Scrolling menu with arbitrary amount of entries

[main spire]

Hello world! I'm not sure what to look up, but in short, I want to make a "bestiary" which has descriptions of a bunch of different entities throughout the game. Something like the Piklopedia from Pikmin, or the Suburban Almanac from PVZ. I have these three problems to solve...

• Storing the entries themselves (icon, description, etc)
• Finding a good way to save which entries are actually unlocked (tamper prevention...)
• Performing well with a large amount of entries (because there are going to be a LOT of entries, given my plan for the game)
• Actually creating the buttons in-code

[main spire]

Also, to be clear: the image is just a mockup, the final game won't look much like this

Actually I'll make a separate forum post for the first two questions

[feral swallow]

For organizing static data in gdscript, I think one of the better ways is dictionary with enum keys. It would look something like this in your case:

enum monster {
    RAT,
    SLIME
}

var monster_stats: Dictionary[monster, Dictionary] = {
    RAT = {
        full_name = "Rat",
        some_stat = 1},
    SLIME = {
        full_name = "Slime",
        some_stat = 3}
}

As enums are just integers, they are easy to save as well. For the menu itself, you would create a vertical container with a scrollbar and fill it with copies of the button scene:

var instance: Node = preload("res://scenes/button.tscn").instantiate()
instance.some_property = some_value
some_node.add_child(instance)

For an UX tip, you don't need to make the "Open" button separate. Just make the name a button

[main spire]

Thank you!

[feral swallow]

Good luck

[main spire]

One more thing: how can I avoid a lagspike for opening the menu?

Maybe I load all of the buttons one at a time?

[alpine niche]

You could have it loaded with the main scene that its in, so when the menu is opened it doesn't need to load it in right then and there

[feral swallow]

Tbh a bunch of buttons are not going to cause a lag spike

But yes, you could have the whole thing preloaded somewhere and show it when needed, or add to the tree when needed

[main spire]

Okay, that's all the things I was looking for I think

But I have one more question: how can I add a search bar? (the hboxcontainers are added in-code)

[feral swallow]

It's not going to be trivial. You will probably need a text field that, on enter pressed, searches its text through names of all monsters and rebuilds the container with only buttons for monsters that have a match

Could also add the name as a property of a button (can't really rely on node names), just hide the wrong ones instead of rebuilding the thing

For the field itself, its just LineEdit probably

[main spire]

Thank you!

Also, I know I said that was my last question, but I have one more fr: is there a simple way to change the sorting of the entries?

[feral swallow]

I don't think so. All your container sees is a bunch of control nodes as its children. It does not know their names, their stats. It has no way to sort them other than by the children order

That children order is the order in which you add them, or move them https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/classes/class_node.html#class-node-method-move-child

[main spire]

Fair enough, thank you!