Sentinal

Sentinal is a Unity UGUI routing and input-control package. It provides view history, keyboard and gamepad selection, cancel and back handling, view-layer isolation, and Input System action-map gates.

Selection replaces UGUI's built-in navigation instead of working around it: automatic spatial search with per-direction angles, optional diagonals, ordered preferred targets, and opt-in wrapping. Controls created or enabled at runtime take part with no extra setup.

Use it for controller-driven pause menus, settings screens, couch co-op lobbies, tabbed panels, modal prompts, and HUD overlays.

Quick start | Why Sentinal | Components | Installation | Samples & debugging

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Why Sentinal

The Sentinal Debug Window at Window > Sentinal > Debug shows the view stack, priorities, and input gates.

• Routable views: add ViewSelector, open directly or through a ViewAddress asset. Priority and recency resolve overlaps.
• Selection: SelectionNavigator replaces UGUI navigation with spatial search, preferred targets, and opt-in wrap. Runtime controls join automatically.
• Dismissal: one ViewDismissalInputHandler sends Cancel/Back to the top non-root view, so Esc, B, and Circle share a route.
• Input gates: per-view ViewInputSystemHandler and ActionMapGate toggle actions by focus. Views register themselves, no manager prefab needed.

Quick start

Build a pause menu. The whole package shows up in this one example, and the hierarchy below is the shape Sentinal expects: one view root, plain buttons under it, one navigator per button.

PauseMenu                         ViewSelector, ViewInputSystemHandler, ActionMapGate
├── Header                        TextMeshProUGUI ("Paused")
└── Buttons
    ├── ResumeButton              Button, SelectionNavigator
    ├── OptionsButton             Button, SelectionNavigator
    └── QuitButton                Button, SelectionNavigator

1. Lay out the hierarchy

Build the tree above with normal UGUI objects. One view per root, buttons as siblings under a shared parent.

2. Make the panel routable

Add ViewSelector to PauseMenu, set First Selected to ResumeButton, then pauseMenu.Open() / pauseMenu.Close(). Priority wins overlaps, Root View marks screens cancel must never close.

3. Make the buttons selectable

Add SelectionNavigator to each button. That is the whole wiring step: it disables UGUI navigation, registers while enabled, and resolves preferred targets first, spatial search second, wrap last. See Components.md for angles, diagonals, masks, and wrap rules.

Select a button in the Scene view to verify: solid lines are authored targets, dotted lines are automatic hits, cyan (wrap) lines are wraps, the fan is the search cone.

4. Gate input while the menu is focused

Add ViewInputSystemHandler plus ActionMapGate to PauseMenu. The handler enables view input only while focused; the gate swaps action maps (e.g. enable UI, disable Gameplay). Details in Components.md.

5. Wire back navigation once, globally

Add ViewDismissalInputHandler to a persistent UI object and point it at UI/Cancel. One handler covers every menu.

For address-based routing (ViewAddress, ViewLink, prefabs, Addressables), see Components.md.

Component map

Area	Use these	What they solve
Routing	SentinalViewRouter, ViewSelector, ViewAddress, ViewLink	Open, close, and focus views without scene refs.
Selection navigation	SelectionNavigator	Controller navigation for dynamic layouts.
View layering	ViewGroupConfig, ViewGroupMask	Isolate HUDs, menus, popups, and tabs.
Input ownership	SentinalPlayer, ViewInputSystemHandler, ActionMapGate, ViewDismissalInputHandler	Route input to the right player, gate maps by focus.
Input-driven controls	InputActionButton, InputActionButtonHold, TabbedView, TabbedViewInputHandler, DisplayInputString	Buttons, holds, tabs, and prompts from actions.
Text prompts	TextInputGateway, PromptedTextField	Controller-friendly text entry.

Full guide: Components.md.

Installation

Requires Unity 2021.3+, UGUI, Input System (for Sentinal.InputSystem), TextMeshPro (for prompts). Add via Package Manager > + > Add package from git URL:

https://github.com/Tirtstan/Sentinal.git

Samples & debugging

Import Examples from the Package Manager (Samples/Examples) for routing, gated menus, action buttons, and tabs. Inspect live views with Window > Sentinal > Debug, or SentinalViewRouter.GetDebugString().