Indie Game Devlog - Making the Main Menu

[@DevDuck]

Great progress! You have a wonderful eye for UI design, everything seems to match the aesthetic of Homegrown very well. Everything you do in this devlog reminds me not to take these pre-made components for granted in the game engine I use! PS - I needed the Rufus update, thank you.

[@yugam6578]

Hello Godot game developer

[@pengurrito7136]

Hey I watch your vids too! Small world!

[@danielladwig3845]

My two fav game devs 🎉

[@pichers5528]

We*** need the Rufus update!!!

[@GuildOfCalamity]

Last iteration of the buttons was much nicer!

[@Ermuggo]

You should make the pause menu background to be a view of the garden through a window from within the house. Like the player character would be just idly having a coffee and watching their garden grow

[@_egi_]

Awesome idea! A cup of steaming coffee/tee would take user mmediately to the idle relaxing mood 👍🏻

[@pichers5528]

I never comment on videos, and I never check the comments, but decided to do so this time... This comment section just made me realize the entire community around your channel are as wholesome as your videos. Basically every comment is a positive one, and a lot of them are positive feedback, which makes whatching this videos even better, knowing you have a lot of consideration for your community and it's feedback. Just love to see it. Keep it up, because every single thing tou add to a game, or every little pause you make in your video script just fits perfectly with everything else

[@ThinMatrix]

Thanks a lot for the nice comment! ^^

[@jackdavenport5011]

8:40 can we all appreciate how gorgeous that transition is, these videos are amazing

[@dylancope]

"I was able to reuse some code... I'm not sure why it took so long to be honest" As a fellow programmer, this is very relatable

[@AuramAlexander]

I think from a UX perspective it would be nice to have buttons like Quit or Delete be painted in red or some contrasting color so that it's clear they'll have consequences. Also that chili looked delightful

[@kakschoen]

Also, the play/load button should probably be to the right as it is kind of a 'next' action. I can see myself hastily clicking Delete all the time. I also like double-click to load immediately as an option.

[@MC4IOSgamer]

This does make sense for many uses but is often ignored for video game menus (in my experience). Minecraft for instance uses the simple silvery grey stone color for all buttons. Edit, delete, etc etc

[@corvineberlein]

Wow, that last design you showed looks really slick! One bit of feedback I'd like to throw in is to add a "Master" volume slider as well as mute buttons for each individual sound category. I always like being able to quickly mute music, for example if I wanna listen to Spotify instead. Or quickly mute the game without having to remember what volume level I had it on.

[@clonkex]

Agreed! Sound controls are much more important than many developers realise.

[@toffl8243]

Minor issue but I noticed the kerning of the font isn't displayed correctly. This is kind of difficult to explain but kerning is basically an adjustment of the gap between certain letters, for example with "Te" the letters, or rather the rectangular areas each letter is in, have to overlap slightly so the gap doesn't look unnaturally big. This is usually included in fonts and most text editors are able to display kerning. On the "My Farm" button for example the gap between the F and a looks really big. In the mock-up you made in gimp it looks normal because the kerning is displayed correctly. Not a huge issue but I thought I should point it out and lastly ofc thanks for another great dev log :)

[@bluesillybeard]

I didn't notice it at first, but now that I look again it's very strange looking.

[@ThinMatrix]

Yeah, I never implemented that into my text rendering system. It's on my to-do list, hopefully I'll get round to it soon!

[@toffl8243]

​@@ThinMatrix great to hear! me and the other typography nerds appreciate it

[@defman21]

Looks great! For the audio settings tab, I’d recommend to add the “master volume” slider which controls both the effects and the music.

[@hamzahgamedev]

I stand guilty of procrastination and that's when I know it is time to see Thin Matrix. Since I am myself making an open-world farming game, your devlogs serves as a boost of motivation and inspire me to carry forward. All the best for Home Grown and Tnx for these devlogs man. Keep them coming!

[@Jejkobbb]

I would love to see you do a game jam sometime, your process seems to always be so thought out and planned and meticulous, which of course makes sense when you're doing a big project. But I think it would be interesting to see what you could make if you have the limit of just a weekend to make a game.

[@ToufouMaster]

i fully agree, but just be sure you don't put too much pressure on yourself.

[@Antantic_]

Wow, you've done a tremendous and high-quality job. I also need to create a menu and UI in my game, but it seems I'm still far from starting to work on that. Wishing you success!

[@alskidan]

I like your UI very much! It has such strong Wii vibes!

[@Mikaminei]

Great Video! Could you maybe do a new Engine Making Series? That Would be so cool! 😊

[@lucbloom]

When working with UI and state animations, it’s helpful to have speed control buttons: - minus key = slow down game by 50% each time + plus key boosts x2 Speed up will save you a lot of waiting for UI animations and with slow down you can catch bugs that occur when you click UI really fast (before it’s done animating) We have one key, ctrl-minus which halts the game (speed multiplier=0), but keeps the update loops going.

[@lnhh]

eyy, you've finally upgraded to a nice mechanical keyboard! love it

[@vazzius]

The UI is looking so comfy, congratz! One suggestion on the My Farms is to start with an option selected, maybe the last one played, so you won't need to disable the buttons (as it seems once you select one you can't deselect), that would come in handy if you're going to implement controller support :D

[@Jejkobbb]

I love these videos so much

[@sasquatchbgames]

Loving the progress! The UI feels cozy and perfect for Homegrown

[@TheSapling]

Awesome, love this video. Also a tip: playtests show that users prefer 'undo' buttons over confirmation dialogues (and personally, I agree). They're not always possible, but I believe for deleting save files they are (you could have a temporary trash bin under the hood for example).

[@chickentenderlover2412]

i also read this somewhere, users now have a tendency to just continue clicking through because we have become conditioned to do it. having an undo button in more games would honestly be much appreciated.

[@codehawkfalcon]

Looking great. Thanks for sharing the video early!

[@lnhh]

And youve also switched to Jetbrains IDEA away from Eclipse. Love it as well :)

[@hedralotfy5081]

Great work! The UI and the scaling of it are great! For the buttons in the "My farms" option, I'd suggest adding a checkbox beside each saved farm so that you can select multiple farms to be deleted, and when you select multiple savings the load button is grayed out.

[@nivmiz0]

Love both the progress on Homegrown and the video itself! Your visual style really is amazing and the devlogs are super relaxing and nice to watch.

[@GameDevAcademy]

Another great update. Keep them coming :)

[@Narsuaq]

I REALLY enjoy watching this series. It's so facinating, satisfying, and beautiful to watch. Can't wait to get my hands on this game.

[@Skeffles]

This UI looks fantastic! I particularly like the animations you've added

[@Draconicrose]

It's shaping up really good. I really like the changes you made at the end, with the darker outlines.

[@gloomxd2204]

im sure plenty people have said this before, but man your pc setup and the view you have during these beautiful months... it's so cozy

[@philldev]

The UI ended up looking amazing! Definitely worth the time you spent on it :) I can't even imagine the amount of work it takes to code in all the positions and anchors yourself! Keep up the good work!!

[@PatteKi]

Really like the "new", flatter, simpler UI-Design on the end of the video. The game logo on the end also looks very nice :D

[@filamentofbulb]

You look like a great cook. I love that more than the game itself XD. Would love to see a setup tour someday...

[@ElianeGameDev]

I absolutely love your designs. It's not easy to be a good programmer and a good artist, and you are both! Your game looks really good.

[@Okapifan]

Looks great again! Thanks for sharing again! Erina

[@filiprank9870]

Dude, your room looks amazing!

[@CausticTitan]

I'd like a video, even like a KZbin short, on what your general workflow is. I see your Trello board in a few shots, it'd be nice to see how you organize your thoughts, plans, bugs, etc.

[@zombieslayamr]

Insane progress! Something about Getting around to finally developing the UI is starting to make it feel and look like a more complete game!. Looking forward to future videos!!

[@kanethedev]

I really like how he pays attention to the small implications like the button stretching. It's just little things that take so long to implement but TM still does it. Keep it up!

[@JoelFunk]

As always, an incredible video! I love following along and every video is so relaxing. Amazing progress!

[@brodierivers9912]

Amazing update as always, thank you for these great dev logs

[@JacobPernell]

I love your cooking interludes in the middle of each video haha

[@smenigat]

5:43 slowly adopting to the german culture I see 🤣 Love those devlogs, they are not just interesting from an software engineering perspective, you also put quite some work in to make those videos visually appealing. The videos always emit a cozy and warm kind of vibe that makes me come back every time.

[@Lynqoid]

Looking great so far, good luck! :)

[@danielawesome36]

Side note: The view where you're working is *_the dream._*

[@stickguy9109]

Man the UI turned out great. Looks visually very pleasing if you ask me

[@morgan0]

a suggestion for the farm list, if you take a screen capture when saving, you could display that as the background when selecting that farm, which could help you remember better which is which. and for the normal background, you could have multiple images that are reprojected to slowly look around a bit without needing to store a lot of frames or load in a save file.

[@IdealIdleIncremental]

Thank you for sharing! It's always interesting to peek what other developers have to show.

[@LifeOfMohammed]

Looks awesome as always!

[@ThinMatrix]

Thanks! :)

[@SecondsGuess]

Outstanding work all around! 👏

[@martinben6970]

Nice progress and looking good. Really looking forward to final product. (And in this case also for early access which I usually don't do.) Only, as a professional QA, I would recommend for "My Farms" section always offer option to get directly back to Main Menu. (Although I understand it is still WIP and first implementation.) Love the part where you were thinking about corrupted save files right in the first implementation

[@eboatwright_]

This is awesome! I love the contrast from Equilinox's sleek minimalistic UI

[@BaileyFM]

That responsive UI is really impressive. Well Done!

[@ArtemShoobovych]

Over the years I came from "how can you not have spare time for pet projects?" to "I deeply respect you if you can spend this much time on your pet project!"

[@ryanrachic5150]

You inspire me to continue to work on my own coding passions!! Its always great to go back and remind myself what is possible. Also make me want to get some plants for my desk lol

[@wdudafa6958]

Wow, its always interesting and inspiring to see you come up with all your game systems, good work!!!!!

[@mitchellmnr]

Something to add .... add photos of the farms in the save view rather than text. There was a YT'ber that did a whole discussion on game UIs ... cannot remember who/what it was sorry... But one thing he stated and I agree with him... something visual for the saves over just text - since there isn't anything but text to distinguish farms and if you came back to the game after a while, you'd have to go into each one to visually remember To add to this, if you have a 'snap' of the farm, you could also set the main menu background as the snap if you are currently playing a farm - so visually you are still in it even thought you at the menu :)

[@NeilRoy]

Very nice. I liked your solution to the UI scaling.

[@TyZo]

Man, everything is really coming together. Can’t wait for final release!

[@mc.friday]

Fellow indi gamedev up here too. Can confirm that UI and visuals usually take much more time than anticipated. A nice progerss you have done, willing to see where it all would come by.

[@uzguruzb]

9:01 you could make active last played game, so the buttons become active itself, you're working quite, I wouldn't be able to do so much work just myself, good luck on your hard work 👍👍

[@baunders5241]

I'm getting FarmVille vibes and im all for it

[@Juampi1990]

Thanks for sharing all the process with us. Really love the updates. Can you show anytime what you write inside a Trello Card? Would like to see the way you think / organize the project.

[@MaxisThe8]

A video on how you use Trello and plan stuff out would be really awesome. Ty for the vids!

[@karole5646]

Woah super cool, main menu always is the hardest part for me

[@mirandaart3012]

Your meals look delicious! Loved watching the process of making a main menu, I have yet to actually start my game (in the concepting part) and feel I have to get it done in one day as it seems like a "simple" thing to add to a game, but watching you I realized I have to take the time and think of what I want to accomplish with it (never thought of if someone adjusted the window of a game) :o

[@verdantblast]

Every time I see your videos, I envy your working environment.

[@dsa267]

Great progress! I think a little zoom-in effect when loading/creating a world would bring more life in the experience :) Of course just one tip for your polishing phase

[@devbre]

Great update to your UI! looks to clean! 🎉

[@alegian7934]

"I forgive myself" cracked me up 😂

[@MeetMistry-ye5yk]

Hey Man ! The Final shot of the UI looks really Good. A small enhancement you can add is to use icons along with text in buttons . PS: Your cooked food looks delicious ;)

[@adio]

the ui looks great. keept it up m8 ;)

[@Jadushnew]

Cool UI! There is one idea I have: At the beginning, you had a view of a farm as a background. What you could do is show a view of the last played farm. When you then press play, the UI could Slide to the side to the edge of the screen and disappear and the in-game UI could Slide up from the edges. Then you would load into the farm very smoothly (it could be a little bit like when you spawn in Battlefield 1 or V). Also then you could rename the second button to "change Farm" :)

[@Orblets]

Not sure how possible it would be but I think a cool home screen background would be a top down view of the last farm that was played in. So when the game is saved the camera like zooms out and snaps a pic of the current state of that save and then that pic can be used for the background of the homescreen

[@joellehippoYT]

Your cooking looks great!

[@Astralklinge]

Looks great ! Thanks for sharing the progess!

[@popsters_]

looking awesome!, if your releasing on steam, it would be interesting to be able to upload saves to the workshop so others can see what you've achieved!

[@alylibri]

amazing progress!

[@acirclecow6042]

Very nice. Good work!😊

[@gaadvis]

If delete function is irreversible, it's advisable to show the user a confirmation "Are you sure that you want to delete this farm?" (Yes/No). Just to make sure that the user doesn't delete their save by accident.

[@HiAdrian]

9:57 he seems to be aware. Also, labeling buttons Delete/Cancel (ideally color-coded) is safer for the brain than Yes/No, even if it seems redundant.

[@kairon156]

It's nice to see proper UI scaling being created.

[@LacrosseFever18]

Would you do a video on your project planning and feature specs? I really like the way you have your Trello board layed out but I'm wondering on your thought processes when making it

[@5y1k]

An interesting idea would be to add insects, birds and small mammals from Equilinox to the area outside the farm to add some life to the surroundings...

[@falcowinkler2429]

looks stunning!

[@lucbloom]

Tip for UI work: make a multi-window renderer where you can see the UI in more than 1 Aspect Ratio. That way, you can always keep an eye out for misbehaving layouts. You can also use one of them for debug info and an in-game cheat menu (quick reload, give $$$, open sceneX). Beats overlays by a long shot. Do you use unit tests? Because you can also test UI by making an assortment of screenshots every night and viewing them though html.

[@OliviaTheVampyr]

Was thinking about this also!

[@patricknercessian5940]

This is really great! It would be cool if you saved a (blurred) image of each farm along with its save fole, and display that as the background when you select it in the My Farms page

[@Jack_McKalling]

For the "Load" function, you should implement a double-click shortcut on the save files, so you don't have to move the mouse to the Load button specifically once a file is selected, just click twice quickly

[@aaronkrugel4471]

Loving your UI until now. It has a cozy and light feel wich resonates well with the game. I’m not sure about the infintely scaling Buttons. In Webdesign I mostly use a ‚max size‘ so things don’t become unpropotionate when viewed on large/wide screens. (I believe you already use max width for the saves) Also for the sake of immersion, if it‘s not to unfeasable, when going to the menu most games „pause“ the game and use the current view as a backdrop for the menu. Keep up the great work. Love your videos.

[@kaesebrot9054]

For the background image I’d suggest to have the house facing to the left instead of to the right. Mainly because currently it is leading your eyes to the right of the screen instead of back to the menu options on the left

[@paul8731]

Looks great well done ✅

[@ThatNerdGuy0]

would it be possible to detect what is erroring out and then default that to some value, so that you could give the option of "return to menu" or "fix error (may lose progress)"

[@ThinMatrix]

That's an interesting idea, I'll have to think about it!

[@scrumptious1177]

Your dog is so adorable!!!!

[@ZahhibbDev]

Looks great, very nice progress and you have a good eye for UI! When it comes to menus I'd also suggest you to make some simple flowcharts of how the navigation and interaction will work between each menu page, mostly to find pain points. :p

[@AnkitSinghKushwah]

You taught me a lot. Thank you.

[@viniciuscosta2646]

Really really nice :) I'd use the leaves as W in the homegrown logo, instead of putting them separating "home" and "grown"

[@ArtemShoobovych]

A suggestion / idea to consider: why not generate a screenshot of the farm before the app is closed and then show it as the background once the save file is selected?

[@kypshas]

Regarding the farms menu, according to Microsoft, the more important button should always be on the right side . for example popups with (Cancel) and the (Okay). So I'd put the load button on the right and move delete to the left. as well as maybe reducing it's hierarchy (now it's the same weight as Load) by making the delete button smaller or colored in a different color.

[@garimeragonols]

I think the more info about your save could show a screenshot of the farm, I think seeing the layout will give the most info to the player because they will remember probably what they were doing there. Otherwise it looks really great!

[@360McCarthy]

Who said Christmas doesn't come early! Have a great Christmas Thin!

[@jamesbaconreid]

Looks perfect! Keep it :)