The User Interface

The most recent addition to my game has been graphic user interface content. And oh what a royal pain it was.

Sure, I had a button to reload the level when it decided not to load bits of script, this was easy, I could stick the same thing on each level.

But a full on title screen?

Ergh.

The Title Screen has 3 elements to it. The two buttons, “Play game” and “Instructions, and the central image logo.. thing. Laying these out was not easy. More on that in a second

Now, you might be thinking “Why is it so crap?” (I can almost hear you say it Josh.)

Simply, because anything nice was too hard.

The game will be submitted in a portable windows format, meaning that whoever is grading it can choose to play in whatever screen resolution he (or she) chooses.
This means that when positioning the GUI, if the player chooses a screen resolution smaller than I have made it for, it will get cut off.

Reversely, if they do it too big, it will distort and not be laid out as intended.

Too Big

Too Small

Just right. (Thanks, Goldylocks.)

I was able to fix this slightly by having objects off centre, but then this meant that any bigger would leave big ugly boarders, and any smaller would continue to cut it off.

So, here we are, with a nice simple layout for the GUI. But what of the other places?

Fortunately, I was able to use images for buttons, and choose the ‘roll over’ state as a different image!