Pushing all of the right buttons.

 So I've been working on the Menu's for the game a bit more recently; I was going to do a interactive menu for the game (such as dragging a plug to a socket labelled "play" to begin), but I decided against it due to the time I have and the fact it would probably make players even more confused.

I currently hate the buttons and most of the HUD due to it being the default look; I need to look into changing it when I've got all of the functionality and content into the game.

After pressing play you now get taken to the level select screen; I think I might actually be getting used to the creation and placement of the HUD elements because I now have it dynamically creating all of the buttons and placing them based on how many levels there are in total; there is room for three rows of 6 buttons, but I would at least like to add one more level to even up the number before I've finished.

When you press one of the level buttons you get taken to that level. I think I found this easier because I've recently done a level select screen for one of my other games, and although the code is completely different, I think the principals I had to cover transferred. 

Once you enter a level, there is currently no way of getting back to any of the other menu's, so I will need either a pause menu of an on-screen button to allow players to do this.

One level at a time

I managed to get in a screen which pops up when you complete a level; Also learnt quite a few controls for the GUI including colour and size;

the second line automatically updates with the current level; I'm hoping for there to be more information and buttons eventually, or at least a picture.

Colours are magic

I've completed mapping texturing the objects now; I think i spent a lot of time on them considering you can't really see them very well in standard game view.

The White sections of the objects are coloured when they have set colours - I left them with no diffuse texture so that it was more clear. additionally, creating textures which did not confuse the player with extra bright and distracting colours was a large part of the texturing process.

Coloured parts of the objects

I'm thinking about adding additional coloured parts to the output part of the hubs, because currently the only coloured part is the plug (unlike the input which has wires and other things)

additionally I added a functional close button to the tutorial popup; at the moment you have to press close on every level and it will re-appear when there is new text on the next level; I may eventually need a global "turn off all help" option.

holding down the space bar now shows this colour wheel overlay; it should help players with finding and deciding what colours they need to use with each-other to get the colours they need to complete the level.

first thing this morning I added a time passed box, just to test and see what it looked liked and how it felt. at the moment it doesn't really fit I must admit.

I think before i get much further, I either need a screen that appears when you complete a level, or a level select screen. or both.

I haven't added any levels recently, But I think 10 or so levels are a good starting point for any game, even if they are mostly tutorials.

It's not what's on the inside, It's what's on the outside that counts.

I have Been UV Mapping for a while; Before I do much more I need to get rid of all of the untextured and white areas of my models so I can decide what to do with the rest (to make it more user friendly).

here are some awesome white checkerpattern UV's. I'm not going to lie, I really dislike this part, Which is probably one of the many reasons why I stupidly left it out when I made the models.

I now only have the input to UV map now I think.

adding the new UV mapped objects might be difficult, as a lot of the objects now have a lot of information on them which isn't in the 3D file, I have to ensure it gets copied over to the new objects.

I also made some textures for one of the pieces too - I'm actually really happy with how it turned out, it's a shame you can never see it in this much detail in game.