Cowzy Friday: Swapping buildings from the UI

Welcome back to another Cowzy Friday update! 🐄 This week brings some progress to our building system and UI. Swapping between build options in our UI is now possible via press or shortcut and we can build said building! Let's dig more into it!

UI swapping

In the UI, when using the build option, we can press the number key or select different options in the selected option panel.

The idea is that we call our set toolbar preview and then walk through a series of functions that ensures we select or cycle through our options.

And when we select or cycle through our options, our preview will set and async load both the preview mesh for the build preview and the initial mesh for the building to be built. As mentioned in a previous post, our buildings are defined not just as a Blueprint but in our data table called DT_BuildingData.

In all, it's a fairly scalable system. It takes minimal effort to create new toolbar button panels or new buildings. Perhaps I could make it more scalable in the future by only having one building blueprint and the datatable defines it!? We'll see!!

What’s Next?

Here’s what I’ll be working on next:

• UI Animations: When selecting buttons via click or shortcut on the Toolbar, I want to add a select animation to improve player feedback and make the UI feel more responsive.

• Building Info Popups: I’m planning to add popup panels that show details about the selected building—like its name, resource cost (wood & stone), and maybe even a little description. This’ll help players make informed decisions before placing anything.

That’s all for this week! Thanks for reading and I'll be back with an update next week for The Cowzy Game! 🏗️🐄🏡