By: Adam Burkemper

9/20/2024

While menus is something I thought wouldn't take so long, oh what a fool I was. While the code itself that runs the menus is not the most difficult it can take time to figure out how to set it up in a way that makes sense both to the player and my fellow developers. I want the code to be as easy to work with as possible so that in the future when we incorporate it with the other systems it will go smoothly and while that is mostly the case the biggest issue I have been running into is the pause menu, which we will get to. 

First up is the the Main menu which went smoothly and had pretty minimal resistance setting up with the biggest issue was making sure that it popped up in the first place and interactivity with a proper player controller for menus. After that getting it to go the the first level was quite easy and quit was a non-issue. Background image is not final!

Next up is the game hud which again was fairly simple. Most of the work with it was just getting it to make sure that is was as modular as possible so that is was easier to work with for other systems. Top left we have the hp and special meter, top right we have score on top and combo on bottom and on the bottom of the screen we have the boss hp and name. The size of that bar still needs to be made smaller but since we don't have bosses yet it hasn't caused any issues with the gaming experience. Also the colors are not right and will need to be changed to better help both the player understand what is happening and look more visually appealing. 

After this is the results menu and to be honest even I am not sure if it fully works. I mean it should in theory but since I was never able to test it I legit have no idea. However, it won't change to much from now to release so here is what it looks like currently. Hopefully it works and will help the player get back to playing the game or just go back to the main menu. Only time will tell. 

Finally the moment you have all been waiting for the pause menu, the thing that has been eating me alive recently. While the work for it should be simple in concept with Unreal Engine 5, since they already have a built function for it getting it to work has been an experience. I have been finding it rough to have a UI element on top of another UI element so I recently have decided to have it switch out with another UI element. If that sounds confusing to you it is, effectively I will, once I get it working, switch out the players hud with the pause menu. During which I need to also switch the player controller and I can't test it since again I don't have access to the player and have yet to have a bind that I can just simply attach to on the player. Needless to say it has been an experience and will continue to do so since I need to add some fixes to it yet and get it fully working soon!

That is all I got this week, hope to see you next week with all of this working, I hope!