When designing Star girls menu system I had to recreate each page at least 4 times. The prototype, first draft with touch support, second draft with gamepad support, third draft because at this point everything kinda looked like shit and every menu had its own logic/ flow (bad games design). One of my goals for Scarlette was to make sure the design was 100% complete before moving into the coding stage.

I can say honestly I’ve failed in that respect. I think it’s more to do with the game design process as a whole. Very few times someone creates a menu or feature and it’s 100% finished. The game changes and evolves and a good designer will tinker away until it’s good or good enough.

For this month I figured I would show you the evolution of the equipment menu and my thought process.

First I wanted to create an old CRPG equipment menu because I hate when games give you a never-ending list for items. (The earliest screenshot could find)

Then I decided that the whole interface was too cluttered. So I hid the item description (only appears if you click on an item) and I also added weight element to the items because I wanted the armour to do more then take up a slot.

Weight is a terrible idea in RPGs. The mechanics piss off a lot of people… so I removed that and made the cargo menu not overlap the character image. Added stackable items to fix space issue.

Added stats the game and wanted the display to reflect that a “persona” sorta way. Also, I made the cargo menu smaller

(Feb 10)

Quick stats info was too bulky and also doubled up the info displayed on the menu. So I streamlined it to have it focus more in the centre. I need the stats to have a better reflection equipment bonuses as well as add the ability to access your companion equipment and health them.

The menu will probably go through a few more changes after the player’s feedback and when the final art comes in. But as of right now I am pretty happy with it.

This is just one of many features that got an overhaul in the last few months and overall the system feel better to play.