3/22-4/4: HUD Redesign and Checkpoint Screen

I’ve had a lot of progress over the past two weeks. Here are my updates:

UI Redesign (5 hours)

Three weeks ago, the skill tree and passive abilities were cut from the final game as a result of scope cuts and design changes. This required me to perform a complete redesign of the HUD and pause menu. Here were the primary changes of the UI:

• Because the pause menu was no longer going to include any of the RPG elements of the game, such as the skill tree and equipment selection screen, I decided to cut out the tab system from the pause menu and make it similar to the pause menu from previous WolverineSoft games.

• Brandon and I worked together to create a redesign for the HUD. He used a website called UXPin to create a mock-up for the UI(here is a link to our redesign).

• I implemented a key counter in the top right (the sprite for the keys have not created, so it is currently a picture of my dog), which turns yellow when a key is unlocked. The primary challenge of this was figuring out how the dungeon objective manager works and modifying it to give me information about the number of keys collected.

• I implemented an XP bar (although it doesn’t seem to work in the current build because the XP system has not been implemented).

• I changed various colors and positions of UI elements as Brandon and I planned.

Death Screen (1 hour)

I created a death screen that appears whenever the player dies in-game. While the death screen is very unpolished, it works. It includes options for going back to the hub, back to the main menu, and quit games.

Loading Screen (1.5 hours)

I fix the level design’s loading screen and implemented it into the main game. It now includes changing …’s after the loading and a series of changing tips. For now, the tips are just inside jokes with the studio, and they will be replaced with more professional tips in the final game.

Checkpoint Screen (4.5 hours)

I created a screen to select a checkpoint. The primary challenges of this were:

• Figuring out how the designers wanted the checkpoint system to work and function, and understanding their design objectives for this system.

• Modifying the level generator to give each checkpoint a unique identifier and store the furthest checkpoint that a player had been.

• Creating a UI screen that automatically generated the buttons based on where the player had been.

• Giving the game the ability to pause when the player enters a door (there were a lot of bugs with this)