Current Events > I have severely under-appreciated the work that goes into video game menus

(+) Yeah! (+)

Its one of those things you never really think about too much until you try to make one yourself.

Jimminy Christmas this is absolutely torturous

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are you building from the ground up? what're you making?

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Other than Persona 5, most don't particularly impress me. Persona 5 has some of the best UI, HUD, and main menu visuals of any game ever.
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Fluttershy posted...

are you building from the ground up? what're you making?

Im using game maker lol.

I followed Shaun Spaldings action RPG tutorial to get started, and now Im trying to get the basic infrastructure together so that the project will be somewhat playable before I actually start going in and designing stuff. The game is ultimately supposed to be a sort of mix between a WRPG for the exploration segments, and a dungeon crawler for the action segments. (The scope is so big for a one-person project itll a miracle if I ever finish this lol)

The problem with menus is that I cant be lazy and just code while procrastinating on the designing. They kind of go hand in hand.

Like, simple process. Use arrow keys to select armor slot. (Weapon, body, head, etc) Press action button to bring up armory. Use arrow keys to scroll through armory. Press action button again to swap equipped slot with armory selection. Coding wise, its ezpz. But then you gotta make it look decent and intuitively navigable, which Ive learned I am not good at. >_>


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wouldnt worry about flashy stylistic menus. make it as simple and intuitive as possible...

The secret is just to have an ungodly large amount of staff.

I often wonder what our software would be like if my dev company had 300 members of staff instead of 5

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ZevLoveDOOM posted...

wouldnt worry about flashy stylistic menus. make it as simple and intuitive as possible...

right. Im not even worried about being stylish lol. Its the intuitive part thats difficult.

Like, where do you show the currently equipped items? What happens when you click them? How should the various sub-menus be divided? Which sub-menus should be visible and which ones should only be seen after the player enters them? How ca you draw the players attention to the relevant information? What other information should be shown on the screen?

FF7s basic ass menus were a fucking masterpiece and i was blind lol

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Also the other point is that game dev is where most of the cutting edge development is being pushed


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Dead Space has the best menu system ever made imo.

GMTK has several videos on menus, including one on the aforementioned Persona 5 menu.
https://youtu.be/4Bv45aPMGyI

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Slayer_22 posted...

Other than Persona 5, most don't particularly impress me. Persona 5 has some of the best UI, HUD, and main menu visuals of any game ever.

What's so special about Persona 5's menu? Anyway most menus pre gen 7's tiny text are good, but if they look like god of war 2018's crappy menu with its abysmally tiny text, then not good at all.

I don't ask much for a menu, just have it be larger than 20pt font and legible on a TV screen, not just a pc moniter screen that's inches away from the dev's face
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yea it's a pain making one, i've remade mine a bunch of times, i hope i got all the elements locked down now and no more revisions later

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saspa posted...

What's so special about Persona 5's menu? Anyway most menus pre gen 7's tiny text are good, but if they look like god of war 2018's crappy menu with its abysmally tiny text, then not good at all.

I don't ask much for a menu, just have it be larger than 20pt font and legible on a TV screen, not just a pc moniter screen that's inches away from the dev's face

It has a very unique style with great animations, great blending of color, and very easy to read/understand information that is just...fantastic, honestly.
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