Cocos2d iPhone Game Remove menu from scene - iphone

Question

I have written a few games using Cocos2d iPhone. In all of my previous games I would change scenes when I setup a CCMenu and then leave that scene when I was finished. In my current project, I need the menu to exist in my current scene and be able to open and then close the menu many times. For some reason, I can't seem to understand, removeChild will not remove the menu. I have seen several examples online that show using removeChild, but it does not work for me. Below is my menu code, when the Start/CreateNewAccount button is pressed I want the current menu to be removed from the scene completely.
This is in my init method.
CCMenuItemImage *Start = [CCMenuItemImage itemFromNormalImage:#"MakeLemonade.png" selectedImage:#"MakeLemonadePressed.png"
target:self
selector:#selector(CreateNewAccount:)];
CCMenuItemImage *About = [CCMenuItemImage itemFromNormalImage:#"About.png" selectedImage:#"AboutPressed.png"
target:self
selector:#selector(About:)];
Start.position = ccp(-175, -90);
About.position = ccp(175, -90);
CCMenu *MainMenu = [CCMenu menuWithItems: Start, About, nil];
[Start runAction:[CCFadeIn actionWithDuration:1.0]];
[About runAction:[CCFadeIn actionWithDuration:1.0]];
[self addChild:MainMenu z:6];
}
return self;
}
-(void) BeginMenuLayer {
//this is not working
[self removeChild:MainMenu cleanup:YES];
}

Answer 1

In your init method you've declared MainMenu as a local variable. You're not setting it as a property, so you don't have a reference when you go to remove it later.
1) Make sure you have a property declared for it like this:
#property (nonatomic, retain) CCMenu *MainMenu;
2) Synthesize it at the top of your implementation:
#synthesize MainMenu;
3) Make sure you release it in your dealloc:
-(void)dealloc {
self.MainMenu = nil;
[super dealloc];
}
4) When you construct it, assign it to your property rather than a local variable:
self.MainMenu = [CCMenu menuWithItems: Start, About, nil];
Now you have a retained reference to the object, which you can pass later to removeChild:cleanup:.