Complex Menus (Menu-Based Battle Systems)

[cdrch]

While working on my current project, an RPG with a Pokémon-esque menu-based battle system, I've begun to struggle with figuring out how to have complex, multi-layer, text (BitmapText, rather than button or image-based) menus. By "multi-layer", I mean that a menu can bring up another menu, ad infinitum, all potentially with different menu layouts (a list or a grid, for example). By "complex", I mean that the selections within menus can have wildly varying results; there could be a different function called by each selection, or there could be a few different functions that receive different parameters depending on the menu selection. An example:

 

-Fight       -Talk

-Use Item -Run Away

 

Selecting Fight brings up the following menu that appears on top of or next to the previous menu:

 

-Attack1 -Attack3

-Attack2 -Attack4

 

Selecting any of those attacks calls a particular function targeting an enemy.

 

Selecting Use Item brings up the following menu:

 

-Item1

-Item2

-Item3

 

Selecting any of those items would call a shared function, passing in the name and stats of the item as parameters.

 

Selecting Talk calls a menu with a list of things to say. Each selection would trigger a short dialogue, with periodic menus of its own, before returning to the Talk menu (or the first menu).

 

Selecting Run Away calls another menu:

 

Are you sure?

-No

-Yes

 

Yes ends the battle, closing all previous menus and opening up another image to show post-battle information, while no simply closes the yes/no menu and returns the player to control of the previous menu.

 

Pressing the back button on any menu would return the player to the previous menu.

 

So, does anyone know of an elegant way to implement such a system in Phaser? Suggestions, links to tutorials or guides, pseudocode, descriptions, and actual working Phaser code are all welcome. Something that minimizes hard-coding, so as to allow things like an external XML, JSON, or text file that contains, say, character dialogue, to create menus for branching dialogue purposes, would be even more amazing. I'd like to avoid using the DOM or anything outside of Phaser for visual display, but anything along those lines that anyone is willing to share could still be helpful.

 

I'll be working on this for a while, so if no one has posted a better response, I'll try to sum up as close as I am able to get over the next week of work.

 

Thanks!