Game Screens

Introduction

The game contains several screen which which each implement libgdx's ScreenAdapter interface. Screen are responsible for initiating important game services, loading screen resources, drawing the background and UI, rendering the entities, handling input, etc.

Only one screen is shown at a time and GDXGame.java contains functionality for transitioning between screens. Screen transitions are triggered by the current screen.

Within the base game, there are 3 screens: Main Menu Screen, Main Game Screen, and Settings Screen. The Main Menu Screen is the starting screen.

Screens can also be split into different Game Areas which can be used to create different levels and areas. Read more here!

Development of game title screen logo

Logo was designed and developed using canva. We decided to go for red theme since we thought it aligned with the title 'beastly'. We browsed through canva and tried different designs until we found we liked and decided on keeping it.

Main screen layout inspiration

• Large game logo covering half of screen
• Horizontal row of buttons at bottom of screen
• Large visible buttons

Screenshot taken from Stardew Valley

Changing of button style upon hover

Button changes to a red color when hovered over

Spawning aninamls/food items in the background

The images of food and customers have been taken and generated at random. They spin and move around the screen at random positions. This is achieved by using the Image class to render the images and adding actions to it. It enables us to rotate specified degrees and also to move it from one point to another. The random position and movement is achieved by using a random generating function. For despawning of the objects, we setup a timer that removes any object that has completed its movement.

Usage

Add a new screen

Create a new screen class, e.g. NewScreen.

  public class NewScreen extends ScreenAdapter {
    ...
  }

Then, register the new screen in GDXGame.java by adding NEW_SCREEN to ScreenType and modifying newScreen:

  private Screen newScreen(ScreenType screenType) {
    switch (screenType) {
      ...
      case NEW_SCREEN:
        return new NewScreen(this);
      ...
    }
  }

  public enum ScreenType {
    MAIN_MENU, MAIN_GAME, SETTINGS, NEW_SCREEN
  }

Switch screen

  private void switchScreen(GdxGame game, ScreenType screenType) {
    game.setScreen(screenType);
  }

UML Diagram

Below is a UML diagram for MainMenuDisplay. It oulines the functions being used along with the classes it uses. This provides a detailled summary of how we were able to create the main menu screen specifically the spawning of the items in the background.