For my Team project, I am in charge of the UX Design. Recently we added a new mechanic. This mechanic entails finding journal pages that were written by the character in the world. The narrative designer wanted to allow the player to view these pages through a menu where they could see all their pages that had been found. The idea behind it was a bit like Stardew Valley where the player can gather more insight into the main character through the notes. I wanted to make a menu where the player could see how many notes they have left and how many they have collected. I also wanted the player to be able to click the note they found to view it in detail. When the player collects a note it needs to be associated with a note in the menu, and the next time the menu opens those notes need to appear and any note not found needs to stay hidden. I also need to add a HUD element to show when the player finds a journal that increments according to the number of journals.
In designing this system I went backward. I first began with the menu design and made sure all of the notes acted how I wanted, and then I went back and added the system to keep track of the collected notes. The menu I created simply scales the note up and moves it into the center of the screen. I used lerping overtime to make this all happen smoothly. When the player clicks the background the note goes back into its spot. I had a few ideas on whether or not the player should be able to click other notes when they're focused on a note. Currently, if the player clicks a different note that note begins to go into place while the initial note moves back to where it belongs. I chose to do it that way because I don't want the player to make an additional click to close their note if they see a different note they want to view closer. There is a chance that doing this will have players misclicking, and if that is the case I won't allow other notes to be pressed while one is in focus. There are still some issues with the menu, such as when you unclick from a note the note is still recognized as the selected object meaning when you click again the click state is shown. I also need to fix the animations for coming in and going out. I want to have the pages fall in and the empty slots should fade in. I will be making these fixes in the coming week.
