where to start when making a readable book in the inventory?

roelienvn

Ok, next problem.

I just finished the tutorial where you scroll documents. And I think I got it right. the document scrolls down when I click but not up again? Is there a way to fix that it can scroll both ways?

And a bigger problem... I actually dont want to scroll documents but I want to make a book that is in my inventory and when i click on it I want to be be able to flip pages forward and back and read the book. I just don't know where to start and how to do that. Do I do that by making a journal? I allready tried to make a journal but I couldnt figure out how to flip pages. I made a document menu item, with a bookbackground, and I made three different journals with all 3 of them another backgroundtexture, because I want to switch that so I can make pages with text and images. So for now I wont be using the text option in AC. 

ofcourse I deleted that journal stuff again, but here is a screenshot from the point where I think I have to start

ChrisIceBox

Yes, you want to use the Journal element - only one's needed, though.  A Journal element is just like a Label - only it's contents can be changed as the page number changes.

Create a journal, enter in the number of pages and put some text in each page (using the Menu Manager's element properties).  You then need to create two buttons beside it (these can be invisible), which act as the "page left / page right" buttons.  Set their Click type to Offset Journal, and follow the instructions below.

You can also use the Menu: Change state Action to add more pages to your journal during gameplay.

roelienvn

Hi Chris,

thanks again!

I don't want to add pages, it are just books that the character finds somewhere in the game and can find some usefull information in, and a lot of bullshit ofcourse. So I think in that case I can better use "label" then?

And I don't want to use the text option in AC because there is not only text but there are also going to be drawings in the books, Therefore I want to show the pages as graphics and create them as pngs in photoshop. But that probably works a bit the same? I'm going to puzzle again with it!

roelienvn

I just don't get it.... I'm pretty sure it is possible what I want, but this part of AC is really rocketscience to me.... (but I also thought that of the other stuff I actually managed to figure out till now) 

I made a screenshot of what I'm trying to do now 

I made a menu item that I called "readbook"

the first element is a journal element (secrets of space I called it)

then I tried to add pages by using graphic elements

and the last 2 elements are buttons to go left or right.

And I also don't get it that if I say that there are 3 pages that I can only add text in page one from the journal. (in case I want to make a real journal I also don't think I understand how that works)

English is also not my first language so I don't always immediately understand all the technical options. So maybe if some things might be pretty clear I'm still missing that.

roelienvn

In the meantime I found out how the journal works with clicking on buttons and read the pages, But I still want to use graphics insted of text. Is that possible?

roelienvn

Ok I got want I want now, I made an actionlist that I attached to the buttons, as seen in the next screenshot. But If I have a book with many pages the list is going to be extremely long, since there are three actions needed per page. "check visible page, hide visible page, show next page" And that two times for buttons next and previous page. (and my plan was to have more then one book that need to be read, so that is a lot of actionlists I have to make then)  How can I organise that better or is this really the only way to do it? Anyway, if there is nothing else possible I solved my problem for now.

ChrisIceBox

I would use the node editor when dealing with such a complex chain of Actions - it's much eaiser to work with.  You can access it by clicking "Action List Editor" at the top of the Inspector.

I've written a tutorial on creating a diary.  You can see it here.  Mind that it's only for single-page journals.  If you want to use your own method of Actions, know that you can use parameters to make things easier.  You could create an ActionList that hides all elements, and then shows the correct one at the end.  The Physics demo makes use of this technique to show it's tutorial messages.  You can learn more about parameters here.

roelienvn

I tried something else now for this problem and that seems to work! 

I made an inventory box that shows only one item at the time, only specific items out of a category. That items are the pages of the book. and they apear smoothly if you click on the left and right buttons. Then I had one problem where you could pick up the item and I want the player to only read it. So to the pages (inventory items) I attached an action on the "use" function where the player just says something about the book (like "hmmm interesting" or something like that. and then the actionlist stops) 

it only seems that the pages have a little bit lower quality in resolution then when I tried it the other way. But if you go to the next page it doesnt get confused on which page to show. With the extremely long actionlists it seemed to get lost in the pages.

SkyTree

An excellent idea, thank you so much!