evennia/docs/source/Contribs/Contrib-Building-Menu.md

Building menu

Contrib by vincent-lg, 2018

Building menus are in-game menus, not unlike EvMenu though using a different approach. Building menus have been specifically designed to edit information as a builder. Creating a building menu in a command allows builders quick-editing of a given object, like a room. If you follow the steps to add the contrib, you will have access to an edit command that will edit any default object, offering to change its key and description.

Install

1. Import the GenericBuildingCmd class from this contrib in your mygame/commands/default_cmdset.py file:

   from evennia.contrib.base_systems.building_menu import GenericBuildingCmd
   

2. Below, add the command in the CharacterCmdSet:

   # ... These lines should exist in the file
   class CharacterCmdSet(default_cmds.CharacterCmdSet):
       key = "DefaultCharacter"
   
       def at_cmdset_creation(self):
           super(CharacterCmdSet, self).at_cmdset_creation()
           # ... add the line below
           self.add(GenericBuildingCmd())
   

Usage

The edit command will allow you to edit any object. You will need to specify the object name or ID as an argument. For instance: edit here will edit the current room. However, building menus can perform much more than this very simple example, read on for more details.

Building menus can be set to edit about anything. Here is an example of output you could obtain when editing the room:

 Editing the room: Limbo(#2)

 [T]itle: the limbo room
 [D]escription
    This is the limbo room.  You can easily change this default description,
    either by using the |y@desc/edit|n command, or simply by entering this
    menu (enter |yd|n).
 [E]xits:
     north to A parking(#4)
 [Q]uit this menu

From there, you can open the title choice by pressing t. You can then change the room title by simply entering text, and go back to the main menu entering @ (all this is customizable). Press q to quit this menu.

The first thing to do is to create a new module and place a class inheriting from BuildingMenu in it.

from evennia.contrib.base_systems.building_menu import BuildingMenu

class RoomBuildingMenu(BuildingMenu):
    # ...

Next, override the init method (not __init__!). You can add choices (like the title, description, and exits choices as seen above) by using the add_choice method.

class RoomBuildingMenu(BuildingMenu):
    def init(self, room):
        self.add_choice("title", "t", attr="key")

That will create the first choice, the title choice. If one opens your menu and enter t, she will be in the title choice. She can change the title (it will write in the room's key attribute) and then go back to the main menu using @.

add_choice has a lot of arguments and offers a great deal of flexibility. The most useful ones is probably the usage of callbacks, as you can set almost any argument in add_choice to be a callback, a function that you have defined above in your module. This function will be called when the menu element is triggered.

Notice that in order to edit a description, the best method to call isn't add_choice, but add_choice_edit. This is a convenient shortcut which is available to quickly open an EvEditor when entering this choice and going back to the menu when the editor closes.

class RoomBuildingMenu(BuildingMenu):
    def init(self, room):
        self.add_choice("title", "t", attr="key")
        self.add_choice_edit("description", key="d", attr="db.desc")

When you wish to create a building menu, you just need to import your class, create it specifying your intended caller and object to edit, then call open:

from <wherever> import RoomBuildingMenu

class CmdEdit(Command):

    key = "redit"

    def func(self):
        menu = RoomBuildingMenu(self.caller, self.caller.location)
        menu.open()

This is a very short introduction. For more details, see the online tutorial or read the heavily-documented code of the contrib itself.

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