The majesty of menu screens

[J T]

I thoroughly enjoyed this article about menu screens, which either means it is very well written, or I'm even more of a geek than I previously realized. Well, it's probably both:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012- ... y-of-menus

"Sat in the domestic darkness of my living room, I hear an abrasive, bacterial scratching sound. Then an ominious melody, but still nothing on the TV. It's teasing me.

And then it's not. I see footage of some alien matter under an electron microscope. It's all blood red and future orange. Then, finally, the logo. METROIDⓇ PRIME."

[Yancakes]

It goes way past main menus, though. I basically play Final Fantasy games for menu time, in a 10 hour game of Civilization I probably spend 15% of that time tweaking taxes, in city menus queuing up construction and setting what tiles my citizens manage. In the Front Mission and Armoured Core series I probably spend upwards of 30 or 40 percent of the game in menus.

Menus are amazing. Bad menus will break an otherwise good game. They need to be simple enough to be intuitive, but deep enough to really offer some customization in a game. They need to be pretty, but not so overdone that it's hard to read or see icons or figure out where you're supposed to click.

Menu design is as much an art as level design or 3d modelling.

EDIT: Skyrim comes to mind, actually- not a complicated menu, really, but so poorly designed that I pretty much don't want to spend any time customizing my character. Without any will to develop my character, my desire to play the game (because without character development, RPGs become pretty one dimensional) pretty much melted away.

[Erik_Twice]

EDIT: Skyrim comes to mind, actually- not a complicated menu, really, but so poorly designed that I pretty much don't want to spend any time customizing my character.

This reminds me of the PC version of 1830: Railroads and Robber Barons. This is a train game with both track-laying and stock market components and the money a player and a company has are separate but the main screen shows the map and nothing else.

In the boardgame you can just look at the other part of the board and you instantly know these things but in the PC game you have to actively click on a button to get into a menu and then choose what you want to check out in it, meaning the interface actively discourages you to do this and you end up playing without checking all that important info, which makes the game less fun.

[Niode]

It goes way past main menus, though. I basically play Final Fantasy games for menu time, in a 10 hour game of Civilization I probably spend 15% of that time tweaking taxes, in city menus queuing up construction and setting what tiles my citizens manage. In the Front Mission and Armoured Core series I probably spend upwards of 30 or 40 percent of the game in menus.

Menus are amazing. Bad menus will break an otherwise good game. They need to be simple enough to be intuitive, but deep enough to really offer some customization in a game. They need to be pretty, but not so overdone that it's hard to read or see icons or figure out where you're supposed to click.

Menu design is as much an art as level design or 3d modelling.

EDIT: Skyrim comes to mind, actually- not a complicated menu, really, but so poorly designed that I pretty much don't want to spend any time customizing my character. Without any will to develop my character, my desire to play the game (because without character development, RPGs become pretty one dimensional) pretty much melted away.

That has been fixed. Assuming you're playing it on a PC. Only an idiot would play it on anything else...

[Yancakes]

Playing on a PC, of course. Honestly the crap menus made me look at the actual gameplay more than player development (which kept me appeased in Morrowind for like a month) and made me realize how freaking shallow the gameplay actually is

Still, for all that I understand after-launch patching, that menu should NOT have been included at launch.

[Zing]

That has been fixed. Assuming you're playing it on a PC. Only an idiot would play it on anything else...

I have only seen Skyrim in videos, but it was very apparent to me with both Oblivion and Skyrim that the menus were designed for use with a controller, not a mouse. Did they create optional PC menus in a later patch?

[Yancakes]

EDIT: Skyrim comes to mind, actually- not a complicated menu, really, but so poorly designed that I pretty much don't want to spend any time customizing my character.

This reminds me of the PC version of 1830: Railroads and Robber Barons. This is a train game with both track-laying and stock market components and the money a player and a company has are separate but the main screen shows the map and nothing else.

In the boardgame you can just look at the other part of the board and you instantly know these things but in the PC game you have to actively click on a button to get into a menu and then choose what you want to check out in it, meaning the interface actively discourages you to do this and you end up playing without checking all that important info, which makes the game less fun.

Possibly the only boardgames I've played that had really, legitimately good translations were Catan (I played on XBL- the game itself was far too limited with no expansions and very few rule options, but the interface was good and it utilized the gamepad very well) and Zombies!!!, which was released for Windows Mobile.

[Erik_Twice]

To be frank, I don't think the interface is bad for it's time (1993), probably a bit better than Xcom's or what have you, and the AI is pretty good.

Except that it colludes espectacularly. Seriously, it suddenly goes wacko and one takes hit just so another opponent can fuck you over. I wouldn't allow that in my table, yet the PC does it! Now, that's something I really hate

[J T]

More about menus:

http://kotaku.com/5923066/theres-beauty ... enu-system