hello all. i am quite new to gamestudio and am planning to make an rpg. im currently doing a software engineering course in university and am willing to spend alot of time on this personal project.

my rpg is based on an era of star wars that has not been looked at, at the moment i have decided that it wont be commercial.

my questions are as follows:

1) i notice that in some examples that i find on the net, that all the files are visible and able to be changed eg maps and models. what im asking is if there is a way to make a database file that contains all the maps, models etc and have the game access that, making it unavailable to the player to edit.

2) ive tried searching and looking at tutorials and havnt found anything to answer this question. how do i create a game main menu. the menu you see every time you load a game that says play new game, load game etc.

thx


EDIT: i wasn't sure where to put this so i put it in this section

EDIT - This is exactly the place to put it, and welcome aboard!

1> The "process" you are looking for is called file-packing.
If you do a deep search in these forums you will find some freeware ones
that can be used with A7. For some reason they just dont get discussed much.

OR if you splurge and buy the professional version of gamestudio, it comes
built-in under the generic term "resources" or WRS files.
You should be able to find some reference to resources in the manual,
regardless of what version you are currently using. The manual you have
is no different to the one that comes with Pro.

2> As for menus, it has no easy answer, as there are so many types of
menus you can create, and so many ways to create each one.
Keep looking through the tutorials, especially in the AUM magazines.
To aid your search, be aware that most menus are using "panels" in some form.

thanks heaps. i did most of the tutorials as part of this 25 thing, cant remember at the moment where but i remember doing tutorials on panels just wasnt sure if thats what you needed to make the menus. and thanks about the packing info much appreciated