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Game Over! (Retro in Unity)
Yesterday I discussed the Unity UI tools and how they make adding UI elements to your game quick and easy. Today we will look at how those same tools allow us to create retro looks in our games. With nostalgia all the rage in independent 2D games it is important to understand just how easy it is.
Our example will look at the classic ‘Game Over’ screen. If you’ve been playing video games long enough you will be familiar with the screens that brought us so much grief over the years. Regardless of whether it was Mortal Kombat’s ‘Game Over’, Resident Evil’s ‘You Are Dead’, Metal Gear Solid’s ‘Snake, Snaake, Snaaakkkeee!’, or some other classic you’ve likely encountered it. Heck ask someone if they remember the game over screen from some classic game and they likely remember it better than they do some parts of the game.
Our ‘Game Over’ may not stand up with the classics just yet but luckily we can accomplish it quickly using the Unity UI. Here’s a quick step by step:
- Right click on the Canvas in the hierarchy.
- Select UI > Text.
- Select our newly created text in the hierarchy.
- In the Inspector make the required changes to the text component. Set your desired size, string text, color, font settings, etc.
- Position the text on screen where you want it to appear and anchor it.
We now have some Game Over text on the screen. However it’s not completely functional at the moment. If we launch the game we just going to have a giant ‘game over’ right in front of the field of play.
For our UI to be working fully we will need a UI Manager script. I have added mine to the Canvas and added the above Text variable to it. Now I can assign my text variable in the inspector quickly.
In void start() of the UI script we will set the Game Over text to be disabled when the game starts. We also have a second text that is functioning the same way for restarting the level.
Finally I am handling the game over text in the UpdateLives() method of my script. I could create a GameOver()…
