Using New Menu System

Introduction

Write some intro here

Beginners Menu Tutorial

Now lets discuss how to use the new menu system. We will go through the basics in this tutorial and make a simple Change Level vote.

Includes

As always we will start out by adding the required includes

#include <amxmodx>

Global Variables

new g_Menu;	// Main Menu handler
new g_Votes[3];	// Store Yes votes at 1, No at 2

In here we created 2 global var's. One to hold our menu handle, and the other to store our menu votes. The 'Yes' votes will be stored in g_Votes[1] and the 'No' votes will be stored in g_Votes[2].

Registering Plugin and Menu

public plugin_init()
{
	// Register Our Plugin
	register_plugin("Vote Menu","1.0","Freecode");
 
	// Register our Change Level vote menu
	g_Menu = menu_create("Change Level?","menu_handle");
 
	register_clcmd("amx_startvote","startvote",ADMIN_CFG,"Gaben");
 
	// Now we need to build our menu
	build_menu();
}

Lets break this down.

• Registers our plugin

register_plugin("Vote Menu","1.0","Freecode");

• g_Menu - Our menu handle. It will be set after menu_create gets called.

g_Menu = menu_create("Change Level?","menu_handle");
 
//menu_create ( title[], handler[], ml=0 )
//title[] - Menu title
//handler[] - This is a function which will get called once someone presses a key on your menu.

• We made this client command so we can start our vote.

register_clcmd("amx_startvote","startvote",ADMIN_CFG,"Gaben");

• This is a function call. build_menu() function will construct our vote menu.

build_menu();

Constructing Menu

Constructing the menu is just adding needed items to your menu. Before we go ahead with adding items we must look at menu_additem native.

menu_additem ( menu, const name[], const command[], paccess=0, callback=-1 )

• menu - menu handle. This tells menu_additem the menu to which we are adding our item.
• const name[] - the item name. This is what gets displayed into the menu.
• const command[] - item info.

Now lets get into constructing our menu. As said, this is a simple vote for a Change of Level. So we will only need 2 items. A "Yes" and a "No".

build_menu()
{
	menu_additem(g_Menu, "Yes", "1");
	menu_additem(g_Menu, "No", "2");
 
	menu_setprop(g_Menu, MPROP_PERPAGE, 0);
}

• Notes
  • As you can see i set the const command[] to numbers. This is for us to identify the item easier.
  • I have also added menu_setprop. This sets our menu to have no pages. For additional properties look int amxconst.inc

Displaying the Vote Menu

To display our menu we must simply use menu_display.

menu_display ( id, menu, page )

• id - id of the user your displaying menu to.
• menu - which menu are you showing the user.
• page - what page (of the menu) to start on. Page of the menu starts at 0.

Ok lets proceed to our code.

public startvote(id)
{
	for(new i = 0; i < 33; i++)
	{
		if( is_user_alive(i) )
		{
			menu_display(i, g_Menu, 0);
		}
	}
 
	return PLUGIN_HANDLED;
}

• Notes:
  • The for loop is used to cycle through players and display the menu to players that are alive.

Handling Menu Choices

Last step is actualy handling the menu choices. This happens through the menu handler function. It will get called once someone chooses an item off the menu. There are 3 variables that are passed to the function.

• id - the users id
• menu - the menu user had open
• item - and the item user chose

Now there are a few of special items like the Exit item.

#define MENU_EXIT	-3
#define	MENU_BACK	-2
#define MENU_MORE	-1

So we must check at first if the item chosen was not one of the special ones.

if( item < 0 ) return PLUGIN_CONTINUE;

Next we must retrieve the item information. What we are looking for is the number we gave the item (Yes = 1, No = 2). And to do this we use menu_item_getinfo.

menu_item_getinfo ( menu, item, &access, command[], cmdlen, name[]="", namelen=0, &callback )

• menu - the menu where the item exists.
• item - the item itself
• &access -
• command[] - (this is where we stored our item identification numbers)

After we get our items info we will convert the command[] to a number (will either be a 1 or 2) and update the g_Votes array with the appropriate vote chosen.

public menu_handle(id, menu, item)
{
	if( item < 0 ) return PLUGIN_CONTINUE;
 
	// Get item info
	new cmd[3];
	new access, callback;
 
	menu_item_getinfo(menu, item, access, cmd,2,_,_, callback);
 
	new iChoice = str_to_num(cmd);
 
	g_Votes[iChoice]++;
 
	return PLUGIN_HANDLED;
}