ui Popmenus: the what, why and how.

[Dread Quixadhal]

So, sorry to necro an old thread again, but I'm trying to figure out something about the client's internal caching system?  I tried to take the above-posted costume change popmenu and add keyboard shortcuts to it, but it didn't turn out the way I wanted.  The problem though, is that I can't get it to replace the broken version with a new one.  I even removed the file entirely, closed the client, opened it back up, and it still loads the old one.

This seems to imply that the game client reads the menu definition from the \data\texts\<language>\menus\ directory, but then also caches it somewhere else?  I literally renamed the file from costumes.mnu to damnit.mnu, changed the menu inside from costumes to damnit, and while the new version (damnit) works as intended, the old version is still there and broken even with no file backing it in the data directory.

Any ideas?  Is there any command to flush the cache?

[AboveTheChemist]

On 1/17/2024 at 5:48 PM, Dread Quixadhal said:

Any ideas?  Is there any command to flush the cache?

 

As far as I know, the game does not cache popmenus. I've worked with a lot of popmenus and have never seen behavior from the client that would indicate it is caching popmenus. Of course, my experience doesn't cover all possible scenarios, but I'd look for other possible causes first.

 

The game will pull popmenu data first from the pigg files (for built-in popmenus or modded popmenus that were bundled as piggs), and then from the \data folder. Versions in the data folder will overwrite any versions in the piggs. Is it possible that you have another popmenu in your data folder that uses the internal 'costumes' menu name? Or, is it possible that you have two 'costumes' popmenus contained in one .mnu file? .mnu files can contain more than one popmenu so maybe you accidentally pasted two copies of the 'costumes' popmenu into one file?

 

It might also help if you uploaded a copy of your 'costumes' menu here so I can see if I notice any other potential causes.

[Dread Quixadhal]

7 hours ago, AboveTheChemist said:

The game will pull popmenu data first from the pigg files (for built-in popmenus or modded popmenus that were bundled as piggs), and then from the \data folder. Versions in the data folder will overwrite any versions in the piggs. Is it possible that you have another popmenu in your data folder that uses the internal 'costumes' menu name?

 

Interesting.  I wonder if the issue was that "costumes" is indeed an internal menu, and my version partially overwrote it but as it had errors, maybe it threw things into an odd state?  I made a "stupid" version that omitted all the locked options and that works fine, as it was difficult to pin down where the actual error was.  I'll check later and see if I still have the broken version to attach here.  In the process, I also renamed the main menu to "costumechange", to avoid the issue entirely.

[Kaos731]

On 11/11/2021 at 7:05 PM, Nerio72 said:

Did you recently update to the Homecoming Launcher? The file path is different if so and you would need to move the files over.

Can you tell me the correct path to put the file in? I'm new to this game, and I don't know where to put the file.

[sbloyd]

RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE!

 

Hey, just came back recently after about a year off.  Did they change the order of execution in popmenu commands?  My voice scripts for my MM Bots play in reverse now.

[kwsapphire]

On 2/6/2024 at 2:42 AM, Kaos731 said:

Can you tell me the correct path to put the file in? I'm new to this game, and I don't know where to put the file.

 

The directory for popmenus is: Homecoming\data\texts\English\Menus

[kwsapphire]

Also sorry to necro an old thread but I'm making a new popmenu and can't get the keyboard shortcuts to work reliably.

 

1. I created a new "Raids" popmenu that includes a Labyrinth submenu, which then has a bunch of thumbtacks in it. The &Ampersand indicated keyboard shortcut works for some number of the submenu items (between one and four of them, depending on various factors), but not all seven. raids.mnu

 

2. I have an old popmenu "Extras" that has &Ampersand shortcuts in most of the submenus and they work fine. Ten options in a submenu and they all work. So I don't know what I'm doing wrong on the Raids one. popmenu.mnu

 

I've looked for the "wrong quotation marks" in Notepad++ but not finding any. I don't think I've missed any brackets (there aren't many). 

 

Files: popmenu.mnu is my "Extras" popmenu, and I have no problem with any of the keyboard shortcuts in this menu. I'm calling this out because I've seen some sites that say "you can't use the &Amerpsand keyboard shortcuts in submenus" and that's just not the case. To my eyes, the layout of these two menus is the same - why are the keyboard shortcuts from the Raids menu only partially working? 

 

- When I first maid the Raids file, the thumbtacks were all in the same Menu (Labyrinth) as the rest of the Lab related stuff. Only the R (for RED) worked, no others. So I separated the thumbtack out into their own menu. Then Red, Orange, and Yellow worked, but not Green-White. I put the thumbtacks back in the same Labyrinth section as the rest, and now the keyboard shortcuts work for Red, Orange, Yellow, and Green, but still not Blue, Purple, or White. The menu itself works, if I manually click an option it places the thumbtack. But the keyboard shortcuts aren't working all the way down.

 

I appreciate any insight yall can give!

 

Edit: Despite this being a new popmenu, I have a very strong sense of Deja Vu, so apologies if I have in fact asked this question and been answered years ago. 😉

raids.mnu

Edited August 3 by kwsapphire

[AboveTheChemist]

4 hours ago, kwsapphire said:

I appreciate any insight yall can give!

 

I gave it the ole college try, and tinkered with it quite a bit in game, but couldn't find the issue. I saw what you saw, in that Red through Green worked, but Blue through White did not. I moved Blue through White to the top, which made them work, but then the three at the bottom didn't. I also tried moving them all to their own submenu, and that made Blue start working, but Purple and White still did not. I checked the syntax as well and could find no faults. I'm stumped.

[kwsapphire]

11 hours ago, AboveTheChemist said:

 

I gave it the ole college try, and tinkered with it quite a bit in game, but couldn't find the issue. I saw what you saw, in that Red through Green worked, but Blue through White did not. I moved Blue through White to the top, which made them work, but then the three at the bottom didn't. I also tried moving them all to their own submenu, and that made Blue start working, but Purple and White still did not. I checked the syntax as well and could find no faults. I'm stumped.

 

I have further tinkered with the file and also gotten the shortcuts to work up through Blue now, but not Purple or White.  I have to wonder if simply making the file longer (with more stuff in it) will allow the final two to work. I see no other pattern than "I keep adding more text, and more of the shortcuts work."  Thank you for taking a look!

Edited August 4 by kwsapphire

[Jacke]

Shortcuts can be weird in Popmenus, @kwsapphire.  I've had no end of problems in my Commands Popmenu.  Then a few releases ago, no more issues.  Not sure why.  Maybe I just changed them to avoid the issues and haven't hit them again.  You can download my Commands Popmenu (article link in my sig) and see if you get any ideas.

[Digirium]

Try to make sure hotkeys are unique whatever the level of the menu.

 

In raids.mnu the hotkey B is used twice try altering one of those to a unique letter that has not been used yet - did it make a difference?

 

Another workaround might be to split out the sub Menu re-using the hotkey to the top level and call the now top level Menu with a PopMenu command. NB a single dot-mnu file can contain more than one top level Menu. There is a possibility still, when using PopMenu within Menu, of entering keyboard jail. Not what you want when in the middle of running a raid you cannot even tell the league. Or a completely different dot-menu file for each raid?

 

 

 

Edited August 5 by Digirium

[AboveTheChemist]

7 hours ago, Digirium said:

In raids.mnu the hotkey B is used twice try altering one of those to a unique letter that has not been used yet - did it make a difference?

 

I tried that during my tinkering and it didn't help, unfortunately. I didn't try splitting the menu into separate menus in the same file, though, and I think that is definitely worth a shot.

[kwsapphire]

7 hours ago, Digirium said:

Try to make sure hotkeys are unique whatever the level of the menu.

 

In raids.mnu the hotkey B is used twice try altering one of those to a unique letter that has not been used yet - did it make a difference?

 

Another workaround might be to split out the sub Menu re-using the hotkey to the top level and call the now top level Menu with a PopMenu command. NB a single dot-mnu file can contain more than one top level Menu. There is a possibility still, when using PopMenu within Menu, of entering keyboard jail. Not what you want when in the middle of running a raid you cannot even tell the league. Or a completely different dot-menu file for each raid?

 

 

 

 

The shortcuts are already unique at each sublevel. Unless you mean you can only use each key once per menu file period - this can't be the solution if only because my other menu (popmenu.mnu, or Extras) has the same key used as a shortcut for several submenus and works fine. 

The Pet Commands section uses A for Attack.

The Travel section uses A for Assemble the Team.

The Costume section uses A for my Armor outfit.

The Pet Commands section uses M for disMiss.

The Travel section uses M for Mission teleport.

The Inspirations section uses M to make Mezz pezz.

 

But for what it's worth, I removed all the keyboard shortcuts from all other submenus and that didn't resolve the issue. 

Edited August 5 by kwsapphire

[kwsapphire]

42 minutes ago, AboveTheChemist said:

 

I didn't try splitting the menu into separate menus in the same file, though, and I think that is definitely worth a shot.

 

Hilariously, putting the thumbtacks into their own sub-submenu gets everything down to Purple to work but not White.  LOL.

Edited August 5 by kwsapphire

[AboveTheChemist]

42 minutes ago, kwsapphire said:

Hilariously, putting the thumbtacks into their own sub-submenu gets everything down to Purple to work but not White.

 

I did a little more tinkering after my first post above and saw the same result. I was excited thinking I had cracked it, but felt the agony of defeat when the white one wouldn't work.

[Digirium]

Right. I have a version of your raids.mnu that works.

 

It just contains the Labyrinth menu at the top level, the other two menus discarded from raids.mnu. Definition of "working" was to tap the hokey and something happens and the menu disappears (a thumbtack might appear or not if out of x-z range), instead of nothing happening and the menu still drawn on the screen staring back at me.

 

I suspect even with the two other menus still included at the top level the Labyrinth menu would still work.

 

Conclusion - each menu must be a top level menu for any chance of hotkeys to work.

 

NB I have had menus with hotkeys at the top level and one level down that worked and did not work. And in one situation caused keyboard death. I gave up trying to figure out the exceptions in the former case, in the death case I tried for a quite some time figure it out but came to no conclusion.

 

I would advise only using hotkeys in the top level menu to avoid problems.

 

 

Edited August 5 by Digirium

[kwsapphire]

On 8/5/2024 at 2:54 PM, Digirium said:

Conclusion - each menu must be a top level menu for any chance of hotkeys to work.

[...]

I would advise only using hotkeys in the top level menu to avoid problems.

 

This isn't the case, though. My "Extras" menu (popmenu.mnu, also linked above) has shortcuts in submenus and they work fine. All of them, as many as 11 options in a sub-submenu. There doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason for the Raids menu shortcuts not working all the way down. 

 

I moved the thumbtacks up one level and they still only work through Purple, White doesn't work.

Moving them to the *very* top level (not in the Lab menu) greatly reduces my options for opening other menus, so I'll keep them as a subsection within the Labyrinth menu. 

[Jacke]

1 hour ago, kwsapphire said:

This isn't the case, though. My "Extras" menu (popmenu.mnu, also linked above) has shortcuts in submenus and they work fine. All of them, as many as 11 options in a sub-submenu. There doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason for the Raids menu shortcuts not working all the way down.

 

I'll support @kwsapphire on this.  My Commands Popmenu (post link in my signature) has Shortcuts in submenus and they work fine as well.

 

What I've noticed over my extensive changes and testing of my Commands Popmenu is that Shortcuts often sometimes don't work.  I couldn't characterise the failure to anything I could figure out.  It's one of the reasons I tended to limit adding more Emotes.  Currently, all the Shortcuts work.  But if I change them, I know that getting them all to work again may be tricky.

[Digirium]

Well, all the evidence points exactly what my advice has been = hotkeys are only reliable at the top-level.

 

My supposition is that when a hotkey is specified a context is created in the code between the hotkey and a command. The person who originally wrote that code probably never thought about or entertained the idea for the need to support hotkeys in sub-menus. They got it working at the top-level and never refined the code further for sub-menus because it was never intended and their "exit point" for working on it was reached.

 

When a hotkey appears to be working in a sub-menu it is a pure fluke. It might even stop working one day or, It is less likely, might start working if it did not before. Probably the easiest correction a game-side coder could make would be to make hotkeys in sub-menus all stop working (which would break a few of my menus too). What we really want is for hotkey contexts to be created for each sub-menu to match what we expected and the only chance of this happening is talking.

 

TL;DR The first line of this post has been my experience and it appears also to be yours as well based on your own evidence.

 

 

Edited August 10 by Digirium

[kwsapphire]

 

10 hours ago, Digirium said:

Well, all the evidence points exactly what my advice has been = hotkeys are only reliable at the top-level.

 

TL;DR The first line of this post has been my experience and it appears also to be yours as well based on your own evidence.

 

Well, that's not what you actually said, the first time. What you said was...

 

On 8/5/2024 at 2:54 PM, Digirium said:

Conclusion - each menu must be a top level menu for any chance of hotkeys to work.

 

Emphasis mine. You only just now added the word "reliably." You can't blame Jacke & I pointing out that we can indeed get hotkeys to work in Submenus when you said flatly that they could not.

Edited August 10 by kwsapphire

[Digirium]

Not sorry because before you have clearly not read and understood everything I said each time I have posted.

 

This is you not me.