Clockwork TD Devlog #4: Dynamic Build Menus

This is the fourth post in an ongoing series about the development of my thesis project, Clockwork TD.

One thing that I knew would be of huge importance before I even started designing my game was the UI. Many games in the Tower Defense genre focus on depth and breadth of systems in lieu of a coherent UI, which makes no sense -- tower defense games are meant to suck the player in and keep them hitting the Next Turn button, so why would you not concentrate on creating as frictionless an experience for your player as possible? As such, I knew that designing the UI had to be a major part of the game, and not a bolted on afterthought. This sort of thinking is what led me use FSMs for GameState and CursorState, to ensure that I have the utmost control over the player's game experience at any given time. My UI and my GDD were created in a back-and-forth iterative process, as I worked out gameplay ideas on paper and then tried to imagine how they'd translate to a UI in Figma.

By taking the time to create a full style & color guide from the beginning, it allowed me to very easily combine building blocks in Figma to create a coherent UI language.

To keep reading this devlog and see the example code & gifs, visit:

https://onewinter.net/2023/07/14/clockwork-td-devlog-4-unlocks-dynamic-build-men...