MAIN MENU

The main menu for Ultimechs is the first thing players will see when they reach the garage area. It is the jump point to the systems the player will need in their journey.

Original Brief

The main menu has options for the following types of content:

• Shop

• Training

• Play

• Options

• Customization

So an initial wireframe for the main menu and the information architecture was made.

More systems at this point were being added so a few new subfolders in the architecture were needed.

• Shop

• Loadout

• Leaderboards

• Play

• Social

• Challenges

• Profile

This architecture would be very close to the end product’s architecture with minor edits. The currencies were reduced to just one to prevent too many micro-transactions and economy management for players.

Exploration and Refinement of systems

The design team confirmed the second layer of interfaces so an initial scope for the UI and UX design could begin!

Wireframe explorations of the layout of this menu continued, to see the forms and space needed in the VR menu scene. These were tested in 2D, against a world concept of the arena, and in 3D - gravity sketch to see size and legibility before one was chosen to block in game.

The play button at the center was the favored candidate with the team so we brought it into unity!

At this point, we had blocked in a lot of the wireframes for the shop, garage, and play menus so a picture was starting to form. Holographic panels were definitely going in the right direction for the world and experience we wanted.

Changes in Direction

The team were wanting to minimize the play options to have training, quick play, and other game modes under a central play menu, the currency and shop systems were still not confirmed so the menu got a quick do over to simplify it.

There would be play, shop, career (the profile), customization, and options.

At this point, we had the UI Artist begin on the project concepting the Art Direction for the UI. We also had a larger discussion and planning for the game and systems at launch. There would be 8 systems besides the play menu to be supported. We felt that text alone would be tricky, so icon based simpler buttons like the earlier explorations would work well while still keeping the play button central and having a shape contrast to draw attention would be the most affective route.

The player would also only have one character and a ranking systems with their username would be needed. Here you can see a layout with some temporary UI Assets provided by the UI Artist.

This layout was to denote the direction the UI Panels would open up as. The center button would open a button in front whereas the side buttons would open a panel beside the mech in the garage area at the respective side.

We also wanted a way to communicate that some things changed inside these systems so a notification system was added.

Some systems were removed, like the shop and challenges and career mode, in favour of a battlepass system, so the menu had another revision to simplify.

Eventually, the main menu aligned to have the most important buttons take the second amount of visual contrast. This is very close to the live version in the end with minor art tweaks.

Things to note

The architecture and flow diagrams for the experience were updated with every step of the UI change, over the course of 2 years there were lots of micro-changes and tests with both layout, flow, and art for the menus. It was really interesting to get into the engine and work on these interfaces!

We had a few publications explicitly write about the UX and UI of Ultimechs’ menus which was really nice as this type of work tends to go unnoticed.