Menu Guide

A short tutorial that explains how to use the menu system of the game. This menu system is different to SA-MP dialogs and better reflects the traditional UI of the original game.

Menus in SA-MP

Menus look very complicated and difficult to script for the most players, although it isn't. Here I will show you how to create a simple menu. At the end we will have created a teleport menu.

First menu steps

First we have to create a menu. The prefix before is Menu: this makes the variable the correct tag. There are different types for different uses such as Float: bool: Text3D: etc. Write the following code near the top of your script:

new Menu:teleportmenu;

Okay, we created the variable to store the menu. Now we have to create the menu and assign the variable we created to the menu. Type this into OnGameModeInit:

teleportmenu = CreateMenu("Teleportmenu", 2, 200.0, 100.0, 150.0, 150.0);

Now a bit of an explanation about the CreateMenu arguments.

Parameters:

Add some menu items

Ok, now we've got the Menu, but we need some items, under which you can choose in the menu. You add them underneath the CreateMenu that we made earlier.

AddMenuItem(teleportmenu, 0, "LS");
AddMenuItem(teleportmenu, 0, "LS");
AddMenuItem(teleportmenu, 0, "SF");
AddMenuItem(teleportmenu, 0, "SF");
AddMenuItem(teleportmenu, 0, "LV");
AddMenuItem(teleportmenu, 0, "LV");
 
AddMenuItem(teleportmenu, 1, "Grove Street");
AddMenuItem(teleportmenu, 1, "Starfish Tower");
AddMenuItem(teleportmenu, 1, "Wheel Arch Angels");
AddMenuItem(teleportmenu, 1, "Jizzys");
AddMenuItem(teleportmenu, 1, "4 Dragons");
AddMenuItem(teleportmenu, 1, "Come-a-Lot");

The explanation for AddMenuItem:

Creating the effects for the items

Okay, now that we have created a full menu with items what should happen when you choose an item? In our example we want to make a teleportmenu, so we should get teleported to the position we choose. When a player selects an item on a menu the script calls the callback OnPlayerSelectedMenuRow. The best way to do it is to do it with a switch, this is like several if statements to check if a variable is worth certain values. But first we only want these effects for the menu we want so we need to create a variable that holds what menu the player is looking at, this is done with GetPlayerMenu:

new Menu:CurrentMenu = GetPlayerMenu(playerid);

Now, when somebody selects something on the menu, their menuid will be saved in CurrentMenu.

Now we have to check that the menu they selected on is the menu we want:

public OnPlayerSelectedMenuRow(playerid, row)
{
    new Menu:CurrentMenu = GetPlayerMenu(playerid);
    if (CurrentMenu == teleportmenu)
    {
        //stuff
    }
    return 1;
}

Now in between these brackets is where the switch is, this checks what item the player selected or row this can be done with if statements checking what row it is, but the switch is a much simpler way of writing it.

if(CurrentMenu == teleportmenu)
{
    switch(row)
    {
        case 0: //Grove Street
        {
            SetPlayerPos(playerid, 2493.9133, -1682.3986, 13.3382);
            SetPlayerInterior(playerid, 0);
            SendClientMessage(playerid, 0xFFFFFFFF, "Welcome to Grove Street");
        }
        case 1: //Starfish Tower
        {
            SetPlayerPos(playerid, 1541.2833, -1362.4741, 329.6457);
            SetPlayerInterior(playerid, 0);
            SendClientMessage(playerid, 0xFFFFFFFF, "Welcome to the top of Starfish Tower");
        }
        case 2: //Wheel Arch Angels
        {
            SetPlayerPos(playerid, -2705.5503, 206.1621, 4.1797);
            SetPlayerInterior(playerid, 0);
            SendClientMessage(playerid, 0xFFFFFFFF, "Welcome to the Wheel Arch Angels tuning-shop");
        }
        case 3: //Jizzys
        {
            SetPlayerPos(playerid, -2617.5156, 1390.6353, 7.1105);
            SetPlayerInterior(playerid, 0);
            SendClientMessage(playerid, 0xFFFFFFFF, "Welcome to Jizzy's Nightclub!");
        }
        case 4: //4Dragons
        {
            SetPlayerPos(playerid, 2028.5538, 1008.3543, 10.8203);
            SetPlayerInterior(playerid, 0);
            SendClientMessage(playerid, 0xFFFFFFFF, "Welcome to the Four Dragons Casino");
        }
        case 5: //Come-a-Lot
        {
            SetPlayerPos(playerid, 2169.1838, 1122.5426, 12.6107);
            SetPlayerInterior(playerid, 0);
            SendClientMessage(playerid, 0xFFFFFFFF, "Welcome to the Come-a-Lot casino!");
        }
    }
}

Last steps

Now we need a command to show the menu. This is the easiest step. Just a comparison with strcmp and a ShowMenuForPlayer. This is done in OnPlayerCommandText. Or, if you have a command processor already, use that instead to call ShowMenuForPlayer.

if(strcmp(cmdtext, "/teleport", true) == 0)
{
    ShowMenuForPlayer(teleportmenu,playerid);
    return 1;
}

Really easy, wasn't it?

Last words

Okay, after you read this AND understood it, try your own menu. As you could see, it isn't that difficult, but will impress the players on your server all the more. And you can script really cool effects with this. It's also very cool for general stores or supermarkets for the things you can buy. Then you can subtract some money as effect and the price is shown in another column in the menu. But now, work on your own.

You can also add TogglePlayerControllable with false after ShowPlayerMenu and TogglePlayerControllable with true at end of OnPlayerSelectedMenuRow so that player may not move while they are browsing menus.

I hope you learned something from this tutorial. If you have any questions, ask in the forums/discord.