UI Clean-up and Changes

Intro

I was able to do a decent amount this sprint and the majority of which was spent on updating the game's UI. To start, I'm still in the process of switching over everything from Canvas to Unity's UI Builder/Toolkit which I feel is a lot easier to use and iterate on. I have mostly finished the base inventory and then I am going to start on the other UI systems that I currently have implemented.

Old UI to New

The current UI was a little clunky and while it worked, it was a little too complicated programming wise for what it did. About halfway into the sprint I found the UI Builder which I had never used before and I really like it compared to the original Canvas structure. Below I've put some images as to the what the old and new UI look like and as with everything style wise it is 1000% not final and is definitly going to change. The current style I have for the UI is based off of a tutorial I did to learn the UI builder and while it doesn't fit the aestetic I want, it's a good enough placeholder.

The UI Builder is really nice as a lot of the styleing is done similarly to CSS in web development. I have been doing web tutoring for a year or so now in my free time so it makes a lot more sense to me than having to relearn a whole new system for Canvas. Also, implementing the UI is A LOT easier with the fact that each UI element is a single GameObject with the herarchy being in the UI Builder window. Another nice feature is that you can make templates without having to create prefabs and you can just denote that a script is a visualelement without creating an entire new GameObject for it. I know that this section is a bit long but the last really helpful aspect is that because they aren't GameObjects in the world the ability to do methods like OnPointerDown() and OnPointerMove() are extremely easy to implement.

Overall, the UI Builder/Toolkit is extremely helpful and I am surprised I haven't used this feature sooner.

New UI Features

While I mainly worked on shifting everything over, I did have some time to implement a new feature for the Inventory which is a click and drag to organize and adjust items to how a player wants. There are some bugs to work out however I think that it will allow for players to better find their items and I am hoping to get the final bugs fixed in the next sprint.

I also worked to fix the funtionallity on the Masyu game and hooked it up to the MVP loop so now players have to research the herb before being able to use it in the cauldron. Additionally, they can't research an herb more than once.

Eventually I want to let the player be able to use the herbs in potions whether they have researched it or not and the player just won't know the effects that the herb gives but for simplicity sake I am just going to prevent players from using them so they can playtest the researching mini-game.

Next Sprint: Switch Over UI

Most of the next two weeks are going to be focused on moving all of the UI from the current Canvas system to the UI Toolkit system. If I have some extra time I want to have the herbs that are in the cauldron show up on the side to indicate what has been used so far. I am assuming now that I know the UI Toolkit better I will get to achomplish that this sprint but we will see how busy I end up being this week!