Josh Farnaby - UI Designer
Caboodle
Summary
As a part of the Drink Devs 2024 game jam, we were tasked with creating a game to fit the theme "Wait... What?" As a team we decided to make a Guitar Hero style co-op cat game called Caboodle, whereby the main goal was to pet as many cats as possible before the player lost their 9 lives.
Roles
Technical UI Designer.
Team Size
7
Project Type
Game jam.
Software
Unreal Engine 5.
Duration
25 October 2024
27 October 2024
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Skills
Team communication, UI design, UI animation, UI art implementation and UI visual scripting.
Main Responsibilities
Challenges
- The first challenge of this project was to make large amount of UI screens in such a short period of time.
The next challenge I faced was in trying to figure out how to create controller UI navigation from scratch using the common UI plugin.
Development Part 1
- To combine the ideas of cutesy style with coop guitar hero, we made the cat petting game Caboodle. I began work by sketching out two main menu layouts. To match our cutesy style, I used soft edges around the text.
For layout 2 I came up with the idea of having a cat come down one of the tracks to click the start button and was the layout we choose. I ended up opting for skipping digital layouts for just these quick sketches to save on time.
Collaborating with our 2D artist, we decided to make the buttons be wooden planks with some having cat claw marks.
Development Part 2
- Using the layout that was picked, I began to block the main menu out in Unreal Engine 5 and started to script its functionality by creating a master button. This allowed me to readjust all of buttons’ styles to allow for better consistency. I also made an animation for the buttons being hovered and clicked.
In addition, I sketched up a join menu (cut due to time constraints), leaderboard and HUD.
I then received the UI art for the buttons that I implemented onto the master button, using the unscratched art for the backgrounds.
Development Part 3
- To continue, I blocked out the HUD using a paw heart and linked it up to the respective variables. Based on feedback, I moved the HUD to the bottom of the screen to better see within the player’s peripheral vision.
Furthermore, I sketched the remaining layouts and blocked them out using UI art through having cat paws hold the menus. I then animated a cat paw pressing the start button and added button prompts to each track. With some help from industry, I was able to overcome the challenge of getting the UI to be used by controller.
In addition, I added scratches for player damage. To worked on the leaderboard with a technical person using a save state. Due to the deadline passing the leaderboard ended up being fixed and uploaded to Itch.io by our team lead. This concluding the project.
We then won Best Overall, and I couldn't be prouder of our team.
Reflection
Most Proud of:
One part I was most proud of was my ability to come up with many different layouts and my ability to quickly sketch them to then block them out in-engine. I'm proud of this as it allowed me to get to quickly get into engine and be able to match the short deadline of this game jam.
The next part I was also proud of was my ability to develop different UI animations that fit the style of the project. As seen above with the cat paw animation on the main menu screen. This is good as it allowed me to help create a consistent style between UI animations and UI art.
One last part I was proud of was the special cat warnings at the top of screen as these were incredible fun to make and served as a good alert to the player to what special cat is coming down the track at any given time.
Any Important Skills?
UI design,
UI animation,
Team communication,
UI visual scripting and
UI art implementation.
Any Changes?
The first improvement I would make would be to either move the press enter screen to it's own widget or to change it's text style to match the rest of the UI's text. I would do this to allow for better flow and focus as well as consistency across this screen.
Another improvement I would make would be to make certain HUD elements like the player's number clearer. I would do this so that the player can easily understand key information quickly.
One last improvement I'd make is to move the left cat paw on the special cat warnings to prevent it covering too much of the warning text.
Final Product
Credits
A big thanks to Dink as well as sponsors and judges for making this game jam possible.
The video was edited our animator.