New main menu design - feedback requested

[LMD]

I'm looking forward to hearing your opinion on this alternative suggestion!

I support this.

[PolySaken]

Here's my designs. They're based on ruben's mockups but with a different color scheme and some slight differences. The main difference is that it still uses tabs. Also, 'Themes' are texture packs, but I'd like them to be able to recolor this menu too.
This is the landing menu. It shows the singleplayer games and also some featured stuff.

This is the online multiplayer menu. It's pretty much exactly like the existing one.

The game-specific menu can look like anything, but it always has this overlay at the bottom with the installed games and a back button.

[Zughy]

heyo PolySaken, my 2 cents: tabs are ugly. They make things look like some sort of weird folder. First time someone opens MT is kind of lost, the fact the "builtin" aspect is grey and with shades here and there (I'm referring to the current one, not to your mockup) make everything worse.
About your mockup, it's all too gray. Which I get it, it should be more generic as possible, but this only makes it look distant, kind of cold. Also, the "pingometer" should be removed, because it's useless and it doesn't return what people expect to return (there is an issue on GitHub about it, #6763). Overall, though, it conveys a "retro" feel (for instance, the fact you removed shades) which it should be kept.

I'm of the idea the menu should be completely reworked, I mean, radically. See my WIP attempt (don't mind the single player window) viewtopic.php?f=3&t=25247

[philipbenr]

I'll throw in my speed redesign as well I suppose:

+ Spoiler

Here's my 2-hour design + 3-hour creation result
(Of note: Icons were done separately, outside the 2-hour block, as I created more than is shown here, plus I enjoyed it and wanted to sink in more time than just a couple hours).

(Also of note: This is not really ever intended for use in the Minetest project, as it is programmed with React, and porting it to React Native would be not that fun and I'm sure most people would not be too keen on having a framework like that in place for Minetest, though I will say platform-agnostic development is nice. Its really just for fun and for me to practice my skills)

(I also suggest viewing the full size image)



The goal was to implement a more intuitive flow for a game, following a F-shaped user tracking experience, with a flat-shaded design.

The user will generally look at the larger box first, noting the singleplayer and multiplayer tabs, distinguishing which one they wish to play first.

Then they will select the world or server they wish to play. Once they have selected a world, the sidebar fills with the corresponding content settings. The important world actions are heavily colored to draw attention, as they are the important ones.

The subgame selection is of slightly lesser priority in this model, as it is the tabs on the side of the world list. This is assuming that most players will largely wish to use one subgame and not bother with the others. However, the tab placement does show the correlation between the subgame and worlds, helping new users to understand the distinction more.

Things I would change if I were to continue on this design:

• Add in creative mode/damage selection (not enough time)
• Make the project interactive/stateful, so that a user can actually select and interact
• Implement/refine other menus that I have designed (multiplayer/configure world)
• Design more menus
• Redesign the minetest_game logo to include the flat theme to better match the style.
• Possibly tweak the add content, global settings, and more info/credits buttons
• Fix the bordering along the subgame-tabs/world list
• Slightly tweak the Minetest icon to match the flat iconography I have included (I still am probably going to do that)
• Implement a default dark theme
• Implement themeing API so that users could apply their own coloring styles to the main menu when their subgame is selected
• Find the most appropriate font (though this one is pretty alright)

In total there are around 650 lines of code associated with this design, ~120 being content, ~430 being styling (including mouse hover/active element styling).

[PolySaken]

heyo PolySaken, my 2 cents: tabs are ugly. They make things look like some sort of weird folder. First time someone opens MT is kind of lost, the fact the "builtin" aspect is grey and with shades here and there (I'm referring to the current one, not to your mockup) make everything worse.
About your mockup, it's all too gray. Which I get it, it should be more generic as possible, but this only makes it look distant, kind of cold. Also, the "pingometer" should be removed, because it's useless and it doesn't return what people expect to return (there is an issue on GitHub about it, #6763). Overall, though, it conveys a "retro" feel (for instance, the fact you removed shades) which it should be kept.

I'm of the idea the menu should be completely reworked, I mean, radically. See my WIP attempt (don't mind the single player window) viewtopic.php?f=3&t=25247

Tabs are ugly, I agree. However, this is not the menu for a game, it's supposed to be the menu for an application that manages modules and launches games. It's also helpful to the user to show all four menus as part of one thing, that way the minetest menu feels more connected, and it serves to mentally separate the minetest menu and the (sub)game menu, because they are on different screens while the options, credits, etc. are all on one screen.

The cold grey colors are simply placeholders; I'd like to have texture packs supply their own color scheme in the form of a plaintext list of hex colors formatted like mod.conf

[runs]

I'll throw in my speed redesign as well I suppose:

+ Spoiler

Here's my 2-hour design + 3-hour creation result
(Of note: Icons were done separately, outside the 2-hour block, as I created more than is shown here, plus I enjoyed it and wanted to sink in more time than just a couple hours).

(Also of note: This is not really ever intended for use in the Minetest project, as it is programmed with React, and porting it to React Native would be not that fun and I'm sure most people would not be too keen on having a framework like that in place for Minetest, though I will say platform-agnostic development is nice. Its really just for fun and for me to practice my skills)

(I also suggest viewing the full size image)



The goal was to implement a more intuitive flow for a game, following a F-shaped user tracking experience, with a flat-shaded design.

The user will generally look at the larger box first, noting the singleplayer and multiplayer tabs, distinguishing which one they wish to play first.

Then they will select the world or server they wish to play. Once they have selected a world, the sidebar fills with the corresponding content settings. The important world actions are heavily colored to draw attention, as they are the important ones.

The subgame selection is of slightly lesser priority in this model, as it is the tabs on the side of the world list. This is assuming that most players will largely wish to use one subgame and not bother with the others. However, the tab placement does show the correlation between the subgame and worlds, helping new users to understand the distinction more.

Things I would change if I were to continue on this design:

• Add in creative mode/damage selection (not enough time)
• Make the project interactive/stateful, so that a user can actually select and interact
• Implement/refine other menus that I have designed (multiplayer/configure world)
• Design more menus
• Redesign the minetest_game logo to include the flat theme to better match the style.
• Possibly tweak the add content, global settings, and more info/credits buttons
• Fix the bordering along the subgame-tabs/world list
• Slightly tweak the Minetest icon to match the flat iconography I have included (I still am probably going to do that)
• Implement a default dark theme
• Implement themeing API so that users could apply their own coloring styles to the main menu when their subgame is selected
• Find the most appropriate font (though this one is pretty alright)

In total there are around 650 lines of code associated with this design, ~120 being content, ~430 being styling (including mouse hover/active element styling).

I love your design so much. I would only change the background of the buttons, to much acid colors that blend badly with the black text color.

[freshreplicant]

EDIT:

Moved my post regarding Zughy's design here to avoid muddling up this topic.

[Dragonop]

Most of these main menu ideas look great!

I would like to see "Menu packs" that work like texture packs, but alter the main menu look, so I could use all of them... This is a legit feature request, btw

[Zughy]

Most of these main menu ideas look great!

I would like to see "Menu packs" that work like texture packs, but alter the main menu look, so I could use all of them... This is a legit feature request, btw

You can indeed design and code your main menu already, the fact is I don't think anybody made their custom versions yet

[PolySaken]

Most of these main menu ideas look great!

I would like to see "Menu packs" that work like texture packs, but alter the main menu look, so I could use all of them... This is a legit feature request, btw

You can indeed design and code your main menu already, the fact is I don't think anybody made their custom versions yet

There's no way to use them other than going into the forbidden realm of yellow dropdowns and setting an absolute path. If we had a folder to drop them into people would actually use them.

[goats]

Honestly, i would just fix the "Special"=climb dowr on the keybindings screen. ;)