Hints for vehicles

  • There exists the possibility to display two types of hints in every vehicle to help the user when driving the vehicle.

    1 In general

    Tooltips are an assistance for users, who are new to the program or the vehicle itself. Every vehicle should have its own hint-/tooltip configuration. There are hints displayed in realtime when there is a misuse of the vehicle to show the right usage. On the other hand a hint can be displayed for learning the names of special buttons. When using the hints in realtime, there might be buttons mentioned, which the user might not know. So you need the hints for the buttons on the dashboard, which can have a small text beside the name of the button like "Reverser - select the direction of driving".


    The texts for the hints should not be listed in the script, they should be listed as language codes following this convention:


    "[Name of vehicle].Hint.[small text]" – example: "GT6N.Hint.ReverserNotSet"


    After setting the language codes you have to create a language file using these language codes and transferring them to the specified language. By using this method you can display the hints in different languages. LOTUS combines this language file with other language files of the same language. Because of this, it is neccessary to follow the convention mentioned before to prevent doubled entries.


    A language file could look like this:



    All language files could be located in the same directory as the vehicle file (*.lob), so they get packed into the container to have one container for the vehicle afterwards. They don't have to be in the same directory, but in when using a separate directory, another container will be created only for these language files. You can name the files as you want, but obviously a good name helps to find them afterwards.

    2 Script or realtime hint

    A script hint - like the name says - gets activated by a script. A typical example is the display of a hint, when the user is trying to move the joystick to drive the tram but the reverser has the false position.


    The activation for the script hint will be deployed when the public script variable "hint" gets a value. The hint will remain for a short period of time even if the value is set only once.


    At first you have to declare the public variable:

    Code
    1. {PUBLIC_VARS
    2. ...
    3. Hint: string;
    4. ...
    5. }

    The hints gets activated, when the user want to use the joystick for acceleration, but the reverser is not set:

    Code
    1. if (id = 'Brake') then
    2. begin
    3. if _cockpit.Richtungswender_Value >= 2 then // the reverser has a valid position?
    4. begin
    5. ... // the joystick can be moved here
    6. end
    7. else
    8. Hint := 'GT6N.Hint.ReverserNotSet'; // the hint will be displayed, because the reverser has not the right position
    9. end;

    3 Hover-Hints

    These hints are displayed when the user hovers above the clickable element, which was configured before.


    You configure these hints within the Objects & vehicle tool. To do so click on the mesh, then go on the left side to "selected mesh" and configure when this hint gets displayed.



    The hint will only work, when the object has an event triggered by the left or right mouse button.


    Now there are two possibilities:

    • You can use the "standard hints" when you previously listed the event in the language file. This is the case, when the event is a standard event or you have created your own language file with this entry.
    • When using "own hint" you can set the language code using the "..." button. This language code also has to be written in a language file.

    In both cases the hint won't be displayed when the entries in the language file are missing.