The First Steps of U and I.

[Oafkad]

  Alright, we've gotten to the point where I can pretty trivially add a new item and be able to add it to my inventory just by interacting with it. Is the implementation how we'll ultimately do it? I don't know, but it works and I think that's the most critical goal for now. I also like to think the implementation is efficient and easy to edit. But generally most people like the smell of their own toots.

  Now that I've got saving and loading working for my player, the Moosecats, and my items, that means I can start storing progress for all of these things. But, what it doesn't mean, is that a player could easily interact with this data. Indeed, you can store things into the database all you want but there is no way for you to *see* that hoard of apples you've bought.

   Naturally I did what any engineer does when they need to work on UI elements. I turned to the bottle. But once I had finished with that I did the obvious next step, I cried to my wife for help. I needed a nice looking GUI that I can use to start populating visuals and interactable buttons. I also wanted it to be in theme. Luckily she had provided me with one many years ago. It required a bit of updating to get it setup for our needs but I think it looks quite nice.

So there we go, we've got a UI element. It toggles both with the I key on your keyboard, or the menu button an an xbox controller, and finally it can be closed by pressing the close button at the top right. Naturally that button will look a lot better in the future but we are just making things work now and coming back to polish later.

I suppose this means the next thing to do is to create a simple inventory window. I "think" we are going to let people carry everything at all times, that is what I'll be going with for now. So I'll just be having a scroll rect with a grid layout group likely. That'll be tomorrows joy.