Week 1 —— Jan 22 → 29

At the start of the semester we decided to separate each programmer into different roles with me focusing on UI/UX. This week I began developing a test character select and main menu to test out UI functionality and prototype placements and mechanics that’ll be used for the final game. We ended up decided on adding a “ready” button for when we eventually connect the character select to our net code system so that we can make sure that all players will be ready and selected a character when the game starts.

Deliverables

• Basic UI functionality
• Prototype character select

Week 2 —— Jan 29 → Feb 5

This week we decided to a UI page for the network functionality, a text chat and a pause menu to navigate menus and options. I worked with Jack to set up the network page with 2 buttons for private hosting, quickplay and an input field for enter a server code. The pause menu allows you to change the brightness settings, go to the main menu and quit. I also set up a text box that lets players enter in messages which will show up in a menu and will dynamically scroll/allow the player to scroll when there are enough messages.

Deliverables

• Text chat/text box
• Network UI prototypes
• Pause/Settings menu

Week 3 —— Feb 5 → 12

This week I focused on getting the mini map and other navigation UI working. The mini map shows the player and hardpoint icons which change color based on the status (open, contested, being captured by either team). The compass uses the player’s rotation to rotate to show the current direction the player is facing. We also have an objective pointer that points towards the active hardpoint and updates whenever a new hardpoint becomes available.

Deliverables

• Compass
• Objective pointer
• Mini map

Week 4 —— Feb 12 → 19

For this week I worked on getting the UI attack cooldowns working for the playtest and for the designers so that they’ll have a visual cue for when attacks are ready. Each attack is represented by a slider that fills up when a move is on cooldown and is full when that move is ready to use. Other UI elements like symbols indicating what type of move that slider represents (fist for basic attack, star for secondary, etc.) and the button that is assigned to that move are also placed to the bottom right of each slider to let players know how to use each move. Next week me and the other engineers are going to focus on testing the game online to debug any errors we currently have.

Deliverables

• Cooldown UI icons
• Cooldowns work for each individual player over the network

Week 5 —— Feb 19 → 26

During this week we tested the game and changed our code to work over the network properly. Specifically for UI, code for the health bars, cooldowns, and hardpoints had to be changed because they either only worked for the host or only for the clients. Additionally, I added a new character select with new art assets and character bios/ability bios that appear when you hover over certain areas of each character’s section on the select screen. Next week I’m going to be removing the compass and replacing it with character icons on the mini map that will show rotation and your teammates.

Deliverables

• Updated UI code
• New character select screen/functionality