The Cute, light and fluffy project!

[Dave the Twisted]

Okay. Updated to comply with suggestions...

-Took the background's brightness down a few notches
-Made the text on the buttons darker
-Changed the font to something more readable
-Added a 'quit' button

The 0.2 menu

[Tsuki-chan]

To be honest, I find that to be a bit too plain. I'm not particularly fond of the button layout, nor the chosen font, nor the underlining...I do like the background, though; it's cute.

[Dave the Twisted]

To be honest, I find that to be a bit too plain. I'm not particularly fond of the button layout, nor the chosen font, nor the underlining...I do like the background, though; it's cute.

Okay, so how exactly could the layout be made better? Where would you put the buttons?

MENU-LAYERED-2.zip

(563.42 KiB) Downloaded 49 times

Here's the layered PSD for anyone who wants to play with it and make improvements.

[PyTom]

The problem with the button layout, IMO, is that it just feels random. The buttons are placed wherever, there's no sort of system to it.

[dstarsboy]

I'm not really involved with the project but I was bored and decided to mess around with your PSD a little. I liked miguen's GUI and yours is a good first draft.

To make it less plain, I recommend adding at least one cute image (like mugen's) and PyTom's right about the layout. I can see the symmetry you're creating with the buttons (grouping similar items in different patterns) but putting it altogether does look busy. There may be too many buttons too, aka, why do you need a "Play All" button? Will someone really click that? Also, the credits button can probably be left off and you can put everything from there into the "about the project" or "about the story" buttons maybe? I'm not sure, just thinking of ways to lessen the buttons. Another idea is to group similar buttons, like in my example, that saves you from writing "Stories" or "About the" in several places, although it may be confusing.

Just trying to help with some suggestions.

Here's a quick mockup based on your design. Of course, I grabbed that image from google, but I'm sure you guys have cute stuff from your games you can use. I attached the PSD too.

[killdream]

How come I didn't saw this project o.o

Anyways, it's good to see cute projects once in a while (altough I'm not really a big fan of moe, I do like cute things). I'm a bit busy with work right now, but if anyone need I can code the game gui and put it all togheter. It's not like it'll be a lot of work, anyways.

About the layout, I agree with dstarboy. The mockup was a bit too messy, like buttons were put at random (not exactly at random, but well). I'd go with submenus, anyways.

[Dave the Twisted]

I'm not really involved with the project but I was bored and decided to mess around with your PSD a little. I liked miguen's GUI and yours is a good first draft.

To make it less plain, I recommend adding at least one cute image (like mugen's) and PyTom's right about the layout. I can see the symmetry you're creating with the buttons (grouping similar items in different patterns) but putting it altogether does look busy. There may be too many buttons too, aka, why do you need a "Play All" button? Will someone really click that? Also, the credits button can probably be left off and you can put everything from there into the "about the project" or "about the story" buttons maybe? I'm not sure, just thinking of ways to lessen the buttons. Another idea is to group similar buttons, like in my example, that saves you from writing "Stories" or "About the" in several places, although it may be confusing.

Just trying to help with some suggestions.

Here's a quick mockup based on your design. Of course, I grabbed that image from google, but I'm sure you guys have cute stuff from your games you can use. I attached the PSD too.

I like that idea of the groupings, although we'll need a new mascot that isn't ripped off of Google. (As of now our contenders are Loli-Lucy and Bunnymugen)
-The story behind "Play All" was that we originally had six or seven entries and we wanted to play them back to back in a random order. Lots of people dropped, so we're left with three stories. Since nobody's really said anything otherwise the plan to play them back to back in a random order is still technically greenlit.
-The story behind "Credits" is that most everyone pulled free resources from places (some more than others) and I thought it'd be a decent idea to put them in an easily-found spot to avoid a bit of trouble later and to show our gratitude for the free stuff.

If anyone needs it, I can code the game gui and put it all together. It's not like it'll be a lot of work, anyways.

If our original coder doesn't resurface, we may have need of that. It's a bother that he disappeared considering the only contact info he gave me was PM...

[PyTom]

How many stories are actually going to be in the compliation? If it's only a few, it might make sense to put them all on the front page... perhaps reducing the number of "About" buttons to one.

[KimiYoriBaka]

I think that dstarsboy's idea is nice, but I'd suggest perhaps a bit smaller on the mascot. It makes me want to ignore the buttons. Perhaps, you can put buttons for the stories on the left, leave the bottom three the way they are, and give the mascot a little breathing room so the menu doesn't seem so cramped. Then when the player clicks on one of the story buttons, replace the story buttons with "Start", "Load", "About" and if it looks nice "Return," while still in the same screen.

[killdream]

When doing user interfaces, I found the simplest layouts to work better (at least for me). I did a simple layout this time =D Don't mind my lack of ability to draw lolis/cute things i.i

cute_main_menu.zip

(2.52 MiB) Downloaded 54 times

About the layout. It's better to have a main menu with the essential buttons (like play/settings/extras (if it'll ever need this)/about/quit). And inside play, you'd select to play all the stories or select just one. And in about you'd have credits information and afterwords.

Putting a load button on the main screen depends on having a load system for the whole game or a load system in a by story basis.

Also, aren't traps wearing victorian dresses with kittys über-cute? <3

[Coatl]

I'm not really involved with the project but I was bored and decided to mess around with your PSD a little. I liked miguen's GUI and yours is a good first draft.

To make it less plain, I recommend adding at least one cute image (like mugen's) and PyTom's right about the layout. I can see the symmetry you're creating with the buttons (grouping similar items in different patterns) but putting it altogether does look busy. There may be too many buttons too, aka, why do you need a "Play All" button? Will someone really click that? Also, the credits button can probably be left off and you can put everything from there into the "about the project" or "about the story" buttons maybe? I'm not sure, just thinking of ways to lessen the buttons. Another idea is to group similar buttons, like in my example, that saves you from writing "Stories" or "About the" in several places, although it may be confusing.

Just trying to help with some suggestions.

Here's a quick mockup based on your design. Of course, I grabbed that image from google, but I'm sure you guys have cute stuff from your games you can use. I attached the PSD too.

GAAAAH! the cuteness it hurts!

[Dave the Twisted]

Just a note, I might be a bit slow in working on my parts of the project. I have a shiny new computer which has none of my files on it, so in the next few days I will be moving and reorganizing things including all my Ren'Py stuff. I'll get something done before the end of the month.

[lucy]

Pokes Thread!...

Is everyone still alive?... what's taking so long?...

"POOF" (Disappears)

[chronoluminaire]

Hmmm.

Is it too late to contribute an extra game?

Because on Saturday, I had an idea for a cute, light, fluffy gamelet, and I, well, wrote it. In 5 days. And SunKitten's making me the character art within the next couple of days. So within a few days, I should have an entire game ready to publish. It's very light, utter fluff, but that's just what this project wants, right?

If you've made too many interface decisions with the assumption of just three, or it's too far into testing or whatever, then that's fine. I'll probably be building a standalone distribution for giving to friends anyway, so I can just make a public release of that one.

But if you'd have it, I'd quite like to submit Cloud Fairy to the CLF anthology. :3

(Now I'm going back to writing chapter 4 of Mermaid Liaisons...)

[monele]

*hides in a bush, cat ears twitching, ready to pounce on the release*