How To Interrupt Main Gameflow With a Pop Up Event Overlayed in Front of Main Screen?

Unity beginner here, and I apologise if this should be blindingly obvious…

I’m developing an overhead, realtime 2D (orthographic camera) mobile game, where, when the player collides with certain objects, I want to freeze the main scene, darken everything slightly, and then have an image (of a monster) slide out onto the screen, in first person view, for the player to deal with.

It’s perhaps a bit of a vague quetsion, and one I’ll come back to as I conquer various bits and get stuck again…but what sorts of things would I need to consider to achieve this? How would I freeze what has essentially become the background, while I deal with the new “foreground” event?

Would I use two scenes? Can you pause a scene, and put another one on top? A second camera, perhaps?

Any ideas would be helpful, even an answer that doesn’t quite get my point might lead me in new, interesting directions! :slight_smile:

I would set Time.timeScale to 0 (which is like pausing the game) to pause the game, and have a separate camera (preferable orthogonal) to deal with popup like UI. Although I am unsure if when Setting Time.timeScale to the game would still process touch events, but I think it still should.

Ah, yes, I’ve read about using a camera set higher up than the main camera to use for the UI. In the Unity manual, no less, I believe…so another camera just below that, then?. Cheers for that, and I’ll look into the timeScale thing. Thanks.