MenuView

Menus are the core interaction model in Mother GUI. It turns any supported text surface into a navigable control panel backed by Custom Data, so you can build ship dashboards, engineering menus, and local control consoles without writing a custom renderer.

How Menus Work

A screen can:

• render a menu defined on the Mother GUI programmable block
• render indicator views like RotorView, PistonView, or DoorView for common mechanical blocks
• switch between menus and preserve navigation history

Minimal Setup

Start by assigning a surface to a menu name. Custom menus live on the Mother GUI programmable block and use [menu:MenuName] sections.

[surfaces]
0=MainMenu

Then define that menu in the Mother GUI programmable block.

[menu:MainMenu]
Mechanical=
.Power Menu=view/go self PowerMenu
.Hangar Door=view/go self "DoorView" "Hangar Door"

[menu:PowerMenu]
...

When the surface is discovered, Mother GUI resolves MainMenu from the custom data.

Nested Menu Syntax

Menu depth is defined with leading dots. Every line still needs an = so the INI parser keeps it.

[menu:EngineeringMenu]
Power=
.Reactors=
..Main On=block/on Main Reactor
..Main Off=block/off Main Reactor
.Batteries=
..Charge=battery/charge Main Batteries
..Auto=battery/auto Main Batteries

Mechanical=
.Lift=view/go self "PistonView" "Lift Piston"
.Ramp=view/go self "RotorView" "Ramp Rotor"

This creates the following menu structure:

Ship Systems /
    |-- Lighting /
        | -- Red Alert
        | -- Clear Alert
    |-- Mechanical /
        | -- Rotor
        | -- Piston

Lines with children behave like groups. Lines without children behave like selectable commands.

Duplicate Labels

If two entries under the same menu need the same label, give each key a hidden internal id.

[menu]
Light 1=
.1:Red=light/color MenuLight1 red
.2:Green=light/color MenuLight1 green

Light 2=
.3:Red=light/color MenuLight2 red
.4:Green=light/color MenuLight2 green

The 1:, 2:, 3:, and 4: prefixes satisfy the INI key requirements but are not intended as player-facing labels.

Opening Views From Menus

Menu entries often launch another view instead of running a direct block command.

[menu:MainMenu]
Mechanical=
.Ramp=view/go self "RotorView" "Ramp Rotor"
.Lift=view/go self "PistonView" "Lift Piston"
.Airlock=view/go self "DoorView" "Outer Airlock Door"

Using self matters here. It tells Mother GUI to target the display that triggered the selection, so the same menu can be reused on multiple displays without hardcoding block names.

Switching Menus

We use the view/gocommand to navigate between menus:

[menu:MainMenu]
Lighting=menu/go self LightMenu
Power=menu/go self PowerMenu

[menu:LightMenu]
All On=block/on Lights
All Off=block/off Lights

[menu:PowerMenu]
Reactors On=block/on Reactors
Reactors Off=block/off Reactors

Mother GUI preserves menu history across these jumps, so view/back can return the player to the previous menu state instead of always resetting to the root.

Path Navigation

If you need to jump directly into a nested group, use a menu path, we can separate levels with >.

view/go "Bridge LCD" "EngineeringMenu > Power > Reactors";

This is useful for button-triggered shortcuts that should land directly inside a deeper branch.

Back and Scrolling

Every menu that has somewhere to return to shows a < Back entry as its last item. This includes nested groups, as well as the root of a menu you reached from another menu or view. Select it, or run view/back, to return to the previous step.

That means most displays only need three inputs: view/up, view/down and view/select.

Custom Titles

The menu header shows the menu name by default. Use the title option of view/go to show something else.

view/go "Cockpit:1" MapMenu --title="Map Menu Title";

The title resets when the player navigates into or out of a group.

Notifications

Use view/notify to show a short message in the footer of a display. Notifications work in menus but will be expanded to other views soon. They clear automatically after a few seconds.

[menu:MainMenu]
Lights=
.On=
| block/on "Interior Lights";
| view/notify self "Lights on" --level=success;

.Off=
| block/off "Interior Lights";
| view/notify self "Lights off";

Notification levels are info, success, warning and error.

Widescreen Behavior

On widescreen displays, MenuView stays visible on the left while the selected live view is rendered in a side panel on the right. On smaller displays, the selected view replaces the menu until the player uses view/back.

That split-view behavior is what makes bridge LCDs especially good for Mother GUI. The menu remains usable while the right side becomes a live detail panel.

Navigation Commands

The main commands to interact with a view are:

• view/up
• view/down
• view/select
• view/back
• view/go
• view/notify