Seeking examples of good RPG pause/menu screens
Thursday, November 4, 2010 - 08:00
My current task with my RPG project is to build the pause screen, where you can select a member of your party, view their stats, equip them, and so on. Just to get some ideas, which RPG menu screens have people liked, and why?
Perhaps not applicable nor entirely on-topic, but if the interface is mouse-driven I really like when you make the secondary mouse button do something useful (say, going back to the previous menu if the menus are nested). In general, a dedicated "back" button makes such nested systems much more pleasant.
As for party-GUIs I've liked... I think I tend to prefer "flatter" menu systems with "pages", if that makes sense:
The individual sections of the status screen would, of course, bring up relevant lists/sub-menus. Characters could be switched with left/right and various screens (party configuration, character status, options etc) with up/down for instance.
Of course, giving a clear sense of where in the "hierarchy" you are is even more important for a "page" system.
Not exactly what you asked for perhaps, but hey - input is input! :)
I cannot seem to find a screenshot of that, but for me the menus from Secret Of Mana were the best I have seen! They were ring menus (the first i've seen) with each piece of the ring being a category (like, spells, armour, weapons, stats), one key to enter a category and one to leave it. Entering a category (say, armour) then replaced the ring by another one (with a replace animation) and there you go.
Oh, I finally found one: http://www.underground-gamer.com/wiki/index.php/Nintendo_SNES_Recommende...
The individual sections of the status screen would, of course, bring up relevant lists/sub-menus. Characters could be switched with left/right and various screens (party configuration, character status, options etc) with up/down for instance.
Actually, this is the sort of input that I'm looking for.
Left/right character switching is nice in some ways, but what's always bothered me about it is the fact that you don't know which character is next or previous, so if you want to get to someone quickly you end up going past them. I like to see the entire list of characters, or at least a good chunk of it. Now, that being said, it might be reasonable to have a horizontal bar across the top with just character portraits, which would allow you to do left/right switching and still see where you're going, while taking up minimal screen real estate.
One thing I was considering was having a vertical menu on the left side of the screen listing all the usual options (party, item, magic, save, config, etc) and then having the right sight of the screen change depending on what you've picked.
I cannot seem to find a screenshot of that, but for me the menus from Secret Of Mana were the best I have seen! They were ring menus (the first i've seen) with each piece of the ring being a category (like, spells, armour, weapons, stats), one key to enter a category and one to leave it. Entering a category (say, armour) then replaced the ring by another one (with a replace animation) and there you go.
Honestly, for whatever reason, the ring menu never really worked for me. I felt like I always had to poke around for things.
A want-to-be-handy user interface should support all input devices available on the platform, e.g. mouse, keyboard, joystick, and touchscreen.