• Log InLog In
  • Register
Liquid`
Team Liquid Liquipedia
EDT 17:05
CEST 23:05
KST 06:05
  • Home
  • Forum
  • Calendar
  • Streams
  • Liquipedia
  • Features
  • Store
  • EPT
  • TL+
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Smash
  • Heroes
  • Counter-Strike
  • Overwatch
  • Liquibet
  • Fantasy StarCraft
  • TLPD
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Blogs
Forum Sidebar
Events/Features
News
Featured News
Code S RO8 Preview: Rogue, GuMiho, Solar, Maru2BGE Stara Zagora 2025: Info & Preview27Code S RO12 Preview: GuMiho, Bunny, SHIN, ByuN3The Memories We Share - Facing the Final(?) GSL47Code S RO12 Preview: Cure, Zoun, Solar, Creator4
Community News
BGE Stara Zagora 2025 - Replay Pack0Weekly Cups (June 2-8): herO doubles down1[BSL20] ProLeague: Bracket Stage & Dates9GSL Ro4 and Finals moved to Sunday June 15th13Weekly Cups (May 27-June 1): ByuN goes back-to-back0
StarCraft 2
General
Code S RO8 Preview: Rogue, GuMiho, Solar, Maru BGE Stara Zagora 2025 - Replay Pack Jim claims he and Firefly were involved in match-fixing The SCII GOAT: A statistical Evaluation StarCraft 1 & 2 Added to Xbox Game Pass
Tourneys
[GSL 2025] Code S:Season 2 - RO8 - Group A Sea Duckling Open (Global, Bronze-Diamond) Bellum Gens Elite: Stara Zagora 2025 $3,500 WardiTV European League 2025 Sparkling Tuna Cup - Weekly Open Tournament
Strategy
[G] Darkgrid Layout Simple Questions Simple Answers [G] PvT Cheese: 13 Gate Proxy Robo
Custom Maps
[UMS] Zillion Zerglings
External Content
Mutation # 477 Slow and Steady Mutation # 476 Charnel House Mutation # 475 Hard Target Mutation # 474 Futile Resistance
Brood War
General
BGH auto balance -> http://bghmmr.eu/ FlaSh Witnesses SCV Pull Off the Impossible vs Shu BW General Discussion StarCraft & BroodWar Campaign Speedrun Quest Will foreigners ever be able to challenge Koreans?
Tourneys
[ASL19] Grand Finals [BSL20] GosuLeague RO16 - Tue & Wed 20:00+CET NA Team League 6/8/2025 [Megathread] Daily Proleagues
Strategy
I am doing this better than progamers do. [G] How to get started on ladder as a new Z player
Other Games
General Games
Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread What do you want from future RTS games? Armies of Exigo - YesYes? Nintendo Switch Thread Path of Exile
Dota 2
Official 'what is Dota anymore' discussion
League of Legends
LiquidLegends to reintegrate into TL.net
Heroes of the Storm
Simple Questions, Simple Answers Heroes of the Storm 2.0
Hearthstone
Heroes of StarCraft mini-set
TL Mafia
TL Mafia Community Thread Vanilla Mini Mafia
Community
General
US Politics Mega-thread Things Aren’t Peaceful in Palestine Russo-Ukrainian War Thread Vape Nation Thread European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread
Fan Clubs
Maru Fan Club Serral Fan Club
Media & Entertainment
Korean Music Discussion [Manga] One Piece
Sports
2024 - 2025 Football Thread Formula 1 Discussion NHL Playoffs 2024
World Cup 2022
Tech Support
Computer Build, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread
TL Community
The Automated Ban List
Blogs
A Better Routine For Progame…
TrAiDoS
StarCraft improvement
iopq
Heero Yuy & the Tax…
KrillinFromwales
I was completely wrong ab…
jameswatts
Need Your Help/Advice
Glider
Trip to the Zoo
micronesia
Customize Sidebar...

Website Feedback

Closed Threads



Active: 25457 users

Student Game Dev Part Seven - User Interface

Blogs > Soan
Post a Reply
Soan
Profile Blog Joined August 2010
New Zealand194 Posts
January 10 2014 06:14 GMT
#1
Part One - It begins
Part Two - Technical Foundation
Part Three - Game Design
Part Four - Input and Physics
Part Five - More Physics Things
Part Six - Even More Physics

This Week
Hello again TeamLiquid!

Welcome back to my blog about the development of The Adventures of Sam the Pirate, the 2D platformer I'm creating as the final game project for my Bachelor of Software Engineering degree. Hope you all had a great Christmas and New Years, I spent far too much time playing Hearthstone, a bit of Civ5, and spending time with my family to do any work. I have managed to get a bit of work done on some user interface related things over this past week, and have a new piece of concept art to show off today as well. I had some thoughts over the holidays on fixing the remaining physics issues, but have not got around to implementing any of them yet.

User Interface
Most of the work done on the user interface so far has been pretty basic low level stuff, setting up for the more interesting stuff later. At the moment, an interface layout will be stored in a file, and be loaded when needed. When the player forces the displayed interface to change, through starting a game from the main menu for example, the displayed interface will simply be switched. In the case of opening a menu while in a level with the level interface displayed, I'll be able to directly force an separate interface to be displayed over the top of that. So basically I'll have interface layouts stored in different files, and be able to display multiple layouts at once.

As well as creating the basics mentioned above, I've created a generic button class, with normal, hover, and click states. Creating this generic class has given me a little bit of a problem however. If I want to create multiple buttons that each take different actions, I'll have to create extra class, each inheriting from the generic button class. While this would work, I don't really want to do it as it is inefficient, and I want the user interface system to be fairly generic, so I can more easily reuse it in future projects. As I've used Lua scripting on my debug console, allowing me to add commands without changing code, I'm considering doing something similar here. As the interface layouts are stored in files, I could also store the name of a Lua file, and function within that file for each button, allowing me to ensure that each button has unique functionality without creating tons of different classes. Still thinking about how best to implement this however, so we'll see how it goes.

The user interface system in general will also need to scale based on display resolution. I have a target resolution of 1920x1080 (art will be created with this resolution in mind), but it's unrealistic to assume that everyone uses that resolution. It should be relatively easy to compare the resolution the game is running in, with the target resolution, and make adjustments based on that.

New Concept Art
[image loading]

What's next?
Officially back to class next week, where we'll also be getting a new capstone assignment. We finished a research based capstone before Christmas, and this new capstone will be development focused. With any luck, I'll be able to use the capstone to create a level editor, which I was planning to do already! I have a feeling the tutors might want me to do a bit more though, so I'm also considering turning it into more of a general engine editor. So as well as creating levels, it'd be able to create interface layouts, preview sprites in the game engine, etc. It would certainly make things easier, as currently levels and interface layouts are created by hand in text files!

So until Monday, and I know what I'm doing on the capstone, I won't know 100% what I'll be working on next. Likely I'll be continuing with the user interface stuff, planning out the level editor, and continuing to adjust/fix the physics.

Keep up to date!
Be sure to follow me on Twitter, and like the Facebook page to stay up to date on future content and blog posts when they happen. If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask, either through Twitter or Facebook!

****
MrShankly
Profile Blog Joined October 2009
United Kingdom371 Posts
January 10 2014 22:44 GMT
#2
Never noticed your blog before! Rated 5 stars!

I graduated as games programmer but I switched to doing regular software development. At the moment I work for a company that builds 3d Visualisations for mobile tablets and stuff so i still get to use my 3D/gfx skills and do regular mobile Dev.

Sometimes I kinda miss working on games though. I'm currently building an iOS app in my spare time. Maybe when it is done I will try build a game.
DONATE SC2 BETA KEY TO ME PLEASE
Yferi
Profile Joined April 2010
United States90 Posts
January 14 2014 09:59 GMT
#3
For your buttons, you could use the observer model and have all classes that you want to respond to the button click implement a certain function (like onButtonClicked() or something). When you create the button, register each listener and when the button is clicked, call the onButtonClicked() method for each listener. That way, what the button does (receiving input) is decoupled from your listeners (doing stuff once you've received input).

By the way, it would be cool if you could post some videos/screenshots of your game so far. Keep up the work!
Soan
Profile Blog Joined August 2010
New Zealand194 Posts
January 15 2014 19:24 GMT
#4
haha, I totally forgot about using the Observer pattern like that. I'm using it elsewhere in the project, so I did know it existed, just didn't occur to me to use it like that, even though I've seen it used elsewhere. Ended up going with a similar Lua implementation to what I used for my debug console, and I'll probably talk about it in this weeks blog.

I do want to do videos/screenshots of the game, but there isn't much to look at at the moment. Currently the tiles and character are just white boxes with black letters to indicate what type of tile/what animation should be playing.
Please log in or register to reply.
Live Events Refresh
BSL: GosuLeague
19:15
Quarter Finals
Hejek vs Herbmon
Semih vs Kyrie
cavapoo vs TousaN
ZZZero.O96
Liquipedia
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
StarCraft 2
UpATreeSC 181
JuggernautJason56
EnDerr 3
StarCraft: Brood War
Britney 10928
Sea 1294
Dewaltoss 182
ZZZero.O 96
Aegong 67
Dota 2
Pyrionflax192
Counter-Strike
tarik_tv21940
fl0m7123
olofmeister3745
rGuardiaN112
Super Smash Bros
PPMD141
Heroes of the Storm
Grubby3268
Liquid`Hasu496
Khaldor141
Other Games
summit1g2691
FrodaN1022
Beastyqt640
ceh9486
Mew2King72
ZombieGrub62
Organizations
Dota 2
PGL Dota 2 - Main Stream3316
Other Games
BasetradeTV132
StarCraft 2
Blizzard YouTube
StarCraft: Brood War
BSLTrovo
sctven
[ Show 19 non-featured ]
StarCraft 2
• davetesta42
• Kozan
• sooper7s
• Migwel
• AfreecaTV YouTube
• LaughNgamezSOOP
• intothetv
• IndyKCrew
StarCraft: Brood War
• FirePhoenix8
• Michael_bg 3
• STPLYoutube
• ZZZeroYoutube
• BSLYoutube
Dota 2
• masondota21908
League of Legends
• TFBlade1522
• Shiphtur460
Other Games
• imaqtpie1376
• Scarra758
• WagamamaTV174
Upcoming Events
PiGosaur Monday
2h 55m
GSL Code S
12h 25m
Rogue vs GuMiho
Maru vs Solar
Online Event
1d 2h
Replay Cast
1d 4h
GSL Code S
1d 12h
herO vs Zoun
Classic vs Bunny
The PondCast
1d 12h
Replay Cast
2 days
WardiTV Invitational
2 days
OSC
2 days
Korean StarCraft League
3 days
[ Show More ]
SOOP
3 days
CranKy Ducklings
3 days
WardiTV Invitational
3 days
Cheesadelphia
3 days
CSO Cup
3 days
GSL Code S
4 days
Sparkling Tuna Cup
4 days
Replay Cast
5 days
Wardi Open
5 days
Replay Cast
6 days
Replay Cast
6 days
RSL Revival
6 days
Cure vs Percival
ByuN vs Spirit
Liquipedia Results

Completed

CSL Season 17: Qualifier 2
BGE Stara Zagora 2025
Heroes 10 EU

Ongoing

JPL Season 2
BSL 2v2 Season 3
BSL Season 20
KCM Race Survival 2025 Season 2
NPSL S3
Rose Open S1
CSL 17: 2025 SUMMER
2025 GSL S2
BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025
ESL Impact League Season 7
IEM Dallas 2025
PGL Astana 2025
Asian Champions League '25
BLAST Rivals Spring 2025
MESA Nomadic Masters
CCT Season 2 Global Finals
IEM Melbourne 2025
YaLLa Compass Qatar 2025
PGL Bucharest 2025
BLAST Open Spring 2025

Upcoming

Copa Latinoamericana 4
CSLPRO Last Chance 2025
CSLPRO Chat StarLAN 3
K-Championship
SEL Season 2 Championship
Esports World Cup 2025
HSC XXVII
Championship of Russia 2025
Murky Cup #2
Esports World Cup 2025
BLAST Bounty Fall 2025
BLAST Bounty Fall Qual
IEM Cologne 2025
FISSURE Playground #1
TLPD

1. ByuN
2. TY
3. Dark
4. Solar
5. Stats
6. Nerchio
7. sOs
8. soO
9. INnoVation
10. Elazer
1. Rain
2. Flash
3. EffOrt
4. Last
5. Bisu
6. Soulkey
7. Mini
8. Sharp
Sidebar Settings...

Advertising | Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use | Contact Us

Original banner artwork: Jim Warren
The contents of this webpage are copyright © 2025 TLnet. All Rights Reserved.