Evaluation
In Unit 79, I aimed to develop my knowledge and understanding of the design, construction and implementation of human-computer interfaces. I learnt about menu creation from both the visual design and the programming sides. To demonstrate this, I made a working game menu prototype, using my own design and including a variety of menu options and an interactive element. This project was useful as I learnt about menu creation, and gained new skills.
I enjoyed the visual design aspects of this assignment much more than the programming, but I enjoyed putting the skills from both together to create my menu. I decided to make a 2D menu system, which gained 3D elements when going onto the character select screen. I found that creating a menu used a big variety of different skills and I enjoyed having the ability to be creative with my menu design and how it was to be interacted with.
I did come across quite a few issues during this assignment. My external hard drive stopped about halfway through this assignment, and while I did have some back-ups saved, they were from much earlier. I had a lot of technical issues during this assignment which made me fall behind - my external hard drive stopped working and the computer in college that I had my back up work saved to wasn't working. I didn't have a PC at home so I couldn't work from home either. I feel like these issues along with some personal issues I was going through really affected my ability to do my work. However, I was able to do my work after these issues were sorted. A big issue in terms of the actual menu creation, was I wanted to make the menu go level select > character selection > load level . Because I had put the character selection after the level selection, and I was using 3D models of the characters in the character selection, I made 2 separate character select levels. I could get one character select level working but with the other one, I had a difficult time getting the camera to start in the right place. I did eventually get this to work but it is something that I was stuck with for a long time.
For my interactive element, I added animal tokens and when they are clicked on, they make the noise of that animal and disappear as another reappears. I like how this came out and think it makes good use of the space to the side of the menu. I also added sounds to different actions. When the player clicks on the splash screen to go to the main menu, it starts the music, and I also added sounds for every time the player clicks on any of the menu buttons.
Overall, I thought this was a good assignment, but I think I could have done a lot better. The timing was just unfortunate with the technical and personal issues. I am happy with the splash screen and main menu and I am proud of the music and animal interactive elements I added. I definitely feel like if I could make it again, I would be able to make it a lot better with more features.