[ROODAY]

Completes the Roles and Equipment pages in the help menu's Guide section. Both pages are read-only and show what is actually available on the server, so new players can look up what exists in a round.

Roles

• Lists all roles that can be part of the game, with their icon and a badge for built-in roles.
• Shows a role's name, team, description, whether it is built-in and, for subroles, which role they are based on.
• Roles that are disabled in the role settings are hidden. Role settings are server convars that are not readable by non-admin clients, so this adds a small server request (roles.RequestEnabledRoles) that returns the indices of all roles that are part of the game. Roles that are not distributable are always listed, since they can still be handed out during a round (e.g. revival or sidekick roles).
• Descriptions use the same ttt2_desc_<role> language identifiers as the role settings menu, with a fallback string for roles that do not provide one instead of showing the raw identifier.

Equipment

• Lists all installed equipment (weapons and items), sorted by their translated name, with their icon and a badge for built-in equipment.
• Shows an equipment's name, type, description and the roles that are able to buy it. The buyable roles respect custom shops, as they are built from the shop data that is already synced to clients.
• Equipment that no role can buy is still listed, as it can be handed out by a role loadout.

Notes

• Wrapped text uses a plain DLabel: DLabelTTT2 paints its text with draw.SimpleText and therefore cannot wrap long descriptions.
• The equipment page intentionally has no enabled/disabled filter.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[ROODAY]

There are still some things I'd like to fix:

• Add a search bar to make finding a role easier
• Remove the margin around the submenu content for this page, so that the list of roles is flush
• Make the displayed information prettier

I think I can figure out the first one, but this is my first time making a PR to this codebase, so any help regarding the other two would be greatly appreciated! TBH I'm not even sure what info should be displayed/how to make it pretty

[TimGoll]

First of: I really appreciate what you did here. However, I have to say that it does not fit our design language so far. I'm a bit confused why your scrollbar looks different. And you should put the content in forms instead of bare strings

[ROODAY]

@TimGoll sure, I can use forms like how admin Roles page works, I guess these would be in form help text and just not have any of the config toggles/inputs?

As for the scrollbar looking different, I'm not sure why it's like that. I'm using a DScrollPanel instead of a DSubmenuList as the latter required a bunch of fields/data to be set that seems to only be on pages derived from base_gamemodemenu.lua, but this guide->roles page is derived from base_gamemodesubmenu.lua. I initially tried just replicating the admin roles page but ran into a ton of errors/stuff just not rendering and not knowing what was going on, so it felt easier to just rebuild from scratch with the components that DSubmenuList uses internally.

Sidenote, would you know how to remove the margin around the content area in this gamemode submenu? I don't think I explicitly set any margin here (and in other submenus I see there is a margin so it looks like something set at a default level)

[ROODAY]

Also just linking the thread from discord to bring the discussion together: https://discord.com/channels/442107660955942932/1402951259601768519

[TimGoll]

I guess these would be in form help text and just not have any of the config toggles/inputs?

Yes, for example by using help boxes which automatically support localization and line wrapping. However, I envisioned something way more in-depth for the guide, but I struggle to find any time to work on it.

As for the scrollbar looking different, I'm not sure why it's like that. I'm using a DScrollPanel instead of a DSubmenuList

That's probably it. The submenu list is heavily modified to have the style I was aiming for. It has been a while, I'm not so sure anymore how exactly it works. As you can see in #1752 I also started to completely refactor the codebase of vgui, because stuff like you encountered here really annoyed me.

Sidenote, would you know how to remove the margin around the content area in this gamemode submenu? I don't think I explicitly set any margin here (and in other submenus I see there is a margin so it looks like something set at a default level)

I think this is defined in the base menu in cl_help. If you want to change it, it will probably cause some pain for you because this propagates through the whole menu.

[ROODAY]

@TimGoll wanted to revive this as I got some time to look at it again, here are some screenshots of it in game

Wasn't sure how to fill in the Gameplay section since that might be more subjective than just piping data into a view.

[ROODAY]

@saibotk just tagging you as I saw you were the most recently active in other prs!

[Nosebody]

@ROODAY
Can you do something like this?
I guess that fits better? That was my idea before i fund this pull request

(it is a render from claude)

[ROODAY]

@Nosebody thanks for the feedback! Is this a mockup or is there a branch I can base off of? Regardless I have some questions on how to implement this view:

• Does each role have a Shop vs built-in tag?
• Does each role have a color assigned to it already?
• Where does the "HOW TO PLAY" text get populated from?
• If roles are grouped by team, how should the UI handle a server with many roles installed? (e.g. in my screenshots earlier I have quite a few intalled). Scroll horizontally? Would this be any better than scrolling vertically?
• Same for equipment regarding scrolling.
• Also aren't there some roles that aren't traitor or innocent but third parties? Do they have enough info to populate further team panels? (e.g. jackal team)

[Nosebody]

Sorry that picture is a render, it is not build on code, i am more on the design side.
Every role has a color, i know that because i create a hud that use the role colors. I guess a tab for „other teams“ make sense? The shop data can we take live from the server, because u can edit shops. Make the same teams the same color? The how to play is something that has to be create per hand i guess.

[ROODAY]

I see, I can update to add role colors, group by team, and show the shop data. For the how to play, I don't think we should create by hand. Perhaps we can expose a field on roles that allows formatted text (markdown/html etc?) for the how to play section, but then this will be empty for most roles until role addon authors update to supply this info.

[ROODAY]

@Nosebody I reworked the roles page based on your mockup, here's how it looks now:

What's in it:

• Roles are grouped by team in collapsible sections. Innocent and Traitor come first, then the other teams (Jackal, Necromancer, ...) and "No Team" last.
• Each card shows the role icon on the role color, the team bar in the team color, and Built-in / Shop tags.
• You can search by role name and filter by team.
• Clicking a card opens the details below its row. They show the description, "How to play", properties (base role for subroles, which shop the role uses, starting credits, visible to everyone) and the role's shop items.
• Everything comes live from the server: only enabled roles are shown, shops reflect the shop editor (linked shops show e.g. "Traitor shop"), and starting credits are sent by the server, so they match what admins have set.

For "How to play", roles can now provide an optional language key, ttt2_howtoplay_<rolename>. Every line becomes a bullet point, and the section is hidden when a role doesn't have one. Because it's a language key, it can be translated like the role descriptions.

I wrote the "How to play" texts for Innocent, Traitor and Detective myself. Could you check whether that copy works for you, or if you'd phrase anything differently? For all other roles, the plan is to let the role addon creators add a "How to play" text to their roles themselves.

One deviation from the mockup: your mockup had the Detective's bar in blue, but since you suggested using the same color for the same team, the bar uses the team color and the icon box keeps the role color.

Could you also share a mockup for the Equipment page? I've left it as it is for now so it can follow your design.