Industry Portfolio Development: User Interface

I took a weeks break to go on holiday with my family, but now I am back and I have been working on the UI of the game. UI is a very important yet under looked part in any game. I will be going over what my UI has to offer today.

I made a title screen, which also has the main menu. In the title screen there is an animation for the logo of the game, with a star coming across the screen to be where it is supposed to, additionally, once it reaches where its supposed to, it starts to spin around, making the logo feel less static. We also have the character in the game at the left side, which symbolises who you will be playing.

For now, the Tutorial does not exist, however later on I will be showcasing that when I finish it. The options menu and quit button work, options letting you change the Audio and Video of the game more to your liking. Of course, start just takes you to the level.

In the actual level, theres a lot of UI to be discussed there, so lets talk about that.

In the top right, we have the score and the time. Score goes up depending on what you do in the game, you can get more score by picking up coins, powerups, killing enemies, parrying attacks etc. You can also lose points by getting hit and dying. The timer is used at the end, which I will talk about soon.

On the top left, we have the health bar, which shows you how much health you have. You also have the characters name, and the special meter. Which when up to a certain amount, you can perform a special attack.

Finally, at the middle left, there is the combo counter, which shows you how many hits you have done against enemies in a short amount of time. It will reset after you haven’t hit anything for 2.5 seconds.

When you complete the level, you will be given medals, which shows how well you have done in certain categories. First is the time medal, at the left. Depending on the medal you get here, you will actually get some bonus points, which goes towards the score medal. If you get a time of 2:20 or less, you will be given a gold medal and 15,000 points. If you get a time between 2:21-2:40, you will get a silver medal and 10,000 points. And if you get a time between 2:41-3:10 you will get a bronze medal and 5,000 points, anything else and you get nothing.

With the score medal, as mentioned before it takes into account the extra points you get with the time medal. If you get 34,000 points or higher, you will be rewarded with the gold medal, 33,999-31,000 gives you the silver medal and 30,999-27500 gives you the bronze medal.

This system was put in place to give the level some replayability, to make up for lost time, to find out how to get a lot of points quickly, and to overall get better at the game.

Finally, we have the pause menu, which is still under development and its looks will probably change, like giving the text outlines, different looking buttons and more, however this menu has multiple functions. If you want a quick breather, just press the P key to open it up and it pauses everything. You can restart the level if you want from here, as well as being able to go back to the main menu or quitting. Before, you needed to finish the level or be in the main menu in order to quit the game, but now you can do it from here!

In the next post, ill probably just brush up some things here and there and talk about the tutorial level.