Devlog: User Interface (UI) and Quality of Life (QoL) Improvements.

Devlog: User Interface (UI) and Quality of Life (QoL) Improvements.

In this session, we focused on refining the player experience by implementing features that offer more control over the interface and enhance immersion in the game’s universe.

1. Collapsible Main Menu

The main change this session was the implementation of a collapsible main menu.

• The Problem: The menu with options like “Options,” “Warehouse,” “Hangar,” etc., was always visible, taking up considerable space in the top-right corner of the screen. This limited the player’s view of the solar system and could clutter the interface.

• The Solution: We added a single “Menu” button that, when clicked, shows or hides all other menu options.

Technical Implementation:

1. Scene (res://scenes/ui/main_ui.tscn): A new Button node named MenuToggleButton was added to the top of the VBoxContainer that groups the menu buttons. To ensure all elements could be controlled, we also assigned a unique name to the HSeparator node within the menu.

2. Script (res://scripts/ui/main_ui.gd):

   • We created a new function, _toggle_menu_visibility(). This function simply toggles the visible property of all the menu buttons and the separator.

   • We connected the pressed signal from the MenuToggleButton to this new function.

   • For a cleaner initial experience, the menu now starts hidden, with only the “Menu” button visible.

The result is a cleaner, more minimalist interface that allows the player to focus on the beauty of the solar system, opening the full menu only when needed.

2. Other UI Improvements (Existing Features)

During the session, we also reviewed and confirmed the robustness of two essential quality-of-life features that were already present in the project structure:

• Pixel Art Font: The game now supports real-time font swapping via the settings panel. The player can choose between the default font and a pixel art font (pixel_font.ttf), which reinforces the game’s retro aesthetic. This is managed through Theme resources (main_theme.tres and pixel_theme.tres) that are applied globally to the UI.

• UI Scaling: For accessibility and to support various screen sizes (from large monitors to mobile devices), the player can adjust the overall UI scale using a slider in the settings panel. This feature, controlled by the main_ui.gd script, applies a scale transformation to the main UI containers, ensuring the game is comfortable to read and interact with on any device.

These features, combined with the new collapsible menu, represent a significant step toward making the Exo Idle Mining Game interface more professional, flexible, and enjoyable for all types of players.