Day 365 Project Rance — Pause Menu & Quest Notifications

24/10/2026 I started this project on 28 August 2025, and as of today, 24 October 2026, I’ve reached development day 365—a year’s worth of days spent working on the project. I usually do not work on Sundays, and other stuff occasionally keeps me so busy that I do not have any time left for that day, so this isn’t a calendar anniversary. Overall, I think I’ve made at least some progress druing last year though the project is far from complete. I learnt a lot about Unreal development along the way. Hopefully, I can complete this game eventually. Pause menu Added a configurable separate pause menu with optional Inventory access. Integrated the existing CommonMenuKit Settings page and retained the alternative Settings-tab workflow. Implemented game pausing, HUD suppression and input-state restoration. Fixed Settings return navigation and incorrect tab highlighting. Added contextual Inventory navigation: entering through Pause returns to Pause; opening Inventory directly returns to gameplay. Moved equipment-transfer confirmation into the normal Gameplay settings section using the same checkbox style. Left Save and Load buttons as configurable event hooks, with their actual actions disconnected as I did not have a central save/load mechanism now. Made the pause menu with a dark gradient, decorative accents, optional background blur and smoother button feedback. Smoothed opening, closing and interrupted transitions. Reused the MenuKit confirmation window without its full-screen background. Created seven editable pause-menu icon textures inside Menu/UI/Icons Placed Confirm on the left and Cancel on the right. Added configurable Enhanced Input actions for Confirm and Back, with keyboard and gamepad support. Connected key icons to active input mappings and input-device changes. Fixed the premature HUD restoration when returning to the main menu. The shared confirmation route now keeps gameplay hidden and paused until level teardown. Quest notifications Added animated Quest Accepted, Updated and Completed notifications connected to the existing progression system. Added notification queuing, automatic dismissal, configurable styling and optional reward information. Screen anchor, alignment and offsets can be used for freely positioning notifications. Default position is set to middle-left. Currently, it supports three notification types: Quest Accepted, Quest Updated, and Quest Completed. I may expand this to include reward notifications and sound effects, or develop a dedicated quest completion screen later. I haven’t decided on the final approach yet. Knowledge / Data system Implemented configurable categories, subtabs and entries supporting descriptions, images and additional details. Added gameplay-event unlocks and persistent item discovery history. Removing an item does not erase its discovery, and reacquiring it does not repeat its first-discovery event. Integrated discovery and unlocked entries with save/load, including compatibility handling for older saves. Added an overview with playtime and an extensible statistics structure. This tab will serve as an information and reference page for players, covering characters, enemies, items, gameplay systems, tutorials, and other useful details. It will give players a central place to understand the game and find help when needed. I’ll expand it during content development. For now, the goal is to establish the tab and get its basic functionality working. Character XP progression Added an optional Fixed XP by Level Range mode alongside the existing growth formula. Exposed editable level bands and XP requirements, with relevant fields appearing according to the selected mode. Kept existing character configurations and the original progression approach unchanged. I added this option because I haven’t yet decided whether character leveling should use fixed XP requirements or values that increase with level and include slight randomness. I’ll decide later in development.