Design Let's discuss the Pause Menu.

[Kyon]

Hi everyone,
so I'm redoing my game template (or engine), and I've come to the point where I think it's time to design a proper Pause Menu.

I was kind of curious to what most of you like in a pause menu. I know it sometimes depends on the genre of the game, but still.
Right now I have just something "I made very quick" because I always tent to ignore Menu stuff in my games. It's these few options that appear in the top left of the screen, and the game screen gets a transparent black overlay to make it appear more in the background.



What are some of the Pause Menu essentials?
But more important for this discussion, what about design?
Do you like your pause menu quick and easy, and leave more complicated options to the main menu?
What about positioning, I don't think we want to drag our players out of immersion, but at the same time the pause menu has to be "obvious", it has to be readable.
Do you prefer pause menu's that kind of leave the whole game-screen visible?
Or do you want to drag yourself out of the game for a bit for a true-pause feeling.

Anyone has nice examples of pause menu's they really like?
What's annoying in a pause menu?

How did you do your pause menu? (this is something I would really like to see from fellow gamedevs here)
I'm kind of new to designing UI stuff like this, so it would really help.

Also I'm not necessarily talking about gamejuice, or how a pause menu should feel. More design-wise, like where is it, how big, what's in it, how many options, do you even make a "options" choice within the menu, or should it just be sound / quality sliders instantly?



Kyon.

 

[Alice]

Since I tend to make non-timed puzzle games, I tend to not have "pause menu" per se (i.e. menu whose purpose is to pause the game), but I'd rather opt for "utility menu" (i.e. menu that provides basic functionalities for setting options, leaving and maybe restarting the current game etc.).

On that note, I tend to setup my games in a way that there's one central object that manages the game flow, several controller objects that perform large-scale game steps and then lots of instances that just do whatever they're supposed to whenever one of controller objects demand it from them.
The important part is that game flow object is the only one actually calling the Step event (and then redirecting the work to controllers which manage individual instances), making it the single place to manage the game flow. Aside from having greater control over actions order (e.g. check for player moving first, and only then try moving NPCs), it also has the benefit of easier pause functionality implementation. You just decide in that single Step event that if obj_PauseMenu exists, manipulate the obj_PauseMenu, and if it doesn't then do the usual ingame operations. Contrast it with N+1 objects having their Step event that needs to be suppressed whenever the game enters the pause state; it would make for an extremely repetitive pause-handling code.

As for pause menu functionality:

Basics:
1. Obviously, option to resume the game.
2. Another mostly obvious option - returning to the main menu, if applicable for the game (possibly with progress loss warning, if player can lose significant amount of progress).
3. Maybe an option to restart the level/go to the last checkpoint, if applicable for the game.
Especially if there is an undesirable condition other than losing - e.g. getting softlocked or not getting a perfect score in a rhythm game.
While we're at that - if you can expect the game to be restarted a lot (especially for these perfect rhythm game playthroughs), you might want to provide a restart button - preferably rebindable and far away from all the other ingame buttons.

Options:
4. An option to quickly mute/unmute music/sfx, or change its volume. Alternatively, have a completely silent menu, except maybe for basic user interaction feedback as player goes through the menu.
This would be useful when the player suddenly needs to mute the game, because they e.g. get a phone call. Though the mute sound keyboard buttons/hotkeys may be so prevalent the game itself doesn't need such a quick way to do it?
5. Key rebinding might also be useful, especially since it allows the player to quickly lookup the controls or try out different keybindings before settling on the one that works best for them.

In general, I guess I'd put all the basic audio/graphics/input options in the pause/utility menu; no need to have the player go back and forth to the main menu to change their settings.

Whether I'd make a separate submenu for options or not depends on how many options I'd have. If it's only music/sfx volume + fullscreen, I might as well put it directly in the pause/utility menu. Especially if the game is mouse-controlled, and I can just add simple toggles/sliders for these. If I allowed fine-tuning graphics options with particles elements etc., or have keys redefinition, I'd opt for an options submenu instead.

Others:
6. Game help reference, especially if the game has lots of things that potentially require explanation (e.g. a puzzle game with lots of elements and interactions among them). Always good to have a quick reminder of how some things work and what you can do.
I suppose a smart help reference would adapt to the current game state. For example, if you are in a puzzle level featuring mostly blocks and no switches, you omit the pages about switches from the game reference for that level. Or if you have a fighting game, you only get the combos reference to the character you currently play as. If I recall, some fighting games even don't have a separate "Help" submenu and have the combos list straight in the pause menu.

In general, keep the most important/frequently used options readily available and easily discoverable, instead of hiding them behind the barrier of nested submenus.
Also, what kind of options you'd provide and where do you put them depends a lot on the mechanics of the game (is restarting even a thing), the usual playstyle (e.g. if player restarts often or not), the variety of options and the controls (mouse vs keyboard).

 

[ThraxxMedia]

My 2 cents in regards to the following questions:

Q: "What's annoying in a pause menu?"

• Unnecessary clutter. Don't put a huge load of options right into my face when all I probably wanted was just to take a quick break.
• Don't forget to stop / mute or lower the volume of your sound effects as well, if there's any sort of ambience going on. Music is generally fine though.

Q: "How did you do your pause menu?"

What I do, personally, is offer 3 menu items: 1) Resume, 2) Settings and 3) Quit, where the "settings" option leads to the exact same submenu that's accessible from the title screen. This eliminates the need to create a separate, watered-down version of your (hopefully) already existing settings menu altogether, and the user gets to freely decide what option they wanna access and change on the fly, if any.

I stop all ambient sounds, leave the music running and fade out the view with a semi-transparent black overlay, which is basically just a rectangle that's drawn on top of everything else whenever the game is in the pause state - with its alpha easing in and out for a smooth effect so it doesn't appear and disappear abruptly. This is handled in a persistent controller object so it doesn't depend on anything.

I also think that placing the menu items in the top left corner isn't quite the best idea, although that's just my personal preference (only exception, imho: the main menu, where placement can be an artistic choice). Whenever your eyes are not following a certain point of interest, like the movement of an enemy or your player, they usually tend to rest on a "neutral" position - which, for most people, would be straight ahead, i.e. the center of the screen. I just think it's easier on the eyes, long-term. But again, that's just me; to each their own.

When it comes to size, anything will do as long as the text is clearly readable. Don't use varying font sizes that change depending on how many menu items you display though; that's distracting. I'd only ever use that if I really, really had to (for example in mouse-over tooltips where space can be a limiting factor). Consider moving menu items into submenus if they don't fit on a single screen, for example: split "settings" into categories like "graphics", "audio", etc.

As for the immersion thing... I guess, whenever a player pauses a game, they've already made the decision to be pulled out of it - maybe because they need to go to the bathroom, or because they wanna fiddle with some settings, or whatever else came to their mind. So I wouldn't necessarily make it a top priority to have a menu feel "immersive" when it doesn't really need to (unless that's supposed to be a key feature).

 

[kburkhart84]

I agree with most of the points above on this. I don't need a massive pause menu if I literally just wanted to pause the game(in fact it could be a different button altogether, one that pauses showing a simple text and fading out the game and another that actually pulls up a menu).

That said, I agree that any options that can possibly be accessible from a pause menu, should be. I know for some games its harder to put video settings(like detail levels) in such a menu, or things like difficulty depending on the game, but things like input options, sound volumes, and similar, should be accessible without me having to quit the level and back out.

 

[scorpafied]

best way to look at stuff like this is as a gamer. the best pause menus you wont have examples of because u dont notice it. but a bad one u immediately notice.

an example is goldeneye. it had an animation play before u entered the menu. and meant u could die in the time the game took to actually enter and leave the menu. its ui was also annoying to navigate.

so for me i look for a few things. firstly quick to access and leave it. it should be clearly displayed not just in terms of how the menu is layed out but in terms of where u place it.

an example here is advance wars. i loved the game but looking back its menus werent very well placed on screen. and had little consistency.

 

[Yal]

Some random pointers from the top of my head:

• Automatically pausing if the window loses focus can be useful in certain genres (usually this is toggleable in the options if the player likes multitasking, e.g. for streaming). GM's window_has_focus function makes this easy to check.
• I personally find completely covering the in-game graphics up is disorienting, though it's necessary in games where perception per time unit are critical (Tetris, for instance). One of my favorite pause menus is Dark Souls 2's menu, which covers the left 70% of the screen but changes the camera angle so you can still see your character, allowing you to frantically change broken equipment in the middle of a boss fight (mind, the menu in that game doesn't actually pause it because of the online connectivity) as well as preview how gear looks if you care about fashion. If you stand still while paused, your character even changes to a more casual pose.
• If the player needs to do something a lot (e.g. check the map, change abilities/weapons) it should be accessible in as few menu steps as possible, ideally with a single button press. YIIK's map abilities and Super Paper Mario's pixl abilities are both perfect examples on how not to do this, constantly forcing you to pause the game and change them, and usually needing to sit through long animations and a lot of slow steps to highlight what you want. The weapon wheel in Doom: No Subtitle But Not The First Game / A Hat In Time which opens a menu while the game keeps moving in slow motion kills the pace a lot less; in a lot of situations it actually improves the flow of the game since you feel the tension of whatever you're trying to deal with as you're trying to make smart decisions as quickly as possible.
• Another interesting example is CrossCode: there's three different pause menus in that game (the quick menu which lets you use consumables, check the map, open the scan overlay to search the environment for interactibles / hidden objects, etc; the system pause menu that lets you save/load and review the most recent events/conversations, and the main menu which has the equipment screen, key item inventory, and database) and the quick menu is a lot quicker to use than either of the "full pause" menus - essentially all the actions you'll do a lot and don't want to be slow are in the same menu which is quicker to navigate than a full pause menu, and the stuff that's less important and slower to do is delegated to a different menu.
• All user interface should give you as much information as possible without being overwhelming or disorienting. This is usually referred to with the line "give the player the information they need, when they need it" - giving the player more information at once is a cheap way to increase the chance you'll meet both of those things, and you can make the information a lot more digestible with good visual design. A common example is displaying an inventory as a 2D grid of item icons, where you can press a button to display all the statistics of the item. It's easy to find the item you're looking for once you know what it looks like, and all the information you need is just one button press away. You'd be surprised how many games thinks a linear list of names (which is slower to navigate) is a good solution to this, but they quickly fall apart when you have hundreds of items, and names are less immediately recognizable than item icons even if you reuse them.

 

[Siolfor the Jackal]

I just want to add that these are all great comments that I agree with. The "Resume - Options - Quit" is great, but I like to have "Quit to menu" and "Quit to desktop" options in my games. Sometimes I just want to quit mid game, I don't want to go back to your title screen, I just want to quit.

 

[Yal]

I just want to add that these are all great comments that I agree with. The "Resume - Options - Quit" is great, but I like to have "Quit to menu" and "Quit to desktop" options in my games. Sometimes I just want to quit mid game, I don't want to go back to your title screen, I just want to quit.

Very few games opt out of closing with Alt+F4, it's usually my goto (save-quit-to-title, wait for the logo splash to begin, immediately hit alt-F4 to skip all those boring extra steps). It might even be an OS level hotkey that can't be ignored, I've not really looked into what needs to be done to specifically not respond to it.

 

[Siolfor the Jackal]

Yeah, that's why I like to have the option to just immediately end the game. A friend and I have noticed more and more games lately are somehow restricting Alt-F4 too which is concerning.

 

[Yal]

You can immediately start the Task Manager with Ctrl + Shift + Escape, and that's an OS level key combination that should be un-interceptable just like Ctrl + Alt + Delete. Show those games who's boss!

(with "immediately" I mean, it bypasses that new lock screen thing you get when hitting ctrl-alt-delete these days, and it's also much faster to bring up)

 

[nacho_chicken]

If a pause menu exists primarily to access the options in it, I want pause menus to be instantly operable. I've been playing some rhythm games as of late, and I find the most common reason to pause is to either 1) restart the song, or 2) quit the song. Rarely do I ever pause just to take a quick break. One of them in particular (Muse Dash) has about a half-second of animation on the pause menu appearing and inputs are completely ignored during this. It gets really annoying because the default option is unpause. If I don't wait for the animation to finish, I'll accidentally end up choosing that, and that wastes another 3+ seconds before I'm able to re-open the menu. Moral of the story: if you're going to do some flashy menu animations, at least let the player still have input during them.

Also another thing to consider is if your game even needs a pause feature. Making a turn-based RPG? You're likely going to have a menu to access your party, inventory, options, etc. that already stops anything going on. If you can also wait indefinitely during your turn, there's zero need a pause in battle.

@Yal @Siolfor the Jackal
You gotta show those Alt-F4-ignoring programs who's boss.

SuperF4

Kill programs instantly with Ctrl+Alt+F4.

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