"Smart" branching?

May 15, 2013

Hi all,

I am building a course that is a simulation of a menu system. There are two "main" menus, each with different submenus that the user is branched out to when they make a choice. However, there is one submenu between the two main menus that is exactly the same.

For that submenu, I was thinking that instead of duplicating the common slides for both of the main menus, I could just link both menus to the common slides. Ok, done.

Now, I am trying to figure out how I enable the user to go back to whichever main menu they were previously at by using one common "back button" (I do not want to have two separate buttons depending on which main menu they were at before).

So, if they were at menu A and jumped to menu C, I want the back button functionality to take them back to menu A. If they were at menu B and jumped to menu C, I want the back button to take them back to menu B.

I'm not sure if this can be accomplished by variables (I tried a few experiments that didn't work), so I am seeking out additional suggestions on whether and how this may be possible.

If this is not possible, I suppose I can settle for adding two separate buttons. The main reason I want to avoid that is because in "real life", the user wouldn't use two separate buttons on the device that we are simulating. They use only one back button throughout all the menus.

3 Replies
Alexandros Anoyatis

I'd probably use a variable if I were you.

I haven't really thought this through (so there may be a more efficient way of doing this) however you'd be fine if you:

A) Create a variable (any type is fine, I guess True/False would suffice). ex : isMenuA : True

B) In each of your 2 menu slides insert a trigger (when timeline starts) to set the 'isMenuA' value accordingly (i.e. True to the slide containing MenuA, false to the slide containing Menu B).
C) Include two conditional triggers for each of your custom back buttons/hotspots (i.e.: Go to slide 'MenuA' when user clicks on Hotspot X if value of variable isMenuA = True   / Go to slide 'MenuB' when user clicks on Hotspot X if value of variable isMenuA = False).

That should do it...

Let me know if this works for you,
Alex

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