Changes to UI (7th May)

Ben Nichols
May 12, 2021
2 min read

As I stated in my last blog post I wanted to make changes to the UI to polish up the game. One of the first changes that I went about making was to change the way that the checklist system worked, so instead of just having a green tick appear when you’re finding the animals, the animals would also be uncovered so would change from being a greyed out silhouette to an image of the animal (as shown below).

New checkList System

As you can see from the image above the new checklist system will reveal the animal to you once you find it. This adds a more visually appealing method of showing progress and adds to the mystery of the game, giving you more of a reason to go and discover the animals. Another big change, is that the checklist is now of the side of the screen this allows the player to continue playing the game while viewing their progress, making the game a lot smoother to play. I have also removed the text button from the checklist which would allow you to revisit descriptions once you found an animal and removed the option to view the checklist from the pause menu, both of these changes where made due to the fact that they felt clunky and uncomfortable navigating through these widgets/canvases. All these changes allow for a smooth and easy way to navigate UI system allowing for the user to simply open and close the checklist while playing the game making the checklist system more of an asset then an inconvenience.

Another big change to the UI was the animal descriptions, all descriptions are now laid out in a scrap book style like the checklist and I have made appropriate changes to the images so that they don’t look as stretched and have added additional information to each description. All descriptions for the animals are from the rspb[1] and the Devon wildlife trust[2].