Creating the Pause Menu in Unity
To start, create a new button for the HUD panel. You can disable the text for this button. For the image, I found a nice pause icon for free in the unity asset store. Put this button at the top right of the screen.
On the existing canvas create a new panel and call it the pause menu. You can copy the pause button and put it in the pause menu. Change the name to the resume button. Then add two buttons for the menu and to quit the game.
Add the main menu script to the canvas. You can use the quit method for the quit button.
In the script, get two references for the pause menu and the pause button. Then create new methods for the pause button, resume button, and menu button.
Add the references to the script.
For the references in the main menu, you can drag the pause icon into the hierarchy and disable it. Then add that to the references.
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Unity3D — How to make a Pause Menu
In this post, I’ll try to explain how to make a Pause Menu that pauses the game and displays a menu with various controls for this Minesweeper template example.
Step 1 — Set up the Canvas
All of the UI elements are placed on a Canvas . To start creating our UI:
- Right click in project hierarchy and add a Canvas to your scene. Remember that this will automatically create an Event System that has to be in the same level with the Canvas .
- Set the Render Mode to Screen Space — Camera and choose Main Camera object in Render Camera field.
- Set the plane distance according to your scene.
Step 2 — Add the Panel
Panel is the area where we’ll group the controls. First, we create a panel that will outline the layout of our menu.
- Right click on Canvas and add UI/ Panel. Rename the panel to “ Pause_Menu_Panel ”.
- Resize the panel according to your design needs.
- Optional: Add a material with alpha channel and play with transparency values of the panel.
I strongly recommend watching Unity’s “Panes, Panels and Windows” training video if you want to grasp the new UI system that came with Unity 4.6.
Step 3 — Populate the Panel
Now that we have our Pause Menu area, we can populate them by the Visual and Interaction components however we want. Below, I preferred using Panel s to group certain elements that can be seen in project hierarchy. I have used Text , Slider , Input Field , Button and Toggle components for this Minesweeper template.
For the sake of shortness of the post, I’ll explain only Music settings components ( Text , Toggle & Slider ) and the Continue Button ( Button ) interactions. Music settings controls will be under the Music_Settings_Panel and Continue Button will be a child of UI_Canvas . To populate the Pause_Menu_Panel :
- Add another Panel under the Pause_Menu_Panel object. Rename it “ Music_Settings_Panel ”.
- Add Slider , Text and Toggle objects to the Music_Settings_Panel .
- Set Slider ’s Min Value to 0 , Max Value and Value to 0.3 or any value suitable for your environment. The file I used sounded right in the range of 0 — 0.3, hence the slider values. Remember not to check Whole Numbers .
- Set Text ’s Text value to “Music”
- Add a Button unter the Pause_Menu_Panel object. Rename it “ Button_Continue ”. Set its Text to “Continue”.
Quick recap: Here you can see the project hierarchy: on top is a UI_Manager GameObject that groups the whole controls that are contained in the Menu. Under UI_Manager GameObject, there is the UI_Canvas on which every UI element lives. UI elements are grouped with Panel s
Step 4 — Wire your Components to your game
I find it useful to create managers assigned for certain tasks that also interact with other managers. For example, I used:
- A GameManager to handle grid generation and game settings
- A UIManager to handle UI related tasks such as toggling pause menu by interacting with GameManager, updating input fields with the game settings values and helping GameManager to create a grid associated with the custom settings
- A MusicManager to play the music file and set the volume by interacting with UIManager
Game Manager
Game manager script will handle toggling the Pause Menu and stopping the time using a public UIManager variable, which can be assigned from inspector by simply dragging UI_Manager GameObject onto the scripts variable field.
- Add an empty GameObject, change its name to “GameManager”
- Add a C# script that defines related functions. In this case, we will define a function that will be called when Esc button is hit and Continue button is pressed that continues or stops the time and makes the pause menu visible and invisible.
Music Manager
- Add an empty GameObject, change its name to “Music_Manager” and add the following components to it:
- An Audio Source that contains the music file
- A C# script that defines music related functions
UI Manager
I find it handy to keep references of other managers in a manager as public objects. UIManager simply checks for keypresses in Update() function. If Esc is pressed, UIManagers calls GameManager’s public TogglePauseMenu() function. UIManager also defines the public functions to be called on Toggle and Slider Update events. These functions are later assigned in the related component from the inspsector.
- Add an empty GameObject to the hieararchy, change its name to “UI_Manager”
- A C# script that defines related functions
Assign the Managers’ functions to Components
Now that we have defined the functions in Manager GameObjects that will be called when a certain event occurs, such as pressing the “Continue” button, it is time to assign them to the related components.
- Choose Button_Continue (or however you named your “Continue” Button ) from project hierarchy. Click the + below the OnClick() method.
- Assign the GameManager to the Object Variable
- Choose the TogglePauseMenu() function as seen in the screenshot above. You can simply assign any public function that is defined in whatever object you assigned as the Object Variable to the Button Script.
- Repeat this accordingly for Music_Slider and Music_Toggle as well. Remember, we have defined the public functions for the Toggle and the Slider component in UIManager script.
There we go. We have a Pause Menu with functional music settings panel that you can adjust the volume of the music or mute/unmute it. Thank you for reading thus far! If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to comment below:)
How to pause a game in Unity
No matter what type of game you are making, pausing it will be needed at some point. Now you can pause the game with or without a pause menu depending on your game type. In Unity, there are a few options when it comes to pausing a game. In this post we will see all the possible options to pause a game in Unity and also cover the advantages and drawbacks of each technique. So, let’s get started.
In Unity the most common way to pause a game is using the timescale function. The other option is to use a Singleton to enable or disable the scene functions. The best option is to use both together but before that lets understand each one separately.