menu with conio.h help needed

[Solarwin]

Hey guys,
I am trying to make cool main menu,but i am not sure how to do this correctly.
so i am trying to make something like this:

at the start:

--> Start
How to play
Exit

after clicked down arrow:

Start
--> How to play
Exit

after clicked down arrow twice:

Start
How to play
--> Exit

I hope you get the point. ;)
This is what i have done so far:

#include <iostream>
#include <conio.h>
#include <windows.h>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
    int option;
    cout<<"    Menu:"<<endl;
          cout<<'\t'<<"--> "<<"  Start"<<endl;
          cout<<'\t'<<"     How to play"<<endl;
          cout<<'\t'<<"     Exit"<<endl;


    while( option != 27){
    option = getch();

    switch(option){
    case 80:
       cout<<" --> "<<"  How to play"<<endl;
    break;
    case 72:
        cout<<"  - "<<endl;
    break;
    case 27:
    cout<<"  - "<<endl;
    break;
    }
}
    return 0;
}

Hope for help, Thanks in advance! ;)

[tabstop]

So keep track of where your arrow is and when a down arrow is pressed change the position and redraw the screen.

I have no idea what character code (if any) you'll get from down arrow and don't want to know, but presumably documentation may still exist for getch.

(EDIT: I feel like I must for form's sake say "conio????????????????" so there you go.)

[Matticus]

I did something like this a long while back (the option pointed to by the arrow was also changed to red), but it was in 'C' (and completely non-portable).

Rather than hard coding it like you did, I created a function to print the menu items. I also passed a code to that function to indicate the currently "highlighted" option. In that function, I printed something before each menu item. For the non-highlighted options, I just printed four spaces. For the highlighted option, I printed " -> ".

Each time an arrow key is pressed, I would increment/decrement (or wrap around) the value of the option to highlight, then simply call the function again.

If you need information on using the arrow keys, check the FAQ.