UI Manager

Description

The UIManager is meant to handle all UIs without knowing what exactly is inside the UI. This manager provides a central point for all the UIs to talk to, so that there are no interfering UIs.

Features include:

• Queueing UI.
• Going back to the previous UI.
• Capturing and releasing the mouse cursor.
• Dismissing UI.
• Loading level.
• Quiting.

Method Descriptions

• void RegisterBaseUI ( node node )

You can select a node in the tree to be the parent of all the UIs. The UIManager wil handle the adding and removing of the UI. This function should be used in _ready.

• void NextUI ( string path )

A new instance of a UI is made and added to the tree. Resource should be a path like "res://UI/menu.tscn" for example.

• bool CanGoBack ( )

Returns true when there is a previous UI availble to which the UIManager can return.

• void Back ( )

The UIManager will go back to the previous UI if one is available. It will ignore this when the history queue is empty.

• void DismissUI ( )

The displayed UI will be removed from the tree. If there are any future queued UIs or UIs in the history queue it will go to that.

• void ClearUI ( )

The current UI will be removed and all queued UIs will be ignored.

• bool RequestFocus ( )

Returns true if there currently is no UI that has focus. Use ReleaseFocus when done.

• void ReleaseFocus ( )

Once focus is no longer needed it can be released, making character controls work again for example.

Example

Before a UI can be added to the UIManager a base needs to be registered. This base is the parent node of the UI. The UIManager handles the add_child and remove_child, so there is no need to do this manually.

var ui_resource = "res://assets/my_ui.tscn"
var added_ui = false

func _ready():
       UIManager.RegisterBaseUI(self)

Once the base has been registered, then the UI can be added at will. In this example a menu will be toggled on and off when a key is pressed. The menu script needs to keep track of adding or removing the UI by using a boolean.

func _input(event):
  if event.is_action_pressed("ui_button"):
                if added_ui:
                         UIManager.ClearUI()
                         added_ui = false
                elif UIManager.RequestFocus():
                         UIManager.SwitchUI(ui_resource)
                         added_ui = true