AT YOUR SERVICE- THE MENU

I'll take the third choice and say a combination of both: Simplicity and style.

If the menu focuses too much on looking nice then its accessibility comes into question, and what good is a menu if it isn't accessible? If the menu focues too much on accessibility and disregards style in its entirety, some people will no doubt have some kind of personal problem with the GUI.

Thus, a menu should be simple enough for Joe Average to figure out through basic experimentation, and yet should not be an eyesore if at all possible. It's not impossible to have the best of both worlds, especially when an ideal such as this is actually within reach.

At the risk of gratuitously self-promoting for no good reason, I am going to gratuitously self-promote for a good reason- to promote discussion on this excellent topic.



That's the early alpha design idea I had for the main page of the menu of my current project, The Colony. I like to consider the text itself to be fairly irrelevant, as anything could really replace those options and it would work just fine- this is the main page after all. In this design, the menu is based around a concept of 'ribbons' containing information and options flying onto the blank slate palette (literally) of the stone in the backdrop. It's all very quickly executed (and I do mean very- we're talking 0.1 and 0.2 waits in the eventing) and, I hope, elegant. As the ribbons fly onscreen, they overlap with each other briefly before reaching their final destination where your cursor is revealed. The intended effect is that no time is wasted outside of the main gameplay, while at the same time, the menu is presented with enough flair to hopefully stay interesting most of the time. Each sub menu would involve different ribbons and configurations thereof, and I was also considering using grid systems for organisation of items/other things to break the 'lol list' mold that is so overly prevalent in RPGs of all kinds. As far as the aforementioned image goes, though, i was thinking i'd add another ribbon to the main page to give some quick, easily checked status updates on the party. Something that can be taken in with a glance just before you close the menu.
That's sort of my take on my own personal menu design.

I believe style and simplicity go hand-in-hand. An overly complex looking menu could turn players away, while an overly simple one might bore the player every time it's accessed. Now, all this is fairly dependent on what sort of game the menu is being applied to, but in general terms, I like to think that quick, elegant and simple is the best way to go with a menu, especially where an RPG is concerned.

Is there anything you find yourself wanting from them, but that menu systems often lack?

One of my biggest complaints with menus is how godawfully slow they often are, specifically in RM* games. Timing as a huge problem in many RPG Maker projects (read: waits in mesages) but out of everything, the only thing that pisses me off more than pauses in text are slow menus with 'stylish' fades in and out that take multiple seconds at a time.
Somewhere where I think oversimplicity can leak into an overcomplex menu and wreak havoc is where you have several panes of neo-SNES styled menu in whatever special system you've concocted for equipping... Let's say "orbs" of some kind. Maybe they teach skills or something. You go to equip your orb, and to do so, you have to jump your cursor around through three either very badly labeled or completely nondescript panes. I definitely get confused and lost when situations like these arise, and I've been doing graphic design for years. That's a big problem.
I think that while menus should be mostly utilitarian in nature, they should be just that- utilitarian. Nothing unneeded, no space (or time) wasted. I really could care less how long I've been playing for or how many steps I've taken. If you need a whole full-screen page to tell me my character's status, that's space wasted. One full-screen page to tell me the whole party's status (assuming the party is a nice normal size like 3-6, unlike a game like Diablocide) would be a reasonable use of space and a good distribution of information.
Lastly, I'm always perturbed when menus need to have music. If I'm going to be spending long enough in a menu navigating through this and that to hear more than 5 or 6 seconds of your idyllic little menu theme, I think there's something terribly wrong. Furthermore, it breaks up the flow of music in whatever scene you've just transitioned into the menu from, destroying atmosphere and mood.

Oh, and another thing. Don't use stupid illegible fonts in your menu. Don't use more than two fonts in your menu. Thanks.

EDIT: TL;DR- I REALLY REALLY LIKE DESIGNING MENUS

Feel free to correct me, but I think AmethystStorm is talking about breaking away from typical menu design. The above menus don't really do that, other than looking unique to that specific game. They are still menus with a background and some commands listed. They look really good, but I don't think this is what he meant (you can correct me amethyst if needed).

Two examples of games that I think break away from typical menu design are Dead Space and the Metroid Prime series. These games do a good job of integrating the menu with the actual protagonist of the game, which adds a lot. It makes it feel like that actual character is controlling the menu, rather than the player with the controller in their hand.

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Two examples of games that I think break away from typical menu design are Dead Space and the Metroid Prime series. These games do a good job of integrating the menu with the actual protagonist of the game, which adds a lot. It makes it feel like that actual character is controlling the menu, rather than the player with the controller in their hand.

The World Ends With You does this. The menu is Neku's phone and has all sorts of funky sliders and menus to push and pull, as well as a phone-like keypad that you literally touch (hey a DS game with menu buttons that are big enough to push!). You can even customize the music that plays in the menu.

If we're talking about menu design, I'd like to see more effort put into reducing the number of button pushes in battle menus. I wish more games with a static Attack/Skill/Item/Other setup took notes from the Lufia battle menu - that can get you four or five options much more quickly than scrolling down a list.

First thing that popped into my head was Persona 3/4 :o

All important/frequently requested information (like, party health) should also come up when you open the menu, you shouldn't have to go digging in sub menus for it. Also supporting what bobthebobish said: Shit should be quick.

Example of what not to do: There was some 2k game where you push the button to open the menu and you got a show choice: Open Main Menu (which you want 99% of the time and does everything) or open a Quest Log which had a one second fade out then a one second fade back in. I quit over something this shitty. I don't remember the game name but I think it was the one with pixel sex in it

As long as I can read/navigate through a menu screen, I'm good. It really doesn't have to be anything fancy. I am hardly ever impressed by screenshots of menu screens. I just can't get excited about menus.


Though, the menu screens in Until My Finest Hour were reeeeeeeeeeeally good. That entire demo was, actually, too bad it was never finished... It had an enormous amount of potential (the opening is still my favorite opening to an RPG2k/3 game ever).

I like the idea of no menus, but it is hard to see how it could be done. I'm a sucker for innovation though, so it is something I would like to try or see done at some point!

As for changing menus, I have a hard time imagining how radically changing menus can be done while still making it a menu. A menu is a menu, after all, it is there for a purpose and if you eliminate that purpose then maybe it is no longer a menu?

Going back to the no menu thing, I guess the best way to do this would be some kind of an alternative to a menu. I can't really imagine what that would be, but maybe that is something I will think over.