One of the less glamourous parts of game design is designing the menus. I\u2019ll talk about the graphical part of menu design another time. What comes first is deciding what menu options there are going to be. Aurora\u2019s Nightmare will naturally need save and load options (with lots of save slots), and the standard return to title and quit options as well. But what else? Well, visual novels often include an option to temporally hide the text and other GUI elements, for when you want to get a really good look at the artwork. There will also be an option to skip to the next scene and\/or choice (for sections you\u2019ve previously read), though I haven\u2019t yet decided if that will be a fast forward or a straight up skip (maybe I\u2019ll include both). And, of course, there needs to be an options menu to mess with sound and graphics settings, among other things.<\/p>\n
At some point, I\u2019ll actually create a little flowchart containing all the menu options and how they connect to each other, which will help ensure that I don\u2019t miss anything and also give me a quick way to evaluate the menus\u2019 usability and organization. The graphical design is secondary, or at least it should be for any sort of good GUI. Focusing on the appearance ahead of the usability is fairly common, but rarely turns out well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the less glamourous parts of game design is designing the menus. I\u2019ll talk about the graphical part of menu design another time. What comes first is deciding what menu options there are going to be. Aurora\u2019s Nightmare will naturally need save and load options (with lots of save slots), and the standard return … Continue reading Menu Options<\/span>