Players Can Interface With The Interface Part Deux

 March comes to an end ... with me starting a blog in the same manner as February, whinging about the weather ...

I had hoped to bravely remove the winter duvet but I got snowed and hailed on earlier and the wind is coming directly from the Artic. The winter duvet is staying in place.

Behold Stats!

What Does What

Other things which can be construed as mildly irritating is the amount of time I have spent making the Game User Interface, actually useable to the game user ...

As ever, whatever part of indiedev appears somewhat straight forwards suddenly become incredibly convoluted and the gamepad useable menu system has been just this. This included making a brand new input system for button selection that uses both vertical and horizontal selection, including uneven rows and columns.

Blast Monsters

 The statistics were not such a problem as setting out the tutorial in a way that the player could easily digest. Highlighting individual HUD elements seemed the best way of doing this and giving a brief explanation of what the player was seeing in game with any key/button related actions to that element, based on the player's currently selected input type. Now there are some stock engine ways of doing this but instead I wrote my own so all button selection goes through a custom input script.

Win Loot

 This useful and problematic in it's own manner, especially with the input system losing focus if you tabbed out or opened the console, but did give immediate response for sudden changes of input. I wrote my own custom key/input remapping system.

 

Get Swag!

So after a monumental kerfufle, the userable user interface is finally useable by people who are not me and do not know what everything does or means.

Next up is actually getting a build uploaded to Steam.