next »

[McMutton]

 Hey guys. I've been spending my time this morning blocking out the design for my game's menus. I'll show the pictures of what I have, and attempt to explain how one would navigate.

Status Menu

Pressing the Menu button during gameplay brings up the Status menu. It's always the default menu, and you can get to it using the Status tab at the top.



Selecting any of the character's faces brings up their Status menu. Pressing the Back button at any time takes you back to the main Status screen





Hovering over any of their Abilities will bring up info about that Ability



Clicking in the Equipment area will take you directly to the Equip screen



The same goes for clicking the Equipment area at the main Status screen



Clicking in the Active Items area will take you to the Items menu



Items Menu

You can access the Items menu by either clicking on the Items tab at the top, or clicking in the Active Items box in the Status screen



You can click on any of the categories on the left to access those types of items. Hovering over the items will bring up their description at the bottom, and you can either click on an item to use it, or drag it into any of the four Active Item slots at the top, for quick use during gameplay

Equip Menu

You can access the Equip menu by either clicking on the Equip tab at the top, or clicking in any Equipment boxes on the Status screen. The latter will take you directly to that character's equipment



Clicking on any of their item slots will bring up the list of that type of item. You can also click on the faces on the left to access the corresponding character's equipment



You can scroll through the list of weapons that appears after clicking on the equipment slot. Hovering over any of the items will bring up a description, and the equipment's stats. Clicking on the item will equip it.

Journal Menu

You can access the Journal menu only using the tab at the top of the screen. Doing so will take you to the top menu



Clicking on any of the categories will open a list of things you've encountered in that category.


(Not shown: The back button that takes you back to the top Journal menu. The Journal tab does the same thing)

Clicking on any of the journal entries will bring up information about that entry and, in most cases, a 3D image showing its appearance

Options Menu

The Options menu is, of course, for changing options. It can be accessed only with the tab at the top



Clicking on any of the categories will take you to options in that category, which you can customize to your liking.


What do you think?

[Destral]

Looks good so far, but it's hard to gauge how menus will work without being able to interact with them. Have you thought about making the menu system as a prototype and maybe putting it up with a link so people can mess around with it and give you feedback?

You only appear to have 1 health and mana bar. Does it only apply to... Celeste, I'm guessing? Or health and mana are shared by the entire party? I'm guessing Celeste has different gameplay mechanics or something, since she doesn't appear to have weapon and shield slots?

[McMutton]

 I had considered doing that. Is there any simple way of making such a thing, or would I have to use an engine and program it in?

 Yeah, the party shares the same health bar, since it would be really inconvenient if a single member died and you needed their abilities to progress further. The magic bar is for Celeste, who isn't really a playable character, per se. You'd set her spells to a hotkey, and pressing it during gameplay would make her hop out and cast it in the direction you're facing.

[noblemaster]

Wow, that's a lot of panels! However, I think they are well organized/structured 

I only have one suggestion: I generally think the [Back] button on some of the sub-screens are hard to see. You could make it bigger, but a better idea might to put the sub-screens into a popup window! E.g. when you click on Ellie, instead of changing your screen, you could popup here information while the tabbed panel underneath is still there. I might make more sense as you can still see the active tab but also the popup window in the center to edit the current selection.