Questions about Menudesign

Since I got the Luna Engine, I've been thinking a lot about the look of menus and what they do.

I thought, I would start a discussion about menudesign and some of your favorites - or some of those menus you don't want to see in a game. What is necessary, what is nice to have, when does a menu start to become confusing or bloated? Which Informations should it convey and how?

Some examples of menus, I mean: Equipment, Quests, Crafting, Biography, Relationships, Bestiary etc.

I'm just curious what menus you put in your games, what you think, should be in there and how they should look. I know, it often highly depends on the genre and the game, but I think, there are some alltime favorites and maybe some general guidelines on how to go about menudesign.

This is only my liking, so don't use this as a parameter :D
I like the basic list :
1.Item
2.Skill (if a no battle RPG then not necessary)
3.Equipment (if a no battle RPG then not necessary)
4.Status(biography would be nice, but not a must)
5.Option(If any) not really neccessary
6.Journal(obviously must have) can consist (main quest and side quest, or just a help for progressing the main story, and maybe consist of Map too)
7.Data(can save and load game)

What I hate :

1.Bestiary, or somethings related like it.

2. Some other custom command that even not related with the gameplay. Example : Album/Photo or things like that.

3. Basically somethings that not really important for the game progress story or game mechanic.

My opinion about command like that should not be exist in main menu, it just make the menu dirty(IMHO), things like that, best to add in a different scene, such as easter egg, or bonus room, or something like that.
Well that only my opinion, hope it helps you, sorry if no :)
 

as a player.. I like my menus simple. I want them to be easy to read, navigate, and pretty quick to get to what I want. For example.. the basic menu system is pretty great because the first option is items and this is general the most used feature of the menu so I don't have to open the menu and then scroll down through a list of features to reach the one I use most frequently.

Next, is organization. Again the default menu does well with this.. I just use the Items menus again since it's basically two clicks to get to the most used items. It filters the items to general items, again this is the first option as it's the most used. The other 3 categories are generally just for viewing things you've collected: armor, weapons, and special items - usually quest/story related. I don't want to have to go through a menu to search for something, use it once and have it take me out of it and start the chain of events over again to get back to where I want to be.. this is highly frustrating.

I don't mind the menu having a lot of options, but sometimes its nice to have hot keys.. so if I press Q or J it'll open up the Quest/Journal System.. O or options, etc so the menu isn't over loaded and I can get to what I need even quicker.

I also like pretty menus. So I appreciate when someone spends time to make little graphics for it however there are limits. Like if the colors class to much, too many animations or just general busy looking menus are poorly designed in my opinion and makes trying to decipher the info it shows harder. Another pet peeve of mine is instructions on menus. If you have something out of the ordinary, explain to me how it works or put some button info on the screen so I know how to work it. Console games general do this at the bottom of menu screens and say what each controller button will do in the menu.

Sorry had a phone call come in while writing this up so hope it's not too disjointed.

edit:

I forgot to mention fonts. Fonts are just as important as everything else. A bad font choice will distroy a menu if it's too hard to read or too busy looking. Again you want to try to keep fonts simple. Some cursive ones are easy on the eyes, but a lot of them just make it harder to read. Keep in mind folks of all ages so try to avoid really small/thin fonts as it can be hard to read

Simple menu yes.... Which doesn't have soooo many sub menu. Yanfly Item Menu is a bad example. When you click the item menu, you need to select item, weapon, or armor. After you clicked the category, you need to select another sub category which is tooo long

Get rid the unecessary infomration. If your game mainly use TP, get rid the draw MP on the menu. Change it to another one, like experience bar, perhaps?

I don't mind about the bestiary if it's necessary to build up the game strategy

Items, Skills, Equipment. The necessities.

I think Story Backlogs should be put a lot more in video games. I really hate it when I leave a game for a long time, then when I come back I forgot what I've done and what I'm supposed to do next.

I never use menus like Bestiaries and extra information menus. I don't think any game that requires you to check a log like that often can be that good.

And I always appreciate good menu transitions.

Main things for me are ease of navigation and clearly communicated information.

- Find what you need without much fuss

- Each category is clear at what it does. There are no riddles as to what each command does

- As few categories as possible. If I see a menu with too many commands in it, I get confused, and as a result start to lose interest in the game.

- Text is easy to read. No mismatched colours. Appropriate size and simple font.

- Any items and equipment must show clearly what they do, e.g. how they change your base stats, whether they inflict or remove any states, etc.

- No lags, delays, or fancy animations. Though fancy stuff is nice, if it in any way impedes the speed at which the player navigates the menu, then it's a no-no.

If we're also talking about battle menus and HUDs, then it's got to be simple and crisp as well. Too many things happening on screen (bars, numbers, commands, counters, etc) and it becomes confusing.

One of the things that really makes menus stand out amongst others to me is an appropriate use of space. I hate menus that have big blocks of nothing. That, for me, is just as bad as looking at a giant map that is too big for its details. I like things tight and neat, both filled space and negative space being used in an appealing manner.

No love for bestiaries up in this thread though! Personally I love them. But that's largely because it's like a giant resource for me to stare longingly at monster designs. (or research drops. But mostly I just want to stare at the beasties.)

One thing that drives me up a wall is the whole biography inside of the menu on character pages. I don't want to get this information from menu! I want to get it from the game and story itself. That feels like the largest offense towards 'show don't tell.' guhhhh

Other than that I agree with the majority here. Keeping things simple and clear and organizing the menu to be quick and easy to get what you want and then get back in the game. Conscious thought needs to be put towards what information and functions are most important based on your gameplay. That information should be the first thing you see and those functions among the easiest to access.

I actually love menu's with lots of options, features, and submenus.

Final Fantasy VIII is the first example that comes to mind.



There are 4 separate menu commands that deal with skills!

-Magic: Used for looking at spells, casting spells, sorting spells, and trading spells.

-Junction: Used to equip spells to stats. And equip abilities. (Since FF8 doesn't have equipment, this is essentially the equipment submenu)

-GF: Used for equipping GFs, which effects which stats you can junction spells to, and which abilities you can equip.

-Ability: Used for menu abilities, like refining spells.

It might seem overcomplicated, but it works well, I think.

There's also a menu command for your Card collection, and a personal favorite, Tutorial. In the Tutorial submenu is tons of stuff, from actual tutorial-y stuff, to miscellaneous background info on the world and same characters, party member battle statistics, to taking tests to raise your rank to get paid more. It's just missing cool stuff like a bestiary...

I often find myself spending tons of time in the menu, and...I enjoy it. It's really bland looking, all that gray, with no character portraits on the main menu (but they are present in other menus) but still, love it for some reason.

So, yeah, I like lots of stuff in the menu. My belief is that a typical RPG has 3 main modes of play.

-Battles: This is the mode most people recognize as gameplay.

-Town/Dungeon/Field exploration: An overlooked form of gameplay, as in, some view it as filler between the "actual" gameplay...I mean, there are those who prefer towns being simple menus of shops and like one information place. Shopping and stuff are kind of sub-modes of this, but also kind of:

-Menus: Often viewed as NOT gameplay, like, an annoying hassle and waste of time between the gameplay of exploring and fighting. But Menus are an essential aspect of RPGs and one thing that is pretty distinct from many other genres. In some games I feel like little effort was put in the menus, like I'm barely spending any time in them, and that doesn't feel right to me.

I wouldn't like a overcomplicated menu full of pointless filler or whatever, I just like menus to have some depth to them.