In this episode of Blue Tengu’s Game Development Show, we wake up bright and early at 5am to implement the base archive menu where players can check on the artifacts they’ve collected from their journey across the world and through the fallen civilization.
The final UI design still needs to be drawn out in paper, so for now, we’re just working on getting the functionality working. In the artifact menu, we need to convey a few things. First, we need to make it clear to the player how much they’ve collected and how much still remains to be found to serve as motivation for exploring the world. Next, we need to give them an opportunity to reexamine any of the artifacts they’ve already collected. For non-rare artifacts, this is text. For rare artifacts, this is the text description and voice with subtitles.
Although we don’t get to the voice playback implementation, it is going to influence our design, because we need to be able to display both the artifact’s description and subtitles at the same time, which could be a little tricky. Too much text on the screen can become distracting.
With the final UI design, we’re hoping we can come up with something that reflects the circle/ring themes of the game. While it’s easy to think of an example that would work with the artifact menu, making it feel a part of the rest of the UI design is what might be more difficult. If this is the only menu with a very circular design, it would be jarring, so we do need to map out the entire menu system on paper, and then possibly in Illustrator, etc. to mock-up the UI flow.
Game Development Show Tasks Worked on This Episode:
- Archive Menu Contains Grid of Objects
- Artifacts are Visually Grouped
- Select an Artifact to Read the Description