Project overview
Over the course of this chapter, we will be expanding on our twin-stick shooter by adding additional UI elements that will include a main menu, a pause menu, and an options menu and will give us the ability to restart our project. This chapter uses the UnityGUI system that existed before Unity 4.6. Even though the new system does have its advantages, the old system is still quite useful to learn. It's still the only way to create UI elements for the Unity Editor (which you can use to create plugins that you can sell on the Asset Store), and it has a much larger amount of documentation out there to help new users.
Note
If you are interested in learning specifically about the new GUI system, please check out Chapter 9, Creating GUIs Part 2 – Unity's New GUI System, where I talk about specific cases in which you'd want to use the new system.
Your objectives
This project will be split into a number of tasks. It will be a simple step-by-step process from beginning to end. Here is the outline of our tasks:
- Creating a main menu
- Customizing the GUI
- Implementing a pause menu
- Restarting the game
- Adding an Options screen
Prerequisites
This chapter assumes that you have completed the previous chapter and are working with that project. If you have not completed the project yet, please take the Chapter_1_Completed.unitypackage file and import it to a blank project in Unity.
We will also need some graphical assets for use in our project. These can be downloaded from the example code provided for this book on the Packt Publishing website at https://www.packtpub.com/books/content/support.
Browse through the code files and download the Chapter2.zip package and unzip it. Inside the Chapter2 folder there are a number of things, including an Assets folder that will have the art, sound, and font files that you'll need for the project as well as the Chapter_2_Completed.unitypackage (this is the completed chapter package that includes the entire project for you to work with). I've also added in the completed game exported (TwinstickShooter GUI Exported) as well as the entire project zipped up in the GUI TwinstickShooter Project.zip file.