¶ Randomization
FancyMenu has lots of features that help you randomize layouts or parts of it.
This can be useful for example if you want users to see different screen backgrounds every time they open a screen or randomized tips in the loading screen.
¶ Randomizing Layouts
There's a feature in FancyMenu that allows you to make a group of layouts and the system will automatically pick a random layout out of this group. By doing that you can basically show a completely different randomized menu design every time the user launches the game or opens a screen, but it can also be used to only change parts of the screen, for example the background.
¶ Random Mode
To randomize layouts you need to enable the Random Mode for every layout that should be a possible pick for the randomization. To do that, right-click the editor background and search for the Random Mode entry.
¶ Random Group Identifier
After enabling the random mode you need to set its Random Group Identifier.
This number needs to be the same for every layout that should be in the same group.
¶ Randomizing Behavior
If you only want the system to pick a random layout of the group once per game session, enable Randomize Only First Time. This will make it pick a layout the first time the screen gets opened and then always uses the layout it picked the first time. If this is disabled it will pick a random layout every time the screen gets opened.
¶ Example Scenario 1: Background
Lets say you want to randomize the background of the Title Screen.
To do that you need to make one layout per background and ONLY change the background for these layouts and enable the random mode with correct random group identifier.
In this example we use the random group identifier 10. This identifier needs to get set for every layout of this random layout group.
The easiest way to do that is by preparing a layout with the correct random group identifier and then just use Save As. Change the background every time you save the layout under a new name, then you will end up with a bunch of layouts with different backgrounds and one of these layouts will get picked every time you open the screen or once per game session.
¶ Example Scenario 2: Element
Another common use case is randomizing a text or image element.
Same as for the background, make one layout per version of the element you want to randomly pick. Only add the element to the layouts and nothing else. Don't customize anything and don't add other elements.
Then just save all layouts with the same random group identifier and one layout of the group gets picked when you open the screen or launch the game.