Joy Of Hex:Menu:Game Menus

Joy Of Hex Menus


The Joy Of Hex has a few menus items of importance to the user. What isn't mentioned here is merely being left out on grounds of over-familarity.


The first menu of interest is the File menu. This menu looks very similar to the File menu in other Mac applications, and even acts in the familar way. The following image is a picture of the File menu.

The first menu item is the New ... command - you chose this if you want to start a completely new scenario. The second menu item is the Open ... command - you use this to open games that you have saved before.

After the New ... menu item there are a few other items. These follow the familar Mac interface guidelines so there should be no surprises there.

Since the Joy Of Hex has some user settings that it can adjust, selecting the Preferences... menu item will cause the following dialog to appear.

In the preferences dialog you have the following settings that you can change:

  • Numerical Unit Descriptions - if you choose to have this option on, you will see the full numerical data that makes up an unit's description whenever you select an unit during the planning stage. Having this option off will leave you seeing a short verbal description of the selected unit.

  • Play Battle Sounds - if you choose to have this option on you will hear sounds of battle during the execution phase of the game when the battle animation is displayed.

  • Show Background Pattern - if you choose to have this option on you will see a pattern on the background of the map window. If you turn this off then the background of the map window shall be black.


    During the play of a game you can tell the game when you are finished with a particular phase and that you want to move onto the next stage by using the Phase menus. There are two basic states that this menu can be in - the first is the planning state where Execution is the only option available and appears as it does in the following picture:

    The second state is the After Action state where Planning is the only option available and appears as it does in the following picture:


    Once you have a window open that contains a hex map in the planning stage, you can change the various toolbars that you can use to setup your commands for that planning phase. The Toolbar menu appears in the image below:

    Notice that the present toolbar that is active can be determined by looking for the tickmark. As you change the toolbar which you are working with then the tickmark will move to represent those changes. Also, if the scenario that you are playing is in a non-planning phase then this menu will be dimmed.


    Since the Joy Of Hex fills the entire screen (minus the menubar) with its windows, switching between multiple windows is achieved with the Window menu picture below:

    There are two main ways to making the window that you want to appear at the front. The first is by paging through your window list (either forwards or backwards) by chosing the Previous Map or Next Map menu items. The second method is by selecting the window that you want directly from the window list that appears at the bottom of the Window menu - notice how the presently active window has a tickmark against it.


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