Engine System Proposal

User Interface Tools

Motivation

Ever since I started developing apps and websites in my undergrad, I always tended to be put an extra focus towards UI naturally as a designer perspective. Further, developing games the interest remained the same because I believe UI is one of the most important factors not just in games but in any other application in general. While creating this system, I want to take that UI designer perspective of mine and start thinking about providing simple easy tools to create UI features for the game developers.

Before I talk about features..

I did some research to Figure out core UI features that I would want to create.

Looked at Unity and Unreal Engine's UI Tools.
Found some other examples of UI systems

I am still continuing this research to figure out how to make the interface more user-friendly.

The features I am planning to create

After the research followings are the features I think will be most useful at this point. I might add other features if I find out them later.

A widget: It will be the main class/component that can be added to a camera. It can have the following features as children/components.

Panel (A basic rectangle colored area.)
Healthbar or related other bars.
Button
Text (at the bare minimum if I have time)
- Menu (Made using buttons and panel)

I didn't want to overscore the features and then end up leaving the project buggy and undocumented, so Included those features that I think I will be able to achieve at this point.

About using the system

At this point, I am not sure about the exact functions and classes I will be creating. I don't want to rush and submit something else without figuring out the proper structure.

Therefore I am writing down the usage briefly.

Users will be creating Lua files to specify most of the UI items that they want to create.
They will use addtoWidget() function to add items inside widget.
There will be a function for them to create a widget and add/attach it to the camera.
Can switch between and add multiple widgets.

I might change the structure later if I need to else I think this is basic startup interfaces that I could think of.

The challenges that I am looking forward to..

Come up with a proper structure for widgets and items.
Find the best way to implement the features(especially health bars and button)
Figure out how to detect a mouse position for windows to add button click events.
Button click and hold events.

My plans

I am taking this project as a good learning experience and I want to create something that is easy to use first rather than focusing on creating something amazing. This is my way of doing things when I am not confident enough and while doing something for the first time.

One step at a time.
Focus on creating a simple easy system first, rather than going for something amazing.
Keep researching for references.
Feedbacks and discussion with fellow students.

ROHAN PATEL