Regarding Title Screens

[VilySoftworks]

Greetings everyone. The concern of this post are title screens. I believe it is a good game development practice to incorporate title screens into the games we make. Title screens guide the user in the proper use of the game. However, sometimes making a "good" title screen it's not an easy task. There are many factors involved in making a good quality title screen. As I progress further into the development of my own and first game, I came against this title screen difficulty.

My question brings me to these reasons: what do you consider a "good", catching title screen? What are the elements, things, that must be incorporated in a title screen for it to appropriately express the content of your game?

Thank you.

[steven8]

Greetings everyone. The concern of this post are title screens. I believe it is a good game development practice to incorporate title screens into the games we make. Title screens guide the user in the proper use of the game. However, sometimes making a "good" title screen it's not an easy task. There are many factors involved in making a good quality title screen. As I progress further into the development of my own and first game, I came against this title screen difficulty.

My question brings me to these reasons: what do you consider a "good", catching title screen? What are the elements, things, that must be incorporated in a title screen for it to appropriately express the content of your game?

Thank you.

By title screen, do you mean the menu system?

[VilySoftworks]

When I mentioned title screens, I referred to the screen in a game that contains: Single Player, Load Game, Configuration, Etc..., Exit. I guess you can call it a menu system too. Thus, how is it appropriately designed?

[steven8]

Well, RF comes with a pre-designed menu system which you can modify for your game. The usual set up is:

MAIN MENU

New Game
Load Game
Options
>Audio
>Video
>Controls
Credits
Exit

I am at work and speaking off the top of my head. If I missed something, anyone feel free to throw it in there!

[scott]

i belive a good title screen would be simple, realy easy to use and not hard to navigate, as little options as possible but as many as needed, easy understanding of wich option you are choosing with good contrast of text compared to the background, if you have an animated background then dont make it too "active" as this draws the players attention away from the menus at wich they are supposed to be looking at.

[steven8]

i belive a good title screen would be simple, realy easy to use and not hard to navigate, as little options as possible but as many as needed, easy understanding of wich option you are choosing with good contrast of text compared to the background, if you have an animated background then dont make it too "active" as this draws the players attention away from the menus at wich they are supposed to be looking at.

Does RF allow for animated menu backgrounds now? That'd be really cool!

[scott]

not sure but it would defenetly help, being able to play a wmv or avi sequence or just a cutscene from the game.

[steven8]

not sure but it would defenetly help, being able to play a wmv or avi sequence or just a cutscene from the game.

Well, I know Dan Valeo put an animated sequence at the beginning of his Son's of Mars demo, but the menu itself was static. It was a great demo. I'd really like to be able to actually play an animation in the background while the menu itself is showing. I think that'd be pretty neat.

[Destron]

Without a doubt, the BEST title screen I have seen are the Half-Life and Half-Life 2 menus. They're easy-to-use, well marked, and the HL2 menus even have moving backgrounds, which are REALLY cool.

[paradoxnj]

When DX9 is complete, someone should implement CEGUI in RF. It's a complete GUI system. That would be more useful IMO.

[jonas]

Half-life 2's menu is awesome! I'm pretty sure rf supports basic animation in the menu, but loops repeatedly, and is limited to gif files only.

[steven8]

When DX9 is complete, someone should implement CEGUI in RF. It's a complete GUI system. That would be more useful IMO.

You can't go wrong with something called Crazy Eddie's GUI System, I'd say. It looks pretty neat. Course, it would render my work on the menu creator quite null and void, but that would be okay, if it made things better!!

[jonas]

wow nice looking system A system like that would be very nice. Cegui would Definatly be way more flexible.