function drawMainMenu(){
// Laying forth Mickey background
image(mainMenuImg, 0, 0, width, height);
// title setup
textAlign(CENTER, CENTER);
textFont("Press Start 2P");
textSize(32);
// Font color for pink
fill(255, 80, 180)
// Title write up
text("It's Hammer Time!", width / 2, 100)
// Play Button creation
rectMode(CENTER);
fill(255, 80, 180);
rect(width / 2, height - 130, 220, 80, 15);
// "Play" being written on said-play button
fill(255);
textSize(25);
text("PLAY", width / 2, height - 130);
}
Have you guys ever played “Whack-a-mole” before; this can include playing it either in an arcade or carnival fair somewhere in life? Surely we all have had the canon event of stumbling upon the game somewhere in our life, whether it is by accident or by intent of finding entertainment for ourselves. I’m not afraid to admit that I was even among the bunch who have played the game at least once or twice throughout my childhood. WItha that being the case, I figured why not pay my respects to such game via creating a minigame of my on based on iconic game, but with twists and turns to make it feel a bit more “unique” than the original
Now of course, I had to start myself off on an easier note since I am not exactly one to talk when it comes to designing games; in fact, I’m not sure if I ever created a game in my life! Nevertheless, I still have the plan in my head set straight, where it will be in the classic chronological order that I personally believe is very good for any game: game main menu -> instructions of how to play, and then the game itself. The first twist i would like to mention is that instead of moles, users will have to click on, or lay the hammer on with their mouse in other words, on 2d Mickey heads! I still wonder why I would choose that particular target for my game, but in a way to me it… kind of works? But of course it will be up to me to have said-targets operate as they should. From what I can see in my vision, one or two of those Mickey heads will appear in one of the six black holes by random, and will stay there for a few seconds in a way that’ll challenge the user to use his/her fast thinking skills and click on it; in addition, I plan on adding a hammer sound effect to better simulate the action of laying down the hammer on these Mickey heads. But of course, no game is ever without a twist for the sake of its own; in my case, I am considering adding a red Mickey head that will pop up somewhere in the gaps of between one of the two out of the six circles by random. If the user were to click on it by accident, the red Mickey head will have to take the user to a game over screen for about five seconds before taking them back to the main menu!
During this first phase of the game, perhaps what felt frightening to me the most is the set up of the main menu. This is because of how I apparently thought that the “draw” function was all I needed to set up the appearance of my main menu; boy, was I wrong on that! It goes deeper than that apparently, as I had to figure out that the only way to get my main menu up and running with its appearance is by creating another function made specifically for it (as snipped here)! So that was my main solution to debug the issue, which is by creating another new function that would be most accommodating for this task for me. Now, i still have yet to figure out how to not just create my gameboard with the effects needed, but also the sound effects that would fit just right for each element of the game. Even so, I still will do my best in figuring out what must be done in order that my game is indeed operational as expected from me.