I always make 3D main menu systems like these for my games, because I kinda like them a lot better than flat 2D menus - and this morning I was idly wondering if there would be any interest if I polished them up a little, made them highly customizable and easy to use, and released them on the marketplace.
Here’s a video I just made with a few examples of menu systems I’ve made for games in the past:
The way this would work is that you’d either use one of maybe a handful pre-made styles I’d supply with the package, complete with most common menu options (play, start game, new game, load, save, pause, options… and so on) or make your own meshes to use with it.
Planned features would include:
Fully customizable menu item actions (e.g. open other menu, execute console command, quit, open level, etc.)
Customizable menu transitions
Selection effects: material switching, bobbing, etc.
Support for selection, confirmation, cancel sounds
Mouse, keyboard, gamepad support
That’s all I’ve got for now. I’d love to hear your feedback! Would you be interested in something like this for an affordable price point?
If it were around $20 or less I think this would sell like hotcakes. Go for it, I’ve found most small groups don’t like to spend tons of time on the UI so whatever speeds that up will be in demand.
Yep, that’s about what the price point I was planning on!
Here’s some more progress. Someone suggested that being able to type in your own words for menu items would be best and give users the most flexibility, so I spent the evening making a system that allows you to do precisely that! At the moment I’m planning to include 3 different fonts/selector styles. Let me know what you think!
At $20 or less is a steal & I would gladly purchase this pack just for the Test-to-Mesh system alone as I’m sick of creating main menus + 3D letters in personal tinker projects & I might even make use of it in my main commercially intended project as a rather complex 3D transition menu is planned for it.
The Text-to-Mesh system uses localizable Text variables for its input, so that should work. I’m planning to include a full base set of characters for a small number of fonts - but the way I’ve built it, it can easily be extended with special characters if you’re able to make your own meshes. Tutorials will be released alongside this!
I’m making them manually. I will release a tutorial on how to create and implement your own fonts after I submit this though, it’s not all that hard
Here’s the list of fonts/styles I’m currently working on implementing:
Sci-Fi/Modern
8 Bit/Pixelated
Cartoony
Fantasy/Medieval
Anything obvious that’s missing from that list? I figure, those four should cover a lot of bases and give people enough ideas for how to customize the system to meet their own needs.
Sweet!!! Since I most work with video production inside the engine, will be a lot easier to create 3d texts (instead of exporting from 3ds max)
Idk if it is possible but it would be awesome if we could have the possibility to add “sub extrudes” to create better stylized 3D letterings.
20$ its a good price indeed
Very Nice. A 3D Mesh UI System and Menu Designer would be awesome. The 3D Text could also be used for a 3D Text-based game too. Keeping my eyes on this.
A little update: I’ve been working on finishing the font sets to be included with this package, and I’m starting to wish no one had ever even mentioned that being able to type in your own text would be great
Here’s a cartoon font, complete with semi-random per-letter coloring:
And here’s an update on the medieval font, half of which I’ve finally finished unwrapping tonight. Mostly looking for opinions on the material - what do you think of it? Keep in mind that it’s still lacking things like edge damages and baked normals.
