyone acutally wants to help me out, thanks in advance

[Panda Bear]

grr, after i hit preview post, it cleared the attach file box, but i didnt notice it until i hit submit :<

here is the source so far

dont leave the town south yet, that map isnt finished so it isnt included

just walk around and enjoy the bryan adams if you run a new game to see what im talking about / test out stuff

[DarkMoose]

Well, you could have a Select Case in your main game loop that executes different codes depending on what game mode you are in...

Dim GameMode As String

Private Sub GameLoop
     Do
          Select Case GameMode
               Case "Overhead"
                    'Get input for moving around the town or wherever
                    'Draw the sprites
               Case "Menu"
                    'Get input for cursor movement and selections
                    'Draw status bars, write Levels/HP/MP/etc
               Case "Battle"
                    'Get input for battle selections
                    '(I'm assuming it's turn based)
                    'Draw cool special effects and battle animations
                    'that poor DarkMoose can't draw with his non-
                    'existant artistic talents
          End Select
     Loop Until GameEnds
End Sub

Private Sub OverheadInput
     'move yer sprite around in here, and on pressing the
     'S key, change GameMode to "Menu"
End Sub

That's basically how my rpg is running. You might be able to alter your code in that style, unless someone can come up with a better way (there is always one :) Anywayz, you obviously know more than I do so you'll figure out something. Which reminds me, can you tell me where you learned to use DirectX? Particularly that fantastic full screen thing you have going there...

[kedaman]

All in one game-loops aren't particularily usefull in this case. Either you could do the external GUI approach or the complex state machine approach.
The GUI approach splits your game and graphical interface into two, the GUI taking all the keyboard and mouse input passing to a window tree or simpler UI, then passing over the data to the game via a layer which the game can adopt. The complex state machine is much easier approach although it gets complex and it's not always convenient to expand and the game gets less dynamic. Under a main procedure you call functions to proceed to a specific "state" of the game in which input is handled in a certain way. These states are hierarchial and cannot just jump from a to b and then back to a, it has to go via a higher level state to access a. Each state process is a individual game loop calling all game specific , input and graphical processing so in a way it's easy to troubleshoot and organize your game contents but in the long run, the code will be heavy.

[Panda Bear]

all the problems (current ones) are now fixed
thanks everyone