Shells Kitchen
Trailer
Year
2023
GENRE
Co-op Party Game
PLATTFORM
PC
UI/UX Programmer
Description
The final Game of the second year, and also the last one we do with the group we have been working with throughout the entire second year.
We wanted to make a game that was a bit brighter in color than our last two games, and also a game that we felt was going to be actually fun to play with friends!
we decided to make our own version of Overcooked 2.
Modular Customization system
When we decided to make our version of Overcooked 2, we looked at what features they had in the game that would fall on the UI/UX team, In this project we where 3 people on the UI team, 2 programmers and one graphical designer.
I decided on making a Customization system. we decided to keep it at hats (headwear) only as we started, to not over scope, but I still made the system very modular, so it would be very easy to add more if time allowed later in production.
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2 Player Menu
One thing I learned during this production was that when you make a Co-op game, where 2 people are supposed to play on the same computer you have to make sure the Menus are designed with that in mind, so for example, if one player opens settings, the other player should be locked out of that system, to prevent overlapping.
Another example is that you have to have some kind of indication that one player is ready and waiting for the other.
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Pause Menu and Level Select
I also made a Pause menu, the challenge here was that we had a whole separate "mini-game" as level select, this was coded by Filip, but I had to match the pause menu to act differently depending on what state we were in, so if we quit when on a level, we need to get to level select, if we quit in level select, we get to the main menu. The same goes for reset levels, and so on...
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Menu transitions with a shader
Once the menus started to come together I noticed that they felt very "snappy" but not in a good way, windows open and close instantly.
I wanted to slow it down a bit and make it more smooth and interesting, so I talked to Tim, one of the Technical Artists, and we decided on using a shader that made the menu fade in and out a lot nicer. to see the result you can watch the video to the right.