Pixel Art Main Menu

[uncut pewter]

It's time for some visual updates! This time we are looking at overhauling the main menu. Below is the current state of the project and all associated assets. Please voice your yays, nays, and maybays on any and every aspect of the design. Think you can do better? feel free to outdo me! This is a community project after all.

Idea @short wolf

[short wolf]

At work right now, will post assets in a couple hours 🙂

[keen vault]

Bro woke up and chose violence with this "try me" motivational talk

[spice grove]

i really like the current main menu pictures, except the ai generated saturn one really bothers me 😔

[prime moon]

Yeah the high res looks nice

[short wolf]

And the current layout (let us know thoughts on button/text placement)

Also the green background is just a placeholder 😛

[formal sandal]

Preeeettttyyyy

[keen vault]

i think the top text is a bit hard to read because the letters are too long depth wise

if you know what I mean

language barrier moment

[river zodiac]

I think I'd need to see some with actual background to really be sure

[short wolf]

Hmmm, i think i understand. the image is actually made from the font itself so it should be scaled properly

[pastel bolt]

ngl i think the shadow underneath the letters on the buttons makes it a little hard to read

[short wolf]

agreed i think no shadows would be better but they got placed on their own. not sure how to remove them

[flint cradle]

nevertheless I'm getting used to the current main menu since its release and it's somehow iconic to me, so an option in the config file to use the old would be nice

[flat garnet]

an option would be perfect imo

[twilit sun]

Shading on sprites is kinda weak

[short wolf]

Are you good w shading? I can give you the .aseprite files to give it a go

[twilit sun]

I have experience with pixel art, but I don't have much free time these days :(

[short wolf]

Nooooo

Do you know any other pixel artists who might be able to help?

[twilit sun]

You might try to look for pixel art tutorials

Also you might look into consistency of sizes

Since pixels of the logo are twice as large as the buttons RN

And social media buttons have differen size of pixels too

So ideally you would need to make a mockup where everything has 1:1 pixels and only then scale them together by the same number

@short wolf

[short wolf]

Noted. The social media buttons were made in the same pixel size originally but if they are original scale they would be wayy too large. And making smaller sprites would lose recognizability. Do you know any workarounds to make it seem more natural?

[twilit sun]

Work with antialising in general allows to make more detailed sprites on smaller scale

Though you should not overdone it - otherwise it will be too blury

[twilit sun]

Also dithering on sphere should not break grid pattern, unless you are doing straight line techniques

[short wolf]

Would you be willing to accept commission to work on these assets? That was originally the plan but somehow it ended up with me (not an artist) working on them

[twilit sun]

Also many will curse me for words that I am going to say now (Because Jappa actively uses it newer textures, but it's one of standard pixel art techniques, so it isn't specific to his style only), but I recommend to look into how to do hue shifting when choosing colours

[twilit sun]

Well, I live in country that is problematic to send money for that in current situation (Russia) :P

[short wolf]

If you're willing, I'll go through whatever hoops to make it work.

I don't want to push you though

[twilit sun]

The main issue RN for me is that I am studying in university for master's degree, so my free time isn't really consistent

And also I have other projects on my back, so yeah

[void cedar]

I love the current planet slideshow. This with the slideshow instead of the green is totally great imo

[short wolf]

On the topic of backgrounds: I think a few of the backgrounds dont play nice with the negative space on this layout. (blue/yellow moon and both saturn images), what do yall think?

also react to this for centered layout

or this for left-aligned (current) layout

[golden sluice]

an option to have the background be (possibly blurred) loading screen images could be dope

blurred because ones with higher visual clutter might hinder the menu visibility

[kindred sedge]

Once you have the UI elements down maybe a fan art contest for a new main menu slideshow would be nice? Of course make it a rule that any art needs to work with the UI layout so they don’t suffer from being too busy but it’d be a nice opportunity for community involvement for those who can’t code but are artistically inclined?

Doesn’t even need to be popular vote, just say devs will pick 5-6 favourites

[twilit sun]

I might try to experiment with the logo on Saturday, but I don't guarantee anything

What is the default Minecraft screen resolution?

[river zodiac]

Am I the only one who doesn't really want this to happen? I honestly think the current menu theme looks very good, and although the sprites for the pixel art and everything look alright it just feels like a downgrade and I guess a major change in GTNH's brand/logo if we start using this menu theme instead of the current one.

[short wolf]

Nothing wrong with that take. But do take into consideration this is still a WIP. We are trying to keep the GTNH branding through a couple of different ways (same color palette, font, and overall space theme). Your feedback is appreciated though, I think we could put a little more effort into keeping it GTNH instead of something entirely new

[twilit sun]

BTW @short wolf should I try to make yellow parts of the logo metallic or not?

[short wolf]

Oooh yes, I wanted to do that originally but it was waaay out of my comfort zone

Also I was thinking of making the buttons a transparent black, similar to the current hover effect. This with a left aligned layout would reduce screen clutter and let your eyes enjoy the backgrounds more

I'll experiment when I get home from work. Also I'll send you all the .aseprite files I have @twilit sun

[twilit sun]

Okay

[spice grove]

It just doesnt seem consistent to have the main menu logo be pixel art while the logos on the website and wiki are the current ones

Everything wuld need 2 be changed i think

[short wolf]

@uncut pewter thoughts?

[spice grove]

I think the gtnh logo is too iconic to be changed to pixel art this late

[uncut pewter]

I open up this Aoi to discuss things so I just wait a bit to hear everyone. We had the option make it switch able or not change the logo for pixel art . I just wait a bit longer for more suggestions and ideas .

[void cedar]

I like the pixelated "GREGTECH NEW HORIZONS", but yeah, the classic logo is better imo. And Idk if mixing the styles looks good...

[golden sluice]

i do really like the symbols on the buttons

maybe something could be done with the stargate constellations too

[golden sluice]

after trying to sketch some out as pixel art, ive considered it to be harder than crafting an actual stargate

[rustic ice]

It's a shame this new style covers up the planet background art because I quite enjoy the old look.

[short wolf]

Stay tuned I'm experimenting with some styles to keep them in focus

[short wolf]

transparent button style to let background keep more attention

[twilit sun]

I think non transparent border would be nice for buttons

[flat garnet]

While I like this, I dont think that this fits the aesthetic of the pack - I have this issue with a lot of newer textures and texture revamps that are trying to look more modern too.

Something more detailed with less emphasis on pixelation I feel would be the more appropriate way to go

[twilit sun]

I want to try make a logo in a higher resolution that logo presented here

At least make it 2x of the size

[prime moon]

the problem is the background is extremly high res

you would need a pixel background

[twilit sun]

Cause different sizes of the pixels is the bad thing for pixel art IMO

[violet beacon]

I do like the idea of the blue/yellow buttons, but I think more separation between the text and the yellow background is needed. they're pretty much the same brightness and it's hard to read

you could either 1) darken the blue a lot more, or 2) add a consistent black border to the text that isn't just text shadow

also to be honest the reason the logo doesn't work isn't necessarily that it's pixelated

it just lacks depth

imo the title at the top does work even though it's also pixelated, simply because it's 3d

also very subtle, but I think the title shadow is too yellow

I like the idea of putting emphasis on yellow/blue as the gtnh colors in the main menu, so I made the shadow a bit cooler (as in like, the opposite of warmer) as you move down (top is old, bottom is new)

it looks nice and also gives a slight impression of like, something bluer (again, yellow/blue) off camera reflecting onto the shadow of the yellow letters

[twilit sun]

Doing my own experiments (Heavy WIP)

[twilit sun]

Some detailing adjustments

[twilit sun]

Adjusted some colours and other stuff

[violet beacon]

this is looking pretty cool so far, curious how it looks with the space background

[short wolf]

gah damn thats gorgeous

[twilit sun]

@uncut pewter (sorry for ping in advance) what do you think about this so far?

[uncut pewter]

yea mean work on it make the 3d look and shadow much stronger ?

[twilit sun]

I need to finish planet next. What's your opinion on visuals of golden part of the logo that I made so far?

[uncut pewter]

It looks a little more three-dimensional. But I need to see it with the other components to compare.

[twilit sun]

Yeah, I tried to make it more metallic

[uncut pewter]

yea it got more shiny look

[twilit sun]

Started work on the planet

(Never drew planets before btw)

[twilit sun]

@uncut pewter What do you think about it?

[uncut pewter]

yea looks cool are the planet rotate or is this planed ?

[twilit sun]

I am not sure that I will be able to pull it off

I suck at animations

[void cedar]

Bro, rotation would be CRAZY!

[twilit sun]

I can give the aseprite file or earth picture separately for those, who would like to try to do this

Even if somebody will do it without shading - it would be helpful

[violet beacon]

that's muuuuuch better

I do think the shading on the earth in the original is pretty good, and this is missing that a little bit

wish I could help with the art but my pen broke recently lmao

[golden sluice]

small nitpick, the blue text on yellow is a bit straining

[violet beacon]

I do still like the idea of blue on yellow but yeah I'm not sure how to make it work

[twilit sun]

Different shade of blue might work

[ebon lava]

i completly agree and was about to comment that the biggest thing i see is on the ep on singleplayer i think its almost like the letters are to close so they merge together more and its more straining to try and read but looks really good on the see through one

[ebon lava]

how does it look with having the extra embellishments like the creeper being a different color then black just curies

[spare imp]

I really dislike the centered layout. Everything is too spread out and it just breaks convention and expectation with basically every single other videogame I play frequently...

The logos and buttons are really pretty though! but I really think the current vertical menu should stay. It makes the start screen easier to parse visually.

As a compromise, maybe the planet can move next to the top GTNH text, and then the original "vanilla" minecraft button layout can be mimicked instead, for that old-but-new vibe

Plus, I have some worries about how the centered layout will work with different monitor aspect ratios, different GUI scale settings, windowed vs fullscreen, etc.

(I still have 4:3 monitors in one or two places, lmao)

Additionally, the pixel art has a lot of different pixel sizes

[spare imp]

e.g. in this screenshot, the MC font has a pixel size of 3-4 (blurry), the button textures a size of 4, the planet logo a size of 4, the GTNH text a size of 5, the social buttons a size of 2...

For visual cohesion I think the art should probably stick to a maximum of 2 sizes

e.g., 4 for the buttons & MC font, 5 or 6 for the GTNH text & Planet Logo. or everything on 4 ^^

I realize this is super-high level nitpicking maybe ^^;
The art itself looks amazing! I don't mean to sound disparaging, at all

I do think proper cohesion between all the different elements can be the difference between "wow" and "wow!!!", though

[fast leaf]

@uncut pewter @short wolf After days of thinking about this new layout, here are my 2 cents:
pros:

• modpack title in the top middle is great
• fresh new logo is great
• the vibe we get from the menu is more blocky/minecraft styled

cons:

• i get it that the buttons are trying to fill up the space, but in any menu you'll have buttons either tied in a vertical line or in an array, or group the buttons by usage, so the currently suggested disposition is annoying to use because it does nothing like this. You want to go SP you click top left but MP is top right,options are middle left / bottom left but language is middle right... So my immediate recommendation would be to use a vertical menu like we do currently ingame, but if we really go for such placement of the buttons, then at least put SP/MP/Quit buttons in the left column, the right column will have the rest.
• The police of the pack title is still too blurry, and this is caused by the depth effect. Either get rid of the depth effect or take a very much darker shade. I say this as a short sighted person, even if i wear my glasses and i get very close from my screen, it looks blurry.
• I see that the credits are top left corner, i suggest making them a properly integrated place in the layout, like something below the website/github/discord icons
• the logo and vertical menu of the current title screen is deliberately on the left so we can appreciate the background images. Changes are needed in the background images to fit with the suggested layout. How do you plan to adress this? I have seen the version with transparent buttons, but then dark gray background + dark blue makes it difficult to read.
• NH has stuck to the current title screen for almost a decade, and the new pixel art aesthetic is very different from the current one. Is a community vote planned?

[violet beacon]

all reasonable suggestions, I'm just not sure what you mean by that 2nd bit I feel like there's no problem there? (I'm also a very near sighted person)

[violet beacon]

do you think this would solve it?

[fast leaf]

no, i see this blurry equally

[violet beacon]

I feel like there's either something uniquely wrong about your eyes specifically or you're using the word blurry wrong

[fast leaf]

possible language barriere moment yes

[violet beacon]

fair

yeah could be made darker

I don't think it shouldn't be there outright, because it would be too flat otherwise

[fast leaf]

what if we reduce depth?

i think what i describe as blurry might be caused by the depth of the letter, mainly on the E of the word New

[violet beacon]

oh yeah I get what you mean

I think the depth is good on "gregtech", but the rest has thinner letters and therefore should have a shorter shadow

[fast leaf]

agreed

[short wolf]

Thank you so much for the comprehensive feedback!

Layout of buttons can be changed: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/603348502637969419/1430279975273238578/image.png?ex=6909ae47&is=69085cc7&hm=1c9d96e9a9a6bb208f81830e2c540ceacaa7c87337c05dd10259916c96d71c9f& is another example of what we had. I do agree that the button choices should be aligned the way you described

We also messed with credits placement here is another layout we tried: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1430632116240253048/1432427654912409751/image.png?ex=69099576&is=690843f6&hm=8497915f9e00886571c24ef893f415e42b496d6c78f7fc9bd8760ff61446f04d&

I agree that in the current state the backgrounds clash with the layout, I suggested some different backgrounds but I'm not sure how different we want to be. I personally really like the idea of a manufacturing city skyline (seeing the "horizon" of factories seems very fitting) https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1430632116240253048/1432021664983679007/360_F_647740109_60mzNajJwiGfTG46dPV2OSrS14ILEkWn.jpg?ex=690a159a&is=6908c41a&hm=e445c825d42685193e98ec34ee5345a9ab3a4fd848eda7227b18491e7ac7fe0a& . However if that strays too far we could also have some space backgrounds similar to what we currently have, but demand much less attention

A toggle is planned to switch between current and old main menu. But I really like the idea of a community vote between a couple different styles

To move forward I think we should decide which layout format we want

I'll come up with some styles when I get home, if anyone has any idea please post them here as well

[fast leaf]

I like the manufacturing city skyline, and i believe it'd be even better to have an evolutive version in pixel art, ranging from stone age to stargate, with many distinctive content from the game, that would be more thematically fitting than insisting on space images like we do.

[short wolf]

Ooooh yes

A slideshow style? Or a single image containing all the ages

[fast leaf]

it would also help with integrating the layout, as we would have complete control of what is drawn, instead of spending hours to find images good looking with the layout

[fast leaf]

Your choice i'd say

[short wolf]

Hmmm im not sure

[fast leaf]

one big image would be boring unless you add tons of references

[short wolf]

A single image would be hard to fit all the ages in. And multiple images would take a lot of time

[fast leaf]

while several images allows you to add more stuff

[short wolf]

True

[fast leaf]

but then beware if we go down this path: 2.9 is going to be the multiblock rework update,so you might want to be in touch with @little cargo and @uncut pewter so you can draw assets already up to date rather than doing assets based on 2.8 content for a publication in 2.9+ with the new multis, which means redoing the work

[little cargo]

i'd add my 2 cents as i read this thread, i like the style, but i'd personally prefer the color scheme of the oficial site as it has a very pleasant color pallete

also you're using pixel art design but each part has its own scale, i know that might be problematic, but i'd personally make a layout for for example 480 by 270 design (or other size i'm just sharing the idea) and make every ui element the resolution of this template

a quick explanation to what i said, on the same screen you have elements that take 5, 9 and 16 pixels per actual pixel on the screen, would be much more consistant to make them the same scale

[short wolf]

Thanks for the input! This has been brought up a couple times and I agree, it's really important our pixel sizing is aligned. It's really difficult to get down as any minor resizing of breaks the scale immediately

Also the palette on the website is nice but also muted

I think the background will bring some nice color in to the mix. And I'm not convinced yet on the orange buttons/title yet

[little cargo]

(settings my belowed)

add a switch that turns your option to the more gray one

and make yours as a default

[little cargo]

i just wanted to make another pixelated menu but instead got an achievement "how did we get there?"

[twilit sun]

Futuristic

I like it :D

Though it would need dark backgrounds to work

It kinda gives me SuperSymmetry vibes

[little cargo]

that's actually a really common style, it's literally everywhere

[twilit sun]

Yeah

[little cargo]

shiii, i now wanna make it animated

that gotta be peak

[twilit sun]

How do you plan to animate it?

[little cargo]

i have no idea, but i want to do it

[twilit sun]

Also I got one idea

Maybe add slightly visible horizontal lines to make it look like an image from old screen?

[short wolf]

hold on i think youre cooking

before you get too deep, try the audiowide font for the title

[little cargo]

how to tell you

it is audiowide

[short wolf]

LOL

[little cargo]

the one for buttons is space grotesk

[short wolf]

what ab the buttons? space grotesk variable is what we use

omg

LOL

[little cargo]

[short wolf]

did you make the website?

[little cargo]

nah that was aristochat, i only did the svg logo for the website

[short wolf]

this one?

[little cargo]

yeah

[short wolf]

yes that looks so nice i wanted to steal it and use it for the main menu originally

[little cargo]

before it was meh

[little cargo]

what can i improve here?

[short wolf]

as a prototype is good. maybe slightly bigger logo and slightly smaller socials

Im gonna post a couple button layouts in here just react to whatever yall like most

[little cargo]

this one is the best in terms of visual focusing

[short wolf]

I agree

maybe no title on that layout would be even better

and a nice skyline in the background to top it all off

[little cargo]

title is a counterweight for social media buttons

[short wolf]

ahh okay

[short wolf]

Okay I've been really busy these past few weeks but I should have some free time to push some progress out on this. Looks like the majority of people like the left aligned buttons w/ a title and active backgrounds

So I'll just move the sprites around to be the position as before, and send a mockup

[delicate relic]

Great work so far. When you use the words “active background” here, do you mean a pixel cinemascape of a GTNH factory in action? (Because that would be awesome!)

[short wolf]

Thanks, by active background I mean backgrounds that have a lot going on. The current background style I would call active, given both the "noisy" nature of the images and the slideshow style