Week 23: Blueprint Woes

Despite some wishful thinking, I was on UI duty all week. Ideally I wanted to mix it up with some modelling or texturing but unfortunately not and I was doomed to have my face smushed into blueprints for half the week. I have managed to get 90% of the UI working though, which is good.

Firstly a quick update on the Pause Menu. I mirrored over the bottom section to get an idea on how it would look having something in each corner and I preferred it, so at some point I will be making custom top corners. I also managed to get some animation into the menu, which I'll be exploring when the rest of the UI is more finalized.

My other time at the beginning of the week was designing the HUD element of our game, which is very minimal compared to most games. I'd even say we could get away without even having any HUD elements at all but I thought I should have a go at it. I wanted the HUD to be a reminder of the growth mechanic that will feature in our game, so I mocked up a few concepts and got feedback from the group.

The one thing that was picked up on was the overall size and position of the HUD, which I agreed with was a bit big. Originally my idea was to have the HUD in the bottom left but my initial concept did not look correct there. Using the feedback I made some iteration on my design.

This iteration was liked along with it sitting in the bottom left corner, so the next stage for me was to make this thing look pretty. While I was designing the various elements I began to iterate on the design again as I came to realize that the huge wedge probably wasn't needed and I could do something a lot more delicate with it. Below is the final version of the game HUD.

Staring at blueprints was my week from about mid-Tuesday onwards, trying to get the various UI elements to work how I want them. The Main Menu and Game Level are on 2 separate levels which has made certain aspects slightly easier. I'll upload screenshots of the blueprints I am using but any of them could change as this entire thing is still very much a WIP.

Main Menu

Main Menu Widget 

Game Level

Pause Menu - WIP

Pause Menu Widget

The biggest problem I can't figure out at the moment is that the HUD will follow the player back to the Main Menu screen and won't ever disappear when activated which is a huge problem as we want the HUD to be triggered in the level. I am slowly running out of options for solving this which is a bit of a worry.

I think I'll begin working on the Main Menu design next week as I feel I have exhausted myself out on Blueprinting for now. I never expected UI design to require this much blueprint knowledge so I am almost regretting choosing it as an option, I just wanted to make nice designs.