Brawl Apart:
Being tasked to work on the Win Screen, I took my previous concept, and simply made it high-fidelity, matching the style of other developed assets.
Upon deciding on the concept, I hopped on the project and saw the client had done some early work on the project screen, which allowed it to be easier for me to then bring this design over, with me using render targets to show the winning player, a before and after being shown below.
Additionally, I made small changes to the HUD, such as making the timer text bigger and adding a font material to the objective text, as well as a drop shadow, allowing it to pop.
In the following week, I decided that I would try and make a menu navigatable by gamepad controls, as this game requires controllers to play, and to hope between controllers and mouse would be rather uncomfortable.
In trying to make a keyboard/controller navigated HUD, I followed a tutorial that unfortunately I struggled to find success in, most primarily to the multiplayer nature of the project. First, I made a new button class called BP Button.
In changing the HUD buttons to be this, I then added them into an array, and had a set timer by function name for every 0.1 second, which would then set the keyboard focus.
However, the keyboard focus was not able to, for example, preemptively hover over the button and show a hover state, instead showing a blue outline that was hard to see. Additionally, the process only supported one player. Given these circumstances, I found it easier to move on and figure out alternative solutions.
The following week, I proceeded to the main menu.
Upon creating it, I then unfortunately realised an issue arose in button collision. Due to buttons considering an image always as a square, there is no way to have shapes outside of the button’s square appear, thus making the design I made have buttons overlap with each other.
The client attempted to both use a plugin to fix this and create an overlay that would have the button itself be non-hit testable, yet overlayed with multiple squares that resembled the triangular shape. The plugin did not work, and the shape was too labour intensive.
I then worked on creating a pause menu for the project. While this was not used in the final game, it aimed to allow the players to stop the match and adjust their gaming experience if needed.
Following this week, I added the title screen into the game, showcasing the most recent logo.
Additionally, I added the game mode selection screen. Due to there originally being far more game modes, I had to make a new concept from what was originally planned, while following the style of the menu. Unfortunately, this followed the same flaw as the main menu in having overlapping collisions.
Additionally, due to feedback from the client’s lecturers. me and him collaborated in changing the logo. The main issue of the original one was due to the text intercepting with the triangular background. We messed around with colours and styles while trying to keep the inspiration of the vaporwave logo intact, and got the following concepts.
However, this was the one we chose, due to its visibility and colour diversity, representing the yellow of our palette that previously went unrepresented in our logo.
On the 25th of April, added a level select screen and a settings screen.
After discussing where in the menu it should be to the client, we decided to have the level select screen follow the game mode select screen, which was inspired by how Super Smash Bros Ultimate allows you to pick your stage before your player.
In making the options screen, we decided to keep it extremely simple in terms of what could be changed to save development time.
Battle of the Bands:
Within Battle of the Bands, I decided to add a dynamic VFX to the player's dash. This was due to the original dash being rather plan and underwhelming in terms of game feel. Being my first time working with VFX, I spent a month trying to figure out the intricacies of VFX and what came with this video.
I made materials to match each different function, all the while reusing unreal materials. For example, we used a vortex for the path the character makes while travelling, while using water for what they leave behind.
Additionally, I also used textures for particles that allows the musical theme of the game to be reflected within this with notes.
Finally, I complied this within a VFX blueprint, modifying heavily their location, spawn rate and position.
After messing around with these categories, I was able to get the following result, allowing my dash to be far more dynamic.
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