Advanced buildings menu

I've done my searching around and found little, so here goes:

As far as I can tell, people seem to agree that there is a way to design a working "advanced buildings" menu using spell book, but I cannot figure it out.

First of all, I ought to use the "Build tiny (farm/castle/etc)" item abilities for each building, yes? It does not appear that these have a gold / lumber cost setting, or at least none that I can find. I've considered pocket factory, but it doesn't use the same "building path marker" (it uses a target instead). Not that pocket factory appears to have gold / lumber costs either, but still.

Second, if this can be done, is it also possible to have requirements on these buildings (tech-tree wise)? If not, I could place my "ordinary" buildings in the spell book based ability and vice versa, because none of the ordinary buildings in my map have requirements. The only problem is that the more advanced buildings would end up to the left and with an incorrect tooltop, which leads to the next question - can I alter the "build menu" ability (specifically tooltip and placement, perhaps also icon)? I suppose I could always swap the icon using imports, but with an erroneous tooltip it wouldn't do much good.

You have to trigger the gold and lumber cost, afaik reveal is the only ability with gold cost.

Or you can have tech-trees, by making custom units name like '500 gold' so the tooltip will say "Requirements: -500 gold"

Just have a periodic trigger check if the player has 500 gold, if he has create the "500 gold" unit, which is a dummy, then trigger the gold cost and such.

Still... it doesn't look quite right, because there's no gold icon and it adds the "requirements" text. I could make it cost mana, I suppose, and continuously set the mana of the builder to the player's current gold... only it doesn't make much sense either, unless I replaced the mana cost icon with the gold one (which would screw up a few other abilities).

EDIT: As a last resort, I could always morph the builder to a copy, autoselected, with another build menu, but it's dull and ugly :<

Moprhing is not bad at all, if you trigger it well that it will replaced immedatly when begin with morphing and then reselect the replaced unit too. the only significant bug will be that the green selectionring will be "off" for 1/10th second and you have no control over that unit for same amount of time. but, who cares that? (unless there better ideas)

mayb it's possible to fix it like this
-1 botton = normal buildings build button (main, factory, barracks etc..)
-button for morphing, but you call it "Advanced buildings" (so everyone thinks you actually will go to the other building list.
-when pressing the last button your builder will replaced instantly with his mirror one, but only with one different, the icons are switched: The Normal Building button will be a morphing button (but still looks like the original build building button) and the Advanced building will take you now into a Advanced building menu (Actually its the standard building menu of your builder copy with another buildings)

the hard thing i think is how to trigger it that your builder automatically opens his build menu when finished relacing and after automatic reselection, if you can fix that, this is the best solution i think!

Well, I know what I can do with morphing. The problem, as I see it, is that you "switch buildings menu" instead of having two of them. I'd rather have two than have to switch. Sure, I can open the building menu automatically "force player to press B", but I cannot switch icons for it (it's no standard ability, I think).

uhhmm i think i couldn;t help you then, theres is one thing that might fix that problem.


you can use the fact that the menu automatically opens, let me explain:

-you have 2 buttons on builder 1. first button (bottom left) is the standard build button. the other besides it, is the Advanced button, but is actually a morph (upgrade), spell or other command you just make it looks like a advanced building button.

- when you click on the standard building, nothing will happen, just the standard building screen will open.

-othersides when you make the unit change (morph) by selecting other button, just replace it by builder 2 and reselect, use the force B key. in fact NO one can see the other buttons of the Builder 2! so it doesnt care where the locations of these buttons are, even if they are on top!, because people can't see them becouse the available buildings where popped up.

-the final thing to fix is that when you leaved that building menu (where the buildings can be build, the overview i mean eh, you know what i mean) the unit will be switched back to its original format (replace and reselect to builder 1 again), and thus the build and the lookalike advanced building will be original again, and noone ever saw the odd looking interface of builder2!
take care of:
-Esc pressing events (so building menu cancels)
-leaving buildmenu by deselecting unit (selecting other unit by example)
-Ordered to build a structure without the Shift key held. (so buildingmenu cancels)

these 3 things could be tricky to fix, but mayb its worth to try it.