A Step Back

These last couple of weeks I've taken a step back to look at the game from one level higher. I had the first tutorial level complete, at least functionally. Watching other people play the level made me realize I needed to redesign some things. Specifically:

• Empty space in sections
• Guiding the player to know what to do next
• Utilizing space better

Empty Space and the Camera

I had some tight spaces. This made gameplay unintentionally difficult because it brought the camera in close to the character. This made it hard to see what exactly you were doing. And hard to see the level.

I had some high ledges. This made it challenging to see where you needed to go.

The solution I came up with is doing two things:

First, generally building more open space into the level segments. (simple enough)

Secondly, I added a camera system where I adjust the camera boom length. So in tight spaces the camera comes in close. For these tight spaces the navigation needs to be pretty simple and linear.

For wider open spaces I zoom the camera out, making more of the space visible.

UI Redesign - Zones

A game's UI is critical, as it needs to look good, be invisible (have no mental load), and communicate to the player concisely what they need to know while staying in the game style.

I spent a good amount of time researching other game UIs and planning out what I wanted this one to look like and behave. What I came up with is removing the "goals" system I had before and instead breaking the level up into "zones". Each zone has a series of steps or tasks. This is shown on screen so the player will always have some guidance.

UI Redesign - Notifications

Another UI component I added was notifications. They serve to inform the player of something they just did or of context information. Add in some iconography and I'm happy with how it looks. Additionally, I've been adding smaller context UI elements to objects so the player always knows how to interact with them.

UI Redesign - Pause Menu

Finally, to bring everything together I rebuilt the pause menu from the ground up. My approach with developing this game is to build something with an understanding that I'll likely need to redo it again in the future. This was the case with my pause menu. I'm happy with this latest iteration as it better utilizes the screen space, it employs the game colors more, and it incorporates the same iconography used in the notifications.

Also, I think I finally understand how focus works in Unreal widgets and how to use it with gamepads. So I rebuilt all of the pause menu sections to support gamepads.