User Interface Design

A sometime-overlooked topic, many users do not think of user interface when it comes to game design, and good design should be fluid – almost unnoticeable, but for some visual treats. I am going to explain the process that we used for implementing the menus for Singularity along with some the reasoning behind our design decisions.

Menu Design

The final look of the menu system wasn’t determined until very late in production, but it still went through a lot of iteration to become what you see in the game now. We really wanted the look and feel of the menus to reflect the broken down, make-shift technology used in the post-apocalyptic Singularity setting. The idea was to take 1950’s technology and advance one aspect of it past what was historically available to create something that felt ultra-high tech for that time period but still appeared to have the same flaws and problems as other similar technology from the time period. To this end, we decided to use holograms that were just “barely working,” in the sense that they were fuzzy, susceptible to interference, and very utilitarian in design.

Menu Implementation

To achieve this post-apocalyptic look, we built Scaleform menus with Flash IDE, and then used the Unreal material system to apply interesting effects and composite them on to a mesh in our menu scene. You’ll see this process and effect when you look at the menus at the beginning of the game as well as at certain points through each level.

Basically, we created a set of menu controls that were then programmatically assembled to form each menu. Visually, the menu was then rendered into a material that would distort the image and periodically split the color channels of the image to make the menu appear slightly damaged and affected by the hostile environment it was located in. This, coupled with flickering particle system effects and scripting, complete the look of the menu. We then placed cameras at various positions in the map where we wanted menus to appear and set up the menu system to smoothly transition to each camera as you move from one menu to the next.

Overall, I think we were successful in bringing the look in line with the rest of the game. What we created lends itself well to completing the post-apocalyptic, make-shift feel of the technology used in the Singularity universe.

Jeremy Blumel
Senior Artist
Raven Software