Possibilities of Hotkeys

[ilmrik]

Since we were hogging another topic and I'm curious what Taiji ( and ofcourse anybody else with and opinion thinks about the following things ). Tutorial on hotkeys

Hotkeys and what I see them to be able to do,
Firstly the "kingmaker" or better "heirmaker"

monitor_event ShortcutTriggered strat_ui Kingmaker 
and not I_WorldwideAncillaryExists KINGMAKER_ANC
  optional historic_event 
  set_event_counter Pick_A_Favorite 1
end_monitor

monitor_event CharacterSelected TrueCondition
and I_EventCounter Pick_A_Favorite = 1
  give the anc this  etc ( don't know the exact script ) 
  set_event_counter Pick_A_Favorite 0
end_monitor

And you're done,
Now what I was planning was using a few hotkeys ( say 6 from F2 --> F8 )
Making some sort of a smart system to allow you to go trough a menu. ( in my case to allow you to manage your colonies )
F2 --> opens and historic event scroll, ( and possibly disables the UI to close it ) this sets an event counter that keeps track of what scroll event is.

if this counter is 1
F2 --> Closes the scroll and enables the normal UI again ( aswel as reset the event_counter obviously)
F3 --> Invest in Growth
F4 --> Invest in military
F5 --> I dunno, attack a neigbouring Province or something

Anyway you get the idea, make a nice event image and event and you basically have an unlimited option menu you can summon at any time wich shouldn't slow the script down one bit.

The options are endless really, Tech trees, colonies and whetever you want, all those things you couldn't make with simple choice events and all the hassle of getting things to trigger all rolled up into a simple elegant system.

Edit:
lol seems that squid had the idea of using it to select heirs long before me.

[Taiji]

Thought about this 'F keys for a menu' business before, can't remember what happened...

[Withwnar]

I like it. Every Yes/No historic event needs its own TGA image (often just exact duplicates) and creates two event counters (whether you need them both or not). Trying to make a menu system using them can quickly result in a LOT of TGAs and counters.

The only issue I can think of is the static nature of historic event (HE) text. A particular menu option might not be available/applicable at that time but there's no way to dynamically adjust the message to indicate this. Whereas with HE menus you can dynamically decide not to show that particular option's HE.

[Taiji]

Every Yes/No historic event needs its own TGA image (often just exact duplicates) and creates two event counters (whether you need them both or not).

No they don't.

[Withwnar]

Which one?

[Taiji]

Obviously they create 2 event counters, _accepted and _declined like it states in the docudemons.

But they don't require TGAs at all - No historic event requires a TGA.

[Withwnar]

Not if you're happy with the default image, no.

[Taiji]

I think you mean 'They don't require what I said they require...', not 'Not...'.

[Withwnar]

I thought that it was clear but okay:

Every Yes/No historic event needs its own TGA image (often just exact duplicates) - unless you are happy with the default M2TW one - and creates two event counters (whether you need them both or not).

The default image is probably fine in a medieval-setting mod but in Third Age, for example, event pics tend to keep to the Lord of the Rings theme.

If you want a custom image for the initial scroll, and the same image for all menu options relating to that first scroll, then you need to duplicate that image for each menu option.

[Taiji]

You can make a new default image if it isn't generic enough. The point I'm making (quite badly so far, I'll admit) is that doing stuff with historic events gives text about what is going on and only requires text. There is no need to create multiple images, but you can if you like. Perhaps the same stuff can often be done with buildings or traits, along with key presses to replace the yes/no function of events, but I think they'll take more work than using historic events.