nearly EVERY commercial game today has a menu. (new/save/load/join/host/exit) isn''t it a little boring? We know that it is the most copied idea in industry and we don''t search for something better. ideas? consoles with help system? no menu, just start game immediately without any questions? I search for ideas . please help. thanks.

I think some games dump you into gameplay right away (i think broken sword 2 did this, and a lot of oldies) but it is usually annoying. The reason that most games have a menu is probably that users like to actually control what they are doing? You could dress the menu up a little more like gameplay (like in quake 1 where you choose a door in first person mode to select difficulty and episode), but i really see no reason not to have menus...

Marijn

Two ideas,

- An icon for starting a new game, an Icon for each saved game, an Icon for each network game server for your game, etc.......

- Double click the icon to start a new game, triple click to load a saved game......

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Original post by exa_einstein
nearly EVERY commercial game today has a menu. (new/save/load/join/host/exit) isn't it a little boring? We know that it is the most copied idea in industry and we don't search for something better. ideas? consoles with help system? no menu, just start game immediately without any questions? I search for ideas . please help.
thanks.

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What's wrong with having a menu?

I don't really like the idea of jumping straight into the game - I like to be given the chance to change the graphics settings to something that will look nice and run fast on my machine. If I want to play the multiplayer game, I don't want to have to wait for the single player game to load, exit, and then start again.

What alternatives are there? I don't consider the use of 'icons' to be substantially different from having menus - since the icons will invariably require some text in order to make it clear what they mean.

I can't think of any good reason why you would want to dispose of a menu, nor can I think of any alternatives that wouldn't make the game less user friendly. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Originality is of dubious value when it comes to UI systems IMHO.

[edited by - Sandman on September 8, 2003 10:35:30 AM]

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Original post by exa_einstein
nearly EVERY commercial game today has a menu. (new/save/load/join/host/exit) isn''t it a little boring? We know that it is the most copied idea in industry and we don''t search for something better. ideas? consoles with help system? no menu, just start game immediately without any questions? I search for ideas . please help.
thanks.

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I''ve never really thought of the menu interface of a game being ''entertaining''. I don''t think that''s the point.

Sandman makes some good points. Do you have an alternative idea? Remeber that menus are universally accepted as being part of a game. One would look weird without one!

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Original post by Mathematix
Do you have an alternative idea? Remeber that menus are universally accepted as being part of a game. One would look weird without one!

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It was universally accepted that player characters flash when hit, until someone introduced "hit animations".

Despite that I am still pro the menu for the simple reason that it serves a purpose. It allows the player to make necessary selections prior to entering the game. Change controls, single player, multi-player..... there are many things a player may want to do rather than just going straight into a game.

Many games (MOHAA for example) try to make the menu fit with the game (MOHAA''s menu is a military briefing room).

Dan Marchant
Obscure Productions
Game Development & Design consultant

I think that menus are fine as long as they don''t have long intros, or intros that you can skip. It''s just annoying to me when you have to wait so long just to pull up your saved game from the load option.

Ugh. Game menus are usually necessary. It really depends on the game type, though. Here''s some examples:

RPGs (offline): Some publishers have decided that the user will always (or atleast most of the time) want to play the game that they saved the last session with. The problem with this is there ARE times when the user will not, especially when there is more than one person playing on a particular system, and with the complexity and size of current RPGs, load times can be huge. Forcing one player to wait through an enormous load time just to load another game and wait through another enormous load time is BAD.

RTSs: The load times aren''t so enormous as RPGs. However, RTSs are played a lot more randomly-- they player will not always want to continue the save game/campaign, but instead, want to just set up a quick game w/ friends or jump on a server. Same goes for FPSs.

Puzzles: The only time I''d say I would WANT it to go right into the game. Solitaire, bejeweled, etc. should start up and get into the game right so I can waste my time as efficiently as possible. I don''t want to have to go through 10 clicks and type in my name just to play a game of hearts against the computer! However, even chess can be argued for having a menu-- you might wanna play against the computer, or a very easy computer, or against a friend, or across the network.... But since the load time for these games is so small (there are very little graphic demands) it doesn''t bother me if it loads up a ready-to-play chess board before I go to the menus to connect to the network.



So I guess my opinion would be to implement menus in all games, except for games which are supposed to be simple and quick, such as solitaire. Whether you do it with text menus, icons, or something more creative like that war-room idea or kinda integrate it into the game somehow... Oh, you should always "default" to playing the game right away, so all a player who wants to get right into it has to do is press enter or click on "PLAY!" or something-- but as Sandman points out, a lot of players equally want to play with graphic settings and view/adjust the controls before getting into the game.

-Desco-

I think you can try to dress it up or hide it as much as you like, but whatever you use to navigate your game is still ultimately a menu.

Take Sonic Jam, the menu is a 3D world where you can explore, do little mini games, etc. And when you actually want to invoke a part of the game, you enter a building. It''s elaborate and kinda cool, but it''s still a menu.

And why would you want to get rid of menus? That''s sort of like removing doors from cars or something. I mean heck, they''re pretty boring too

The human brain is only capable of remembering between 5 and 9 things in the Short Term or Scratchpad area. This magic ''7'' where most of humanity sits at is the generally accepted wall in just about everything that pays any mind to modern psychology. With that said, if you remove the menu, you have to find a replacement for it, since there are a lot of functions that are very much needed and can''t be usefully expressed anywhere else. If you assigned a button on the controller(or keyboard) that acted as a hotkey/modifer-- Like you expect the player to press ALT-S or R2+TRIANGLE to save, you have found a very wasteful way to eat up one of those spaces in the player''s short term memory. If you pop up a screen of ALT combos when the player happens to be holding ALT, well then you have a menu again.

How about item usage? How in the hell would you have the player use an item hes carrying? Show him the backpack he''s carrying with the stuff inside and let him pick out something... how would you facilitate using and dropping, two on-screen squares, one labeled USE and one labeled DROP, where the player can carry the items via mouse click and release. Heres a more useful idea rather then just saying "Oh, menus aren''t fun!"