Dynamic main menu

Technical Designer

The goal of this project was to create a dynamic main menu that could easily be used by non technical developers.

This was a solo project in year 2, meaning all UI elements are made by me. This means scripted materials, computer generated materials, UI element owned animation (not supported by UE5 normally) are made by me over a 4 week period. The project comes with how to documentation and video explanations for easier use ensuring anyone can use it to make a main menu.
A gameplay shot of the game codename M.O.T.H.

Features

Computer generated materials

One part of a scalable and dynamic UI is having a consistent but still recognizable style. This makes it a good place to use computer generated materials. Here I showcase a background material that I use for all my backgrounds in this main menu. It allows for many options like changing colour, the way it is displayed and how much noise is added which is a recognizable feature.

Animation and states

Unreal Engine 5 does not support value based animations for UI elements. I added this to my pack allowing people to combine variables and UI animations without learning additional systems. Besides this I also use states a lot, these are most crucial to console players but still useful for PC players.

The states currently in the pack:
  • Selectable, when you can hover and select a button
  • Selected, last button clicked
  • Hover, when the user is currently hovering over the button
  • Unselectable, when a button is disabled
Additionally there is transition states for the animations.
A gameplay shot of the game codename M.O.T.H.

Documentation

As the stated goal was making a product that any developer can use I have to include documentation. I use three forms of documentation, documentation within the product, a youtube series for the basic elements and a how to document with indepth documentation.