Is it possible to store and reload controls without having to recreate them?

[Heeeere's johnny! 51]

Hey guyz,

seemingly, it's possible to store a created control into an array, like this:

allMyControls = [];
allMyControls pushBack (findDisplay 46 ctrlCreate ["RscButton", 12345]);

In that case, a button with the IDC 12345 will be visible as long as the display is visible. As soon as the display closes, the button disapplears (obviously), yet it's still in the array, but its IDC is now -1 and it wouldn't change back to its original one, even when the display it was added to is open again.

So the question is, if the control is stored in that array, can that somehow be readded to a display? Is it maybe possible to work some magic with uiNamespace?

I'd be glad for help!

Have a nice Play!

Johnny

[dreadedentity 278]

I'm not sure this is possible, I think when dialogs are closed all of the controls are deleted. Here's what I'm using in a current project:

{
ctrlEnable [_x, _this];
ctrlShow [_x, _this];
}forEach [1001,1002,1400,1401,1603,1604];

The only problem with this is that the dialog is still open, those controls are just hidden

[Heeeere's johnny! 51]

Yeah, I already thought about this too, but the problem begins when you want to open another display or when you've got a dialogue which you need to close in order to be fully functional again, gamewise.

[zapat 56]

What's up with https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/ctrlCreate ?

[Heeeere's johnny! 51]

There's nothing up with it. It's just a needless overhead to create the control again and again, everytime it's needed even if it's allways the exact same element. There should be a possibility to add an existing control to a display/dialogue.

[zapat 56]

Ok, but controls cease to exist if you close your dialog.

If you consider, this is not that bad design decision. You usually open dialogs when you don't shoot and such, so performance dips are not recognised.

However keeping unnecessary ui elements in memory is unnecessary.

[Heeeere's johnny! 51]

I know, it doesn't matter timely and it's "only" a discussion about performance and look as it might not look very smooth if a whole display is "puzzleing" together.

But if you take the code from my initial post, you'll see that the control actually remains in that array, even after the display is closed.

[zapat 56]

The question is how it is stored in your array. Data remaining there doesn't necessarily mean that the control still exists.

My solution against the annoying puzzle-ing is that I hide it until it's all loaded. All you sense is the some frames delay, but you get that with default BIS dialogs as well, probably for the same reasons.

---------- Post added at 12:55 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:49 AM ----------

Or for super fast, super smooth shows if it is this necessary, have a master rsc and hide/show elements on it together with a second layer of dialog which handle actions but not shows.

Overkill and totally not worth it, but smooth as hell. :-)

[Heeeere's johnny! 51]

Yeah, overkill indeed. ^_^ But thanks for the idea.