User Interface Experience (UIX)
This page shows all the Interface designs that the player will interact with throughout the game and how I believe they should look to be effect for the essential experience of the game and also the best design for VR capabilities.
Main Menu
In order to come up with design ideas for the main menu I looked into different VR games to see how they handled Menu designs.
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I looked at 3 games:
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Surgeon Simulator VR - This games main menu is an environment, in this case an doctors receptionist desk , the player is able to interact with everything on the desk and unlock secrets in this environment. The main menu in this game is all on the clipboard in the middle of the desk.
This environment fits the genre and narrative of this game and also keeps the player entertained whist they are waiting for the game to load and is more interesting than just an image and a start button.
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This menu in action is shown within the first two minutes of the game-play video by Youtuber Jacksepticeye linked to the right.
Beat Saber - This games main menu as shown through the images below is a classic image and buttons type menu which works for many games however, for a VR game this can be seen as quite boring for the player as they are just in a dark room pointing and clicking on song option to play through.
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This type of menu wouldn't work for many VR games however, this design works well for Beat Saber because the main idea of the game is its a guitar hero like experience where the player hits colored cubes to make sound in a room that is darken apart from the colored cubes and obstacles so in that regard this menu works rather well for Beat saber.
Fallout 4 VR - This games main menu is the same as Beat Sabers and the same as the console release of the game however, I looked at this game because in the VR version of the game the player doesn't have to press a button too access the characters Pitboy (where the menu is) they simply have to raise there left hand to where they can see it in order to navigate it.
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This type of menu navigation works for the fallout universe as the player has an already established piece of equipment attached to there arm which adds to realism when the player can just raise there arm to see it like how the character would do realistically.
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This gave me the idea to possibly have a menu emerge from the players hand or watch on his wrist.
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Gameplay footage of how this Pitboy is used by a player in VR is shown in the last 10 minutes of the video by MaxPayneLE84 linked below.
My Main menu idea
Looking at how existing VR games handle Main menu and other User Interfaces has helped influence my decisions when it comes to the main menu design as well as other user interfaces that will be shown below this.
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For the main menu I came up with a few different designs, the first design was a design based on the plain picture and options design that Beat Saber uses, where the Logo for the game is shown in the middle with the options and other settings like the exit game button in separate boxes around it. I think this first design works well for the theme of the game as the dark room that the menu and the player will be in could represent how alone the character feels in his battle with this unknown illness of the mind.
For the second design idea that I came up, it is a combination of Surgeon Simulators environment main menu and Fallouts Pitboy idea, This is because I thought of the idea of having a calming menu area that the player could walk around if they get overwhelmed by certain areas of the game, this calming environment will be the garden to the house so that the player can be contained in one area and given a few interactable things like flowers and chairs etc. and to re-enter or enter the main gameplay all they will have to do is simply raise their arm to show the menu prompting from their arm.
Out of the two designs that I came up with based on my research into menu types in a few VR games I believe that my second design is a better candidate for a menu as yes the first design is simple and the dark room may represent how alone the character feel in his battle with anxiety, this is not really an immersive design and as because I want my game to be a stimulatory experience I want the player to be immersed as much as possible. So, in the characters shoes in a tutorial like environment allows the player to settle into the game before they progress with the narrative, meaning that they will be all ears and focused to experience different types of anxiety and different triggers.