Castagne's User Interface system allows you to display in-game information to the player, through bars, numbers, and other widgets. This system interfaces with Godot engine more than others as it relies more on its features, and as such some intermediate operations are meant to be done from Godot's editor proper.
The main concept of the system is Widgets. A widget is an interface element displaying one or several values from the current state of the game. They can be added in two ways:
Widgets are updated during the graphics update step. They can be added from CASP, which will try to add them at a hook point defined in the root. You are able to specify the variables and assets to use, but their actual use is defined by the widget itself.
The type of widget can be either "custom" to load any scene, or one of the other default types to load the default associated widget, which can be changed from the Castagne config.
Default widgets are meant as an easy way to add information during prototyping or for simple widgets. The
| Type | Description | Variables | Assets |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bar | A fillable bar that can show two values | Main: Main value to show Sub: Shown behind the Main value Max: The full bar capacity needed for ratios |
A1: Main bar texture A2: Sub bar texture A3: Background texture |
| Icons | Adds icons one after the other | Main: Number of icons | A1: Icon |
| Icon Switch | Shows one icon from a list | Main: Icon ID to show | A1: Icon for 0- A2: Icon for 1 A3: Icon for 2+ |
| Text | Shows a simple label | Main: Text | / |
You can use any scene as a widget as long as it implements the interface of res://castagne/helpers/ui/CUIWidget.gd.
The easiest way is reusing one of the widget scripts from the default section, in res://castagne/helpers/ui/widgets. Here are a few additional remarks on each:
Save your scene and give the path to CASP to use it with the Custom type, and it should add it to the hook point you want.
Sometimes, you need something complex. You can create new widget types by inheriting res://castagne/helpers/ui/CUIWidget.gd. There are helper functions to validate data and gather them.
If you create a new widget, you'll also need to handle mirroring properly through the isMirrored value.
Before adding widgets to the UI, it needs to create the hooking points. It does this by spawning it the UI Root. There are two:
You can visualize the current hook points by using the "Visualize UI" Debug switch from the debug tool. Every node can be a hook point.
Widgets already present in the global or player root are detected and updates automatically.