Menu Items

Taking a break from animations I decided to work on on the user interface and make some menu mock-ups. 

The start menu will be quite simple with a logo in the top and three buttons; Start Game, Options and Exit Game. The start game button will take you to a character select screen. There you will be able to choose between a male and a female character. There is no difference between the two player characters other than looks. 
The options button will take you to the options screen and the exit game will simply quit the game.

I had this idea that the title logo should represent the words in the title. So, I chose a swing set to represent the playground. The plank on which it says playground was chosen for the logo to fit the theme of the rest of the start screen. I did not know how to depict panic, a burning building with people running in fear does not feel like the way to go for this.
The swing set and the rope pieces in this image are stock photos I took straight from Google. I used Photoshop to make the swing set twice as wide to fit in the sign. The texture on the sign is part of the same texture that was used for the buttons.

The layout and looks of the start menu is not final and will most likely change in the future.

The options menu will contain some settings you should expect to find in all games. There you will find sound and music sliders. These sliders will be separate from each other instead of there just being a master audio control. This is something I think everyone who play games appreciates. In the options menu you will also find an option for fullscreen mode.
As of now I am not sure if there will be a controls menu for key binding or just simply for control help. This is something I will take up with the team on our next meeting.

The menu buttons was created in a fairly short time. I sort of made them on impulse. The buttons consists of three main components.

• Texture

• Color Overlay

• Frame

With some Photoshop magic I managed to put together a pretty decent looking button. I will most likely polish them if I get time to. 

Coming up on my schedule the rest of this week is more walking animations. If everything goes as planned I will have all the walking animations done by Monday but as we all know things do not always go as planned but I will try my best and not try to get too distracted by the Thief release this week.