Our team was able to get off to a really good start for the last sprint which means we are already making huge changes to the gameplay and player experience to mold our new target market.
For this blog post, I am going to be discussing the changes that I personally have made towards the new UI overhaul, the decisions that I have made and what will happen for the rest of the UI.
The first major change was the in game UI which went from a very static display of numbers just showing the ammo count for each player and the level time to a dynamic showcase of the player’s current special ability, their cooldowns and the level name.
The Brown squares on the bottom left and right will show off the current equipped special ability (which for now is blank while we start creating icons). The ammo count will shake and grow when players shoot or obtain bullets and the cooldown squares fill up to full when the player has a special ability use available. The level name (in the upper right hand corner) disappears after a short period of time to give more attention to the level itself. This is just a layout for the final UI that will be developed continuously throughout development but is a huge increase from what we had before.
For the next iteration I hope to further increase the visibility of the icons and placement by possibly placing a blur behind the UI or if I have to a static image that fits into the game world. I will also be adding a star counter underneath the timer (which is why the timer seems to be higher than it should be). The level name being “-1” is also just a bug with the specific level that is in the screenshot.
The next update I did to the UI this sprint was to our new upgrade screen which will be replacing the progression menu for the player’s opportunity to upgrade their character and play the way they want to. The main goal on this screen is simplicity and even choice for both players. We chose to go with a system with 3 randomly picked upgrades for the players every time they get 5 more stars. You can see the general layout for how the final version will look (as it isn’t implemented in the build yet; we still have to finalize the upgrade system itself).
The next iteration, I will finalize the layout for all three upgrades as well as find a new font to pair with the one we have. The Bauhaus font is very difficult to read when used in paragraphs and so a nice similarly simplistic and childish font will be better for the description fonts. I will also work on animating the arrows that point under the UI so that the users can know exactly which upgrade they are hovering over. The last major change for the layout is to add a progression bar to this screen that I will use for the level end UI as well. The progression bar will be a way for the player to know how close they are to getting a new upgrade.
For next sprint, I will dive more into the specific greenlight challenges that we have tackled, as it will be the sprint before we challenge to pass into the greenlight stage.
Ethan Loewald 