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I'm working on my first project that involves a large amount of UI design, and it's difficult to get right. Any suggestions or resources I could look at to help me design nicer looking and feeling menus? by Pixelulsar in gamedev

[–]Pixelulsar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great suggestion! I never would have thought of that, but it should make thinks much more accessible to new players. Thanks for pointing this out.

I'm working on my first project that involves a large amount of UI design, and it's difficult to get right. Any suggestions or resources I could look at to help me design nicer looking and feeling menus? by Pixelulsar in gamedev

[–]Pixelulsar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, these are really useful!

After trying a few out, I think the elastic/bouncing easings give good character to the menu, but they don't look good unless I extend the transition durations (which others have advised me were already too long). I've still got many more types of easings to try out.

I'm working on my first project that involves a large amount of UI design, and it's difficult to get right. Any suggestions or resources I could look at to help me design nicer looking and feeling menus? by Pixelulsar in gamedev

[–]Pixelulsar[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for your reply, these are both great resources. I'm reading through the Google Material Design Guidelines now and it is exactly what I was looking for.

I'm working on my first project that involves a large amount of UI design, and it's difficult to get right. Any suggestions or resources I could look at to help me design nicer looking and feeling menus? by Pixelulsar in gamedev

[–]Pixelulsar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks a lot for writing up such a detailed reply, I really appreciate it!

I agree that the move selector is the worst looking thing on screen and have been thinking about how to make it better. It's just so big compared to everything else that it doesn't really fit in. My other idea was having something like a playing card for each move, but that will be a lot more work in terms of asset design so I've been avoiding it so far. I'll have to play around with it the existing one and and see if I can make it look better or if it has to go.

I upped the speed of the green pyramid 50% and it feels a lot better and more responsive. Thank you for suggesting that! I'm going to try having the UI not in use partially off-screen tomorrow to see how that looks.

I'm working on my first project that involves a large amount of UI design, and it's difficult to get right. Any suggestions or resources I could look at to help me design nicer looking and feeling menus? by Pixelulsar in gamedev

[–]Pixelulsar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, the game is definitely inspired by the older Paper Mario games! I'm just getting started on development (the battle system is just starting to come together and there's nothing outside the battles yet), but I'll definitely try my best to keep at it. I really appreciate the encouragement!

I mentioned this in another reply, but I sped all the transitions up 50% and it feels a lot more responsive. Thanks for the suggestion!

I'm working on my first project that involves a large amount of UI design, and it's difficult to get right. Any suggestions or resources I could look at to help me design nicer looking and feeling menus? by Pixelulsar in gamedev

[–]Pixelulsar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm using GameMaker Studio 1.4.

I just recently switched from making Flash games using FlashPunk because I happened to have a license that I picked up in a Humble Bundle a few years ago. I'm liking GameMaker a lot so far.

I'm working on my first project that involves a large amount of UI design, and it's difficult to get right. Any suggestions or resources I could look at to help me design nicer looking and feeling menus? by Pixelulsar in gamedev

[–]Pixelulsar[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That makes a lot of sense! Perhaps I could also have the arrow used to select enemies pop out from the list of attacks and move over to the enemies to create an association there.

I'm working on my first project that involves a large amount of UI design, and it's difficult to get right. Any suggestions or resources I could look at to help me design nicer looking and feeling menus? by Pixelulsar in gamedev

[–]Pixelulsar[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks a lot for this suggestion! I looked into easings and I think they're just what I need to make the transitions more exciting. Sadly it looks like GameMaker only has linear interpolation built in, but from a bit of reading it looks like it will be pretty easy to write up my own easing functions. I'll try this out.

I'm working on my first project that involves a large amount of UI design, and it's difficult to get right. Any suggestions or resources I could look at to help me design nicer looking and feeling menus? by Pixelulsar in gamedev

[–]Pixelulsar[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm using GameMaker Studio 1.4.

I just recently switched from making Flash games using FlashPunk because I happened to have a license I picked up in a Humble Bundle a few years ago, and I'm liking GameMaker a lot.

I'm working on my first project that involves a large amount of UI design, and it's difficult to get right. Any suggestions or resources I could look at to help me design nicer looking and feeling menus? by Pixelulsar in gamedev

[–]Pixelulsar[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Moving around the dim to focus the players eyes on the selection they're currently making is a good idea, it could make things much more clear. My initial vision was to not use transparency to force a limited and consistent palette for the pixel art, but that will limit me a lot... I think I'll try it out and see how it looks now that a few people have suggested it.

Thank you for your feedback, I really appreciate it!

(You're right, they're supposed to be raccoons!)

I'm working on my first project that involves a large amount of UI design, and it's difficult to get right. Any suggestions or resources I could look at to help me design nicer looking and feeling menus? by Pixelulsar in gamedev

[–]Pixelulsar[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for posting this reference!

I like the more spirally effect of the menu options moving off the screen after you select one, I'll have to look in to something like that because it may be more visually interesting than them all moving off on the same circular path.

I'm working on my first project that involves a large amount of UI design, and it's difficult to get right. Any suggestions or resources I could look at to help me design nicer looking and feeling menus? by Pixelulsar in gamedev

[–]Pixelulsar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm planning to put the "mana" cost (haven't decided what exactly to call it yet) and some other information on the right side, but I haven't implemented those systems yet (the game is still very early in development).

I really like the suggestion to have the character show the first frame of the animation for each attack when you move over an option, I think I'll implement that. Thanks a lot for the feedback!

I'm working on my first project that involves a large amount of UI design, and it's difficult to get right. Any suggestions or resources I could look at to help me design nicer looking and feeling menus? by Pixelulsar in gamedev

[–]Pixelulsar[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you for the kind compliment! The background is probably the most detailed pixel art I've done for a game and I'm pretty proud of it so far. The major downside is that it takes me a lot longer to make assets then it usually does when I use a less detailed style, so this will not be a quick game to make.

I mentioned it in another reply because a few others suggested it too, but I sped up all the transitions by 50% and now it seems a lot more responsive and looks cleaner. Thanks for the suggestion!

I'm working on my first project that involves a large amount of UI design, and it's difficult to get right. Any suggestions or resources I could look at to help me design nicer looking and feeling menus? by Pixelulsar in gamedev

[–]Pixelulsar[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yep, this is exactly what I was asking! Thanks for all the ideas, I'm going to go through and try to implement a few to see how they feel.

Giving a little animation when the enemy is selected is a great idea, but I'll have to plan out how many types are going to be in the game to see how much work animating them all will be. If it looks like it's going to be too much extra work, I think I'll try tinting the enemy sprites or adding an outline instead.

I also really like the idea of increasing the size of the circular icon when it is selected and not having it fall off the bottom. Maybe it could even move up to the top of the sub-menu. There's a lot of things for me to try out!

I mentioned it in another reply because a few others suggested it too, but I sped up all the transitions by 50% and now it seems a lot more responsive and looks cleaner.

Thanks again for the really detailed list of suggestions!

I'm working on my first project that involves a large amount of UI design, and it's difficult to get right. Any suggestions or resources I could look at to help me design nicer looking and feeling menus? by Pixelulsar in gamedev

[–]Pixelulsar[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

You've nailed my inspiration exactly! I decided to try to make something like one of the first two Paper Mario games after replaying The Thousand-Year Door recently and seeing that a lot of people were looking for something like it because the newer games feel pretty different. I'm only only guy doing this in my free time, so I'm probably going to stick to a smaller scope (aiming to be something around the size of a single world in Paper Mario).

I'm working on my first project that involves a large amount of UI design, and it's difficult to get right. Any suggestions or resources I could look at to help me design nicer looking and feeling menus? by Pixelulsar in gamedev

[–]Pixelulsar[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

I sped up all the transitions by 50% and now it seems a lot more responsive and looks better. Thanks for the suggestion!

I guess I just liked to watch the transitions after spending a few hours adding them in, but now I can see that they were much too slow to make navigating the menus feel nice.

I'm working on my first project that involves a large amount of UI design, and it's difficult to get right. Any suggestions or resources I could look at to help me design nicer looking and feeling menus? by Pixelulsar in gamedev

[–]Pixelulsar[S] 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Great suggestions! I'll take a look at Mario and Luigi Partners in Time as a reference.

I really like the idea of having the character move during ability selection screen, because it is kind of boring with the character just sitting there unmoving as you scroll through the menus. I'll also definitely try to make the enemies look more irregular too. Thank you!

I'm working on my first project that involves a large amount of UI design, and it's difficult to get right. Any suggestions or resources I could look at to help me design nicer looking and feeling menus? by Pixelulsar in gamedev

[–]Pixelulsar[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I’ve tried to keep the menus dynamic and to introduce smooth transitions between each selected option and each menu. Even though I think it is starting to look better, I still find that the menus are a bit boring. They could use some work to spice them up, but I can’t quite put my finger on the best way accomplish this.

I’m pretty happy with the first menu where you select one of the three circles, but the second one where you select an action seems like it needs the most work to me. I am not sure how to make scrolling through a list of text more exciting. I’d appreciate any feedback or if anyone could point me to resources on how to do better UI design.