document and journal design

ehuvio

Hi, I'm trying to design how to create stuff what I want I don't seem to fully understand the journal concept. Is it so that document is a fixed design and you can't add pages into it? But then again document can have journal elements in it. How free could I be in journal design? Can I just create a template as a prefab and attach it into journal? So the pages would be quite different.
I have already thought of pages like "normal" journal, where there's couple of tasks player should do and a explaining image with it, a page with three notes and player can click and select two similar elements - like date - on two notes and then a fourth note would be created out of the players selections - so select two out of three to verify what you want and a page with some photos with clickable areas for player to select to create conversation choises.
I'm not sure if I could do them all with journal or maybe I should create separate menus and link them with menu changes.
Any ideas?

ChrisIceBox

Think of a Journal like a diary that the Player character writes as they progress - it can have a set of default pages, but can be added to over the course over the game.

A Document, on the other hand, display a fixed set of text - but the Player can view/collect multiple of them over the course of the game, and (optionally) view all they've collected in a list.

By themselves, though, Journals/Documents are not interactive - they just display text. You still need to rely on Button elements to add interactivity, and Graphic elements to display images/photos.

Through scripting, this can be automated - so that e.g. each page has an associated texture that is used to update a Graphic element based on which page is open. For that specific behaviour, see this wiki script.

A similar technique can be used to hide/show Buttons based on which document or page is open.

If you make use of Unity UI, you also have the option of using animation to control the layout/display of you Menu - for example, update the Sprite inside an Image component, hide/show a Button, etc. If you made animations for each of the possible "layouts", then you could wire them up to an Integer parameter in your Animator, and then have a script that updates that parameter value based on the index of the currently-open page:

using UnityEngine;
using AC;

public class AnimatedJournal : MonoBehaviour
{

    [SerializeField] private Animator _animator;
    [SerializeField] private string pageParameter = "Page";
    [SerializeField] private string journalMenuName = "Journal";
    [SerializeField] private string journalElementName = "PageText";

    private void OnEnable ()
    {
        EventManager.OnMenuTurnOn += OnMenuTurnOn;
        EventManager.OnMenuElementShift += OnMenuElementShift;
    }

    private void OnDisable ()
    {
        EventManager.OnMenuTurnOn -= OnMenuTurnOn;
        EventManager.OnMenuElementShift -= OnMenuElementShift;
    }

    private void OnMenuTurnOn (Menu menu, bool isInstant)
    {
        if (menu.title == journalMenuName)
        {
            UpdatePageTexture ();
        }
    }

    private void OnMenuElementShift (MenuElement _element, AC_ShiftInventory shiftType)
    {
        if (_element.title == journalElementName)
        {
            UpdatePageTexture ();
        }
    }

    private void UpdatePageTexture ()
    {
        MenuJournal journal = PlayerMenus.GetElementWithName (journalMenuName, journalElementName) as MenuJournal;
        int pageIndex = journal.showPage - 1;
        _animator.SetInteger (pageParameter, pageIndex);
    }

}

ehuvio

Thanks, I think I'll go with linked documents. Can I change the crossfade target by script or are they fixed? And maybe I should cut images into mosaic pieces, so that I could add buttons where I want and still have the ability to variate the size.

ChrisIceBox

Can I change the crossfade target by script or are they fixed?

From a Button menu element?

Through script, any Manager field can be changed at runtime. Just click the field's label in the Menu Manager to get an API reference to it.