Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
The screens
First off, you need to work out the structure of your menu systems in advance; it doesn't
need to be heavy, just understand the flow of your game from start to finish and then iter-
ate on that design until it looks impressive and easy to use. The kinds of screens and areas
that you need to focus on are covered in the next section.
Splash screens
Splash screens tell the user about you and your brand; it's the first thing they always see.
If you animate a splash screen, try to keep it under 3 seconds; a good baseline is to aim for
between 1-2 seconds—anything shorter and users won't pay attention, longer and you
could just annoy them waiting to start the game.
A big debate I've seen between studios is whether you should allow the user to skip splash
screens, and there doesn't seem to be any firm sway either way.
A general piece of advice though is to not allow skipping as it can devalue your brand.
Splash screens can either be separate screens or just fullscreen GUI textures that are
drawn using the GUI.DrawTexture function in your menu scripts as follows:
public Texture m_texture;
void OnGUI()
{
GUI.DrawTexture(new Rect(0, 0, Screen.width,
Screen.height),
m_texture,
ScaleMode.ScaleToFit,
true);
}
Either method will work; the direction you take will largely depend on the style of your
game.
Loading screens
Plan to have a loading screen in advance. You may not actually use it initially, but when
your game runs on lower spec devices, you will find that the loading times will increase,
sometimes dramatically. Be prepared!
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