UI Designing and Documentation

Anthony Palermo - 2/16/2023

I currently have been working on planning and implementing UI for the majority of the game, such as the main menu and the skill trees of our project. The major portion of this work has little to no coding but is rather essential for our ability to test the game. Along with being important to our ability to demonstrate the game, without even a simple main menu UI, no one would truly be want to play the game nor would the game look professional. I am also working on the implementation of the functionality of these menus along with a pause menu.

I have currently made temporary art assets and mock ups of the UI for the main menu and skill tree. I am currently designing the skill trees, along with the Beastiary. The Beastiary is a large compendium of all the different enemies and their associated skill trees, along with how far the player has progressed in them. It is not yet possible for me to implement the Beastiary functionality of the Beastiary, but I will be adding it to either our upcoming build or the one after that.

I am currently working on getting the temporary skill tree implemented for the testing purposes of our menus and pause screens. The functionality of the options menu has not been touched yet, and will have the ability to change volume, brightness, and resolution. The main menu is currently in the game, with the player being able to start the game and quit the game. The options and credits in the main menu are not currently implemented. The pause menu will allow access to the Beastiary and options, along with a resume and quit button.

UI is rather important to a players experience to a game, even though they often don't think about it. Without a UI, the player would not be able to understand what they have available to them, such as not seeing their health or items. The player would only be able to quit the game by using task manager or ALT+f4, which are both not supposed to be used to quit a game unless it has full crashed without closing. Implementing even a basic mock up of UI is better than having no UI, which we do not currently have an artist to make professional level looking UI.