Devlog 5: Polish and User Interface

In this fifth devlog, we will focus on polish and the user interface.

For this checkpoint, I added a transition effect between levels into my game by following a Brackeys tutorial. The transition was implemented by animating on a second canvas with the screen fading into black, switching to the next scene in the build order, and then fading out of black into the new level. The transition was originally implemented between game levels, but is now used for all scene changes.  An improvement to this could be an instant transition between the title and level select screens.

The player transitioning between levels

Next, I made a title and level select screen using text buttons and a background image (a pixelated version of The Fall of Icarus from the Game Concept Devlog). The code for this was added to the level switching code from earlier. Button text becomes italicised then the player moves the mouse over it.

Next, I implemented the level restart and return to menu buttons. After importing and slicing a spritesheet to get the sprites for the buttons, I linked the buttons into the level switching code. The only code needed to reload the level was to load the same scene!