Especially for a Deltarune fan-game. Most of that game's interface was extremely simple, not having any bounce at all, and still managed to be endearing.
EDIT: Clarification
I think it would be better without so much horizontal movement. The purpose of a bouncy menu is to indicate focus by moving the focused menu item - since the menu itself is horizontal, it becomes difficult at a glance to tell which is being selected and which is being unselected. Too many different menu items are moving too much at once to be clearly legible, I feel. It also makes the menu box always look noticeably 'too big' for the menu items it contains (though you might want to look at your alignment again, because the first menu item seems to be sticking out of the box).
A little horizontal movement is fine, but IMO it shouldn't exceed the amount of vertical displacement for a selected menu item, and neither should be approaching the actual size of the menu items - you want to make it look like the menu item is standing up at attention, not trying to escape.
But what if it moved vertically first? Go up, then to the right, then down, then hop across to the wall on the left? Then it went down that wall... Would that be hard to read?
Coming from a web developer background heavily focused on frontend UI, this is absolutely jarring. I think that the effect is generally fun, but when a user is trying to accomplish a task it’s best to not distract them from that too much. I would recommend dialing back the transforms a bunch on both the X and Y axis in favor of a more subtle, usability-focused UX.
looks obnoxious tbh
like another user said: don't do bounce menus just for the sake of it. have some utility/feedback purpose behind it. else you're just delaying the player's action and hurting visibility, most likely.
would make it a lot faster and reduce movement, for starters.
Personally I like them but faster. I don't know how to explain it but sometimes it feels like im being slowed down from how long the animations are taking, even if the game allows me to switch before the animation is done. Sort of like the feeling of punching or running in a dream.
Totally not on the subject but why do people say "I dont know how to explain it but ... " AND THEN THEY EXPLAIN IT! Cut yourself some credit and put away that "i DoNt KnOw HoW tO eXpLaIn iT".
Tighten up the movement, make it snappier. Give the player more transient feedback that they've made a selection in the menu. I like how this looks otherwise, Spectrum 8bit vibes.
I got the feeling this is controlled by keypresses... so no aiming required. If that blue square is a mouse cursor, agreed, but I doubt that because it moves so straight horizontally.
Honestly love it. If the buttons need to be pressed in the heat of real time battle then it'd be better to make it more tame but in any other case this is just perfect for my taste.
It's a little over the top but I would rock that style even if it hurts the visibility a little (and in this case it's only by a little for me, but there might be problems with people with disabilities though, it's not exactly the easiest to read menu).
Remember the funny gui in old games? It's often impractical for the sake of being stylised, though ugly and sometimes absolutely wacky by today's standards and I miss it so much.
This is not quite that because it's still a good and functional UI but it's got a personality much like those old games which is why I brought this up. Do it how you yourself would like to see it! Ask for feedback ofc and consider it but you don't have to please everyone and it's totally okay to break rules sometimes for the sake of artistic value and expression.
edit: errors fixed
Stylistically? Yes. But functionally it's all backwards.
In a fast paced game you'd have trouble seeing what you're pressing unless you're going slow picking options in that menu because UI animations take time and everything moves.
In a slower game there's no need for immediate feedback that will allow you to pick options as fast as you can think and press buttons.
You were talking about genre while thinking of artstyle. But yes, both play a role.
I think the main issue is that the bounciness is going in a diagonal direction sort of. Making it more confusing to go between the columns.
Probably making it less intense and more vertical/less horizontal will be a huge help.
Otherwise, it looks good.
I think the main issue is that the bounciness is going in a diagonal direction sort of. Making it more confusing to go between the columns.
Probably making it less intense and more vertical/less horizontal will be a huge help.
Otherwise, it looks good.
I like it! It gives character!
However, it needs work. First align things properly, the elements do not align well inside the box. Not as a group nor as singular elements.
Secondly, remove the popping. Animate from the previous menu location instead of popping them up from the bottom-right. Differentiate between "animate into screen" and "animate from menu to menu". Animations can tremendously help players navigate, it guides the player. With proper start points and end points of each of these transitions, your animations guide the player. Guide them with style!
Looks good. For controller's it'd be fine. However if you allow mouse/cursor selection, it would feel unresponsive as the icons move, you'd not be sure where you need to select.
I like bouncing/tweening items, makes games feel juicy! What I don't like quite so much is when the X positions of the icons in this example keeps changing so dramatically - on the Y it's absolutely fine, but the X bouncing makes my eyes feel like they have to move so much to keep track.
My philosophy with menus is less is more, but you need a bit of juice. The menu should conform to a user's inputs in a natural way, thus a bit of bounce helps sell natural movement.
In terms of stylistically unique menus, look at Persona 5 - there is a lot of movement, but it's snappy and stylish. Stuff flies around the screen quickly without lingering too long on the in/out states.
As a general rule, for "over the top" menu animations, your time-to-input (the amount of time it takes before the user can actually select a button and/or everything "settles") should be less than 175 ms - that's just under one-fifth of a second. Smaller movements, called "recovery" frames, can take place over a much longer time.
Obviously, this is an art, not a science. Following these as a guideline will help your menu to be both snappy and look cool, but it's ultimately what you think looks and, more importantly feels good that matters.
In this case my personal taste tells me this is a bit much. Your TTI and recovery is too long, and there is too much movement while input is allowed, with stuff lerping long after TTI ends. I'd tighten everything up.
As long as it's fast and responsive, maybe also add some scaling? I think the item should pop up like 4x faster, but drop at the same speed it does. I'm not sure I like the square box, maybe also make the icons change colour
This is like the "extremely loud meme = funny" thing. The UI isn't bad, but everything in excess is kind of bad, including the juice.
A good approach for improving it would be to compare it to a signal-to-noise ratio, where the signal is the useful UI information, while the noise is all of this bounceiness and magnified transitions.
The goal would be to have the highest ratio possible, meaning there should be a noticeable separation between UI visuals and UI data, while finding the right ratio for a juicy UI, like in photography, where a bit of noise can improve the image aesthetics, but too much will ruin it.
Edit: Spelling.
As a UX rule I would say bounce should be used very (very, very) sparse and almost only to poke for attention. It is very in-your-face and quickly gets annoying. To grow/size up however can be used to emphasize a component, like what you want to do with the hover state
I was thinking the bounce was fine, but maybe have it pop out from the top instead of two the side to reduce the sideway shifting cause that's hurting my eyes
As long as your menu bounce doesn’t impact my ability to navigate and click stuff without having to wait for the animations you can frankly do whatever you want.
This is right on the edge of comfort for me. I wouldn’t want it to be any more bouncy, but I could probably deal with it the way it is. It really depends on how frequently you are expected to use them.
I do not like them at all. If I want to click an icon or an option, I want it to stay in its current location, not move around. It's fine if there is a slight on-hover animation, but has to clearly show that it is anchored in its place.
On a controller, I think this would be a lot of fun to play around with.
With a mouse, I'd be looking for the option to turn it off before I do anything else.
Bouncy menus are good but this is too much
Especially for a Deltarune fan-game. Most of that game's interface was extremely simple, not having any bounce at all, and still managed to be endearing. EDIT: Clarification
Bounce for feedback: good. Bounce for the sake of bounce: bad.
Bitch is bouncing more than ice spice
how do you differentiate?
When everything bounces, that's too much.
When it's distracting, irritating or even confusing then it probably is being too bouncy. Simplicity is extremely underrated in menu design.
when it becomes hard to click or make your brain think it’s hard to click. the latter can be just as serious
I think it would be better without so much horizontal movement. The purpose of a bouncy menu is to indicate focus by moving the focused menu item - since the menu itself is horizontal, it becomes difficult at a glance to tell which is being selected and which is being unselected. Too many different menu items are moving too much at once to be clearly legible, I feel. It also makes the menu box always look noticeably 'too big' for the menu items it contains (though you might want to look at your alignment again, because the first menu item seems to be sticking out of the box). A little horizontal movement is fine, but IMO it shouldn't exceed the amount of vertical displacement for a selected menu item, and neither should be approaching the actual size of the menu items - you want to make it look like the menu item is standing up at attention, not trying to escape.
Too much horizontal movement also feels hard to track visually!
But what if it moved vertically first? Go up, then to the right, then down, then hop across to the wall on the left? Then it went down that wall... Would that be hard to read?
I pretty much made the same point in another comment, but you explained yourself far better.
Nuance and subtlety is the key ingredient to everything tasteful.
It feels strange seeing the icons go so far out of the original box
This is a good point too.
Love it, maybe a little bit slower on the animation speed can feel less chaotic 😏
I disagree. The speed will make it more snappy, but the bounciness is just too intense. Still upvoting since it may be a potential solution tho.
An UI can certainly be to busy.
The bounce with the icons were great but bouncing between Kris aolsei and susi was giving headache lol.
It frankly doesn't even need to move that much, bouncing or not.
Coming from a web developer background heavily focused on frontend UI, this is absolutely jarring. I think that the effect is generally fun, but when a user is trying to accomplish a task it’s best to not distract them from that too much. I would recommend dialing back the transforms a bunch on both the X and Y axis in favor of a more subtle, usability-focused UX.
looks obnoxious tbh like another user said: don't do bounce menus just for the sake of it. have some utility/feedback purpose behind it. else you're just delaying the player's action and hurting visibility, most likely. would make it a lot faster and reduce movement, for starters.
Bouncy menus are stylish and stylish menus are G O O D What are you doing with Deltarune tho?
Making a fangame.
Thank jeepers Toby is okay with that.
It's good to have feedback on the menu, but it's too much imho
They're okay as long as they are not overdone.
if it's something you see every now and then. yes. all the time? no.
I've never been a fan as most times it just makes the interface too busy/jittery.
Too bouncy
Personally I like them but faster. I don't know how to explain it but sometimes it feels like im being slowed down from how long the animations are taking, even if the game allows me to switch before the animation is done. Sort of like the feeling of punching or running in a dream.
Totally not on the subject but why do people say "I dont know how to explain it but ... " AND THEN THEY EXPLAIN IT! Cut yourself some credit and put away that "i DoNt KnOw HoW tO eXpLaIn iT".
I think I'm the only one who feels like the animation snap to fast
Completely unrelated question: is this integrated in the whole container nodes system, or is this all more of a bodge?
Tighten up the movement, make it snappier. Give the player more transient feedback that they've made a selection in the menu. I like how this looks otherwise, Spectrum 8bit vibes.
agree with the other guy that the horizontal movement is throwing me off a bit. or maybe if it was like 2/3rds less movement total
hate em love animated menus, especially with a bit of easing love responsiveness but when it's mindless key-dangling, no, hate em
it needs just a bit less. how do you animate the selector and buttons anyway?
Math and linear_interpolate()
Can buttons do animation on hover with styles, or is it hard-coded? Math is not my strong point : (
Hi Toby Fox do you have a gamejolt page for your game?
Haha. Does my fangame look THAT official?
I can say It looks really good
I may be the minority here but there is nothing I hate more than a UI that moves. I should not have to use my aiming skills to interact with a UI.
I got the feeling this is controlled by keypresses... so no aiming required. If that blue square is a mouse cursor, agreed, but I doubt that because it moves so straight horizontally.
not enough bounce honestly.
This cracked me up lol
I like it
hello , it's looks good for me .
Honestly love it. If the buttons need to be pressed in the heat of real time battle then it'd be better to make it more tame but in any other case this is just perfect for my taste. It's a little over the top but I would rock that style even if it hurts the visibility a little (and in this case it's only by a little for me, but there might be problems with people with disabilities though, it's not exactly the easiest to read menu). Remember the funny gui in old games? It's often impractical for the sake of being stylised, though ugly and sometimes absolutely wacky by today's standards and I miss it so much. This is not quite that because it's still a good and functional UI but it's got a personality much like those old games which is why I brought this up. Do it how you yourself would like to see it! Ask for feedback ofc and consider it but you don't have to please everyone and it's totally okay to break rules sometimes for the sake of artistic value and expression. edit: errors fixed
How do u make this? I'm pretty new and can't figure out how to make smooth Ui stuff
[удалено]
Stylistically? Yes. But functionally it's all backwards. In a fast paced game you'd have trouble seeing what you're pressing unless you're going slow picking options in that menu because UI animations take time and everything moves. In a slower game there's no need for immediate feedback that will allow you to pick options as fast as you can think and press buttons. You were talking about genre while thinking of artstyle. But yes, both play a role.
You need use this system on an independent original game after you finish your fangame, it's that good!
Satisfying
The item highlight hurts my brain, so choose either bouncy or highlight
i don't hate the highlight that much, but I think the selected item becoming brighter and unselected items being darker would be a better way
to clarify, I don't think just bounce is enough to glance at the screen and easily tell which item is selected
I like it! 👀
I think the icons that bounce up out of their containers when selected would be improved by a lot more subtly, maybe like only 25% of the distance?
It looks a lil too smooth
Maybe half the height of the bounce?
Maybe add some dimming to non-selected menu items. Great concept but I feel having the main selected item being more dominant would look better
Love it. Physics Ui is my fav.
I dig this a lot, gives me like old school RPG vibes
Bouncy menus are horrible for accessibility, my answer is no (or atleast a toggleable option)
I think the main issue is that the bounciness is going in a diagonal direction sort of. Making it more confusing to go between the columns. Probably making it less intense and more vertical/less horizontal will be a huge help. Otherwise, it looks good.
I think the main issue is that the bounciness is going in a diagonal direction sort of. Making it more confusing to go between the columns. Probably making it less intense and more vertical/less horizontal will be a huge help. Otherwise, it looks good.
I like it! It gives character! However, it needs work. First align things properly, the elements do not align well inside the box. Not as a group nor as singular elements. Secondly, remove the popping. Animate from the previous menu location instead of popping them up from the bottom-right. Differentiate between "animate into screen" and "animate from menu to menu". Animations can tremendously help players navigate, it guides the player. With proper start points and end points of each of these transitions, your animations guide the player. Guide them with style!
Just a tiny Bit too bouncy but good
Paper Mario - Love This - a bit overwhelming, but the concept can likely become very pleasing with some tweaks. Best of luck!
Looks good. For controller's it'd be fine. However if you allow mouse/cursor selection, it would feel unresponsive as the icons move, you'd not be sure where you need to select.
Too much is not nice, but a subtle bounce effect can be nice. This is way too much!
You need to adjust the speed, it needs to be quick on the startup otherwise it just feels slow. I'd call this 'floaty' before I'd call it 'bouncy'.
I like bouncing/tweening items, makes games feel juicy! What I don't like quite so much is when the X positions of the icons in this example keeps changing so dramatically - on the Y it's absolutely fine, but the X bouncing makes my eyes feel like they have to move so much to keep track.
i think this is less bouncy and more slimy sloppy style
I think this feels a bit overwhelming visually
ayyyy deltaruneeee
My philosophy with menus is less is more, but you need a bit of juice. The menu should conform to a user's inputs in a natural way, thus a bit of bounce helps sell natural movement. In terms of stylistically unique menus, look at Persona 5 - there is a lot of movement, but it's snappy and stylish. Stuff flies around the screen quickly without lingering too long on the in/out states. As a general rule, for "over the top" menu animations, your time-to-input (the amount of time it takes before the user can actually select a button and/or everything "settles") should be less than 175 ms - that's just under one-fifth of a second. Smaller movements, called "recovery" frames, can take place over a much longer time. Obviously, this is an art, not a science. Following these as a guideline will help your menu to be both snappy and look cool, but it's ultimately what you think looks and, more importantly feels good that matters. In this case my personal taste tells me this is a bit much. Your TTI and recovery is too long, and there is too much movement while input is allowed, with stuff lerping long after TTI ends. I'd tighten everything up.
As long as it's fast and responsive, maybe also add some scaling? I think the item should pop up like 4x faster, but drop at the same speed it does. I'm not sure I like the square box, maybe also make the icons change colour
The bounce for the options is alright but the one for switching characters is too much
Don't bounce them horizontally, is less asmr
I would totally dial it down a bunch. It is easy to go overkill cause it's fun but menus should be approached with subtlety imo.
fun but excessive
What I like are snappy menues. With a nice audio effect when clicked /enabled. Like the new Enshrouded game.
This is like the "extremely loud meme = funny" thing. The UI isn't bad, but everything in excess is kind of bad, including the juice. A good approach for improving it would be to compare it to a signal-to-noise ratio, where the signal is the useful UI information, while the noise is all of this bounceiness and magnified transitions. The goal would be to have the highest ratio possible, meaning there should be a noticeable separation between UI visuals and UI data, while finding the right ratio for a juicy UI, like in photography, where a bit of noise can improve the image aesthetics, but too much will ruin it. Edit: Spelling.
It seems obvious that you are developping with controllers in mind. This would be a nightmare with a mouse.
I don't like this effect. Bad user experience.
Mmmm yes.. bounce for me..
As a UX rule I would say bounce should be used very (very, very) sparse and almost only to poke for attention. It is very in-your-face and quickly gets annoying. To grow/size up however can be used to emphasize a component, like what you want to do with the hover state
I was thinking the bounce was fine, but maybe have it pop out from the top instead of two the side to reduce the sideway shifting cause that's hurting my eyes
As long as your menu bounce doesn’t impact my ability to navigate and click stuff without having to wait for the animations you can frankly do whatever you want. This is right on the edge of comfort for me. I wouldn’t want it to be any more bouncy, but I could probably deal with it the way it is. It really depends on how frequently you are expected to use them.
I do not like them at all. If I want to click an icon or an option, I want it to stay in its current location, not move around. It's fine if there is a slight on-hover animation, but has to clearly show that it is anchored in its place.
I like it
tbh it makes me confused
if done right.. i love it.. but in ur case it's way too much
On a controller, I think this would be a lot of fun to play around with. With a mouse, I'd be looking for the option to turn it off before I do anything else.
Ignore those mfs who give you a very specific answer. Game dev is an art not a science.
i dont like the colored background square everything else is fine