Devlog - Polish and UI

Devlog - Polish and UI

Hi again, this week I focused on creating a main menu and game over screen for my game. On top of this I implemented the countdown timer mechanic, which begins at 15 seconds and will kill the player when it hits zero. The plan is for the timer to be extended each time the player kills an enemy, but I am yet to get to that so for now it just counts down and ends the game.

Creation Process

Main Menu and Game Over

In creating the main menu and game over screens I adhered to a similar process I used in creating my game sprites. I used my iPad and note taking app to hand draw the UI screens. I began by opening a blank page and scaled it to a suitable size for the game. From here I researched some different fonts that I could draw for the screens and found one I liked. I then used this font as inspiration in drawing the UI myself. The main menu features the name of the game and the play button, and the game over says ‘game over’ and has a ‘play again’ button. If I get time I may add a scoreboard screen or could possibly add a settings screen that include adjustable aspects such as brightness but this is unlikely as there wouldn’t really be any settings to adjust given the nature of the game. Once I had drawn both the main menu and game over screens I exported them to my computer where I then created a new scene in my project for each screen. I mapped the images over the game camera and allocated spriteless buttons to where I had drawn my own buttons. From here I implemented scene switcher scripts to both scenes that told the game where to go when the 

buttons were pressed.

Countdown Timer

In creating the countdown timer for my game I utilised TextMeshPro to create a text element within the game that would sit in the bottom right hand corner. This would be the timer. Next I implemented a timer script that would countdown from an adjustable value, which currently is 15 seconds. I then had to make it so that the timer ending would also end the game. I first attempted this through modifying the timer switch to kill the player and then switch scenes to the game over scene but soon realised this was not the way to go. I instead adjusted the script to simply switch scenes to the game over scene, which effectively ended the current gameplay and reset the game. This addition to the game finally made it playable (barely) as you could now start the game, die, and play again. 

Testing and Issues

This week I ran into two key issues which regarded the countdown timer and UI buttons. Firstly when the countdown timer reaches zero, it doesn’t quite stop at zero, but instead briefly shows the time -1:01 and takes a moment to actually switch scenes. This gives the game a bit of a slow feel and ideally the timer would cause a scene change instantaneously upon hitting zero which is something I hope to fix before final submission. Secondly the UI buttons don’t always seem to work. Upon my testing I found that the buttons can sometimes be slow or even require two presses before they act properly. I do not understand why this is, but plan to do some research in order to understand and fix the issue.