Hacking Design Your Own Menu: Community Challenge!

[BassAceGold]

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I have gathered you here today to explain that:

• I am interested in creating a new replacement menu for the DS2 (feature wise like BAGPlug but better designed)
• I unfortunately realized (or maybe fortunate in this case?) that I have horrible menu design skills
• This will be an entirely new menu coded with the Supercard SDK (Runs on the DS2's processor)
• And finally, due to point 2 in this list, I need your help!

Basically, I was hoping that this community here could create the design specifications, and graphics if needed, for this replacement menu project. There are a few ground rules and things to keep in mind:

• I kinda want to get a working release coded fast, so menu customizability should really be limited to skinning. This means there would be only one menu design/layout that everyone would need to agree on. Perhaps once the menu cores and features are coded in, I could create alternate versions of the menu with new layouts.
• Can't do anything wifi related on the DS2 (using the Supercard SDK)
• The in game menu will not be affected by this menu.
• I do not have the details on enabling and disabling cheats from the cheat database per game, so I cannot really impliment a cheats menu. All I can do related to cheats is to turn the cheats option on or off per game, you'll still need to use the in game menu to select what cheats to use.
• I still have full control on what makes it into the menu or not. Decisions will be based on if my coding skills can achieve such feature, or if the hardware can handle said features.
• If this topic dies before a design is proposed, this project will die as well. (Obviously a sign of a lack of interest)
• I am coding this in my free time, which may vary depending on my schedule, so please be patient
• I won't start programming this until there is a complete menu design agreed on in this thread. It is much more easy to program something when there is a complete list of what is needed and how it works.

With those rules in place, please feel free to add your own suggestions on what you'd like to see, even if it is just a small feature you'd like added so other people can work it into their designs.







Designs must include:
-layouts for various menus
-what these menus contain and what happens in them
- how these menus are accessed (from one central place in the program? or from everywhere and how?, what kind of input is needed?)
-any details on how the menu graphics are presented or work (like certain parts animated or faded in, scrolling text)
This is probably best done with a flow chart to walk through the use of your menu and make sure there are no gaps in the process(Such as "Where do people pin icons, is there a home menu separate from a filebrowser?" kind of stuff.)

Basically, the goal here is to leave as little interpretation as possible on my part for the look and behavior of the menu. The main thing is to be very specific in what you would like to see and how it is implemented. General statements like "make it like menudo" are not really helpful and don't contribute to designs others may be working on.

Fine details are a must! I cannot read your mind on how you want some specific aspect of the menu to behave (like scrolling, fading in and out, pop up windows, flashing icons)


In conclusion, please help me design an almost perfect menu i.e. one that appeals to the broadest audience.

PS. Diagrams are helpful!

Here is a summary of the ideas that people have mentioned, not in any particular order, with some of the worst ideas removed...


Single list with or without icons
Grid with either original or double size icons, also 1.5x and 0.5x
Smooth scrolling
Change wallpaper from menu / timer
'Glow' for icon selection
Arrange icons by Name/Type/Used/Manual

Drag icons to the side or long press to reveal options (both views?)
> Customisable icons
> Customisable Name + Description
File type display selection - only .nds, only .plg etc.
File associations - .SMC = smes emulator etc.
-Icon info-
> three lines of text (from rom header)
> title/filename
SD card info - file sizes, free space etc.
Main 'Home screen' not related to folder paths
Most used games list
Groups like iOS and 3DS
Customisable tabs for different file types/genres
Brightness control
Some sort of widget support for clock, screenshot, info etc.

Show current file path
Boot menu (similar to the one from iMenu?) to allow changing of main .nds/plg menu

Stylus + D-pad controls for everything

Support EZ 3-in-1

Built in media player
Ability to rename/move/copy/delete files
Animated themes


So if someone wants to start coming up with some drawings based on the above info, then please do.

If your design is voted for the final menu, you must be prepared to make your design into its skin. (To help me more accurately code the menu to the design).

 

[VMM]

What do you think about creating a menu similar to Akaio and Wood menus

 

[Rydian]

I've always found the DSTwo's navigation of games a little weird, since I couldn't get a 1D list with icons.

So perhaps a 1D list (icons and no icons), a 2D grid with normal-sized icons, and also a 2D grid with double-size icons?

This kinda' sounds like other flash cart menus now that I think about it more (minus the double-size menus items).

 

[The Catboy]

What do you think about creating a menu similar to Akaio and Wood menus

This!
Features like custom icons, wifi updates, homebrew soft-reset, ect. Also suggest adding features from BagPlug.
Also made it easier to theme.

 

[BassAceGold]

What do you think about creating a menu similar to Akaio and Wood menus

This!
Features like custom icons, wifi updates, homebrew soft-reset, ect.

Sorry, shoulda mentioned in the first post that wifi can't be done with the supercard sdk. I've updated the first post.
However, I suppose a separate binary could be made to look for updates.

 

[The Catboy]

What do you think about creating a menu similar to Akaio and Wood menus

This!
Features like custom icons, wifi updates, homebrew soft-reset, ect.

Sorry, shoulda mentioned in the first post that wifi can't be done with the supercard sdk. I've updated the first post.
However, I suppose a separate binary could be made to look for updates.

Well Wifi updates was more of an example. Features like Homebrew soft-reset would be nice through.

Also on side note, adding features from like Sakura/Moonshell. Such as multi-media features and rom support all built into one system. Sakura was an amazing kernel, which did everything all in one kernel, it would be great to see something like that make it's return.

Plus I miss the feature where you could press down on a rom, drag it to the right to open the rom options. I also suggest being able to have two options, one to soft-reset roms and the other for RTS, not just RTS like the Supercard DSTwo has.

Not going to lie, most of my ideas are straight from Sakura and Wood R4/akAIO.

 

[Rydian]

Oh yeah, long-press on a ROM to open the settings? Sound workable?

I don't suppose that being able to re-arrange the ROMs in a folder/display (opposed to being alphabetical) would be possible?
But then it might as well be an icon-placement thing like in android.

 

[The Catboy]

In case anyone hasn't seen Sakura
http://www.youtube.c...A&v=wAl5tCUfY3I

It didn't change too much other than being more stable and adding the greatest feature I wish more flashcards had! The ability to either Soft-reset roms or RTS! I hate only having one or the other, Sakura gave the option to have both!
If you can make Supercard DSTwo more like M3 Sakura, that would be amazing!

 

[Terminator02]

I think it's worth bringing in some MENUdo themes into consideration, I like the way the menu flows fluidly. http://youtu.be/t0aJLo3etaY?t=17s

 

[The Catboy]

I think it's worth bringing in some MENUdo themes into consideration, I like the way the menu flows fluidly. http://youtu.be/t0aJLo3etaY?t=17s

Animated themes would be a cool idea!

 

[Rydian]

At least, allowing themes with more than two frames of animation. I've seen some two-frame animations done using the pulsing colon in the clock for AKAIO/Wood, allowing more frams of animation could make prettier things if people cared.

 

[BassAceGold]

My only problem with animation is the screen updating issue, as you folks already know, dual screen performance isn't that amazing. But animations could be enabled for one screen or the other, or both if the user wishes.

How I would go about supporting animations is probably in the skin.ini file, a new section could be added for each menu graphic to configure the number of frames and animation timings.

[graphics name]
frame_count = x
counter_total = y
counter_increment = z

Where frame_count is self explanitory, counter_total would be the total number of cycles to animate over, and counter_increment to modify the number the counter is increased each program cycle.

Also, does homebrew menu 4.1 support homebrew reset on the Supercard?

 

[Sicklyboy]

I'm with Catboy on this one, I think that having performance/design/features take a little bit of inspiration from Sakura/Moonshell would be phenomenal.

I don't have time to sketch anything up right now, but maybe tomorrow I can throw in a little bit of a design idea.

I think the nicest thing would be smooth scrolling animations. I've never seen a flashcart with one other than one running Sakura or when Moonshell is open. Every one I've seen (which is only a few) has just such "you're on this page, BOOM now you're on a new one" animation. A nice fluid scroll would be pure, enjoyable eye candy.

Edit - I think, as mentioned, multimedia capabilities also integrated into it would be orgasmic.

 

[The Catboy]

Also, does homebrew menu 4.1 support homebrew reset on the Supercard?

What is the button combination for the soft-reset?

 

[BassAceGold]

Also, does homebrew menu 4.1 support homebrew reset on the Supercard?

What is the button combination for the soft-reset?

It isn't really a button combination. It must be programmed into the launched homebrew program.
http://devkitpro.org/wiki/Homebrew_Menu#Exit_to_Menu_Protocol

 

[spinal_cord]

I'll have to vote for a sakura/moonshell2 style file selector with nice ease-in-out scrolling.
features-wize, I think it should load a most recent/used files list by default (unless first run of course), with 'B' (or whichever button) returning to the folder containing the most recently loaded file.

 

[Mars_x]

Maybe taking the mobile interface style to the console?
The Vita did it, the 3DS has similar workings too. Maybe something
like that would be possible with the system capabilities, yes?

Heres what I have in mind:
- Grid Style Menu (Icons aligned in a grid, up & down scrolling using the touchscreen or D-Pad)
- Icons (Arrange any way you want, alphabetically, recently played... change the size (2x, 4x, etc), option to change the name or icon, etc)
- Groups (Touch an Icon for one second, then drag and drop it into another icon to create a group)
- Tap X do delete (Touch and Icon for one second, release and small "x" will appear in the upper corner, tap it to erase that file)
- Menu Tabs (Upper or Lower section of the screen, Tabs for Games, Homebrew, Media... maybe even the ability to add your own tabs, Favorites, Books, etc)

Everything with smexxy eyecandy, silk smooth animations, bouncy scroll view, pixel perfect graphics, themeing possible and what about adding widgets to the upper
screen? It would be awesome. You want a Clock? Bam! Widget'd, wanna change the look of it? Change the widget settings. How about a screenshot widget that shows screenshots of the current icon selected? How about a music widget that plays music while scrolling trough your awesome games and homebrew? And maybe a widget to change the screen brigthness easily? A quick-note widget? Calendar? Want nothing but your wallpaper with that hot girl with big bewbs!? The possibilities!

Eveyone is getting used to touchscreen devices, be it the last generation consoles, smartphones, tablets or even PC screens.
Taking new generation interface systems to old hardware would be interesting.

Im sorry if this post is not what's needed, I know nothing about the DS2 or how it works.
Just throwing some ideas here!

 

[BassAceGold]

Alright, so far, the general consensus is that everyone wants smooth scrolling lists (and or grids too) with icons.

Now in order to do this, every icon would need to be cached ahead of time. This means that some limits will need to be enforced, such as the maximum number of icons per screen. This could be limited through a maximum number of files per folder, but too few files per folder is frustrating, and too many files eat memory.

Lets say we want to use 16 x 16 icons for files. Each icon in ram will use slightly more than 512 bytes. If we limit each folder to 256 files, thats a minimum of 128 kilobytes of memory used right there. Now, how slow do you think your sd card could load 256, 512 byte files? There are lots of factors to take into consideration here. Of course, increasing the icon resolution would increase the memory requirements, unless it is scaled upward in software, which won't look too amazing.

So make sure to keep such thoughts in mind with your menu designs as well. I only have 30 megabytes of ram to work with here, not the hundreds that other touch screen devices have.

I'm not saying these ideas are bad, its just we also need clever ways of applying said ideas within the design so that it appears possible within our hardware restraints.

 

[spinal_cord]

Not sure how your pixeling the gfx yet, but for different icon sizes, you could just do a 2x, 3x, 4x pixel resize during rendering rather than using different resolution icons. To make it look nice though, go the DSi/3DS route and add a nicely rendered border to the icons that way it gives the illusion of higher resolution icons.

Also, if you use a single list rather than a grid, you wouldn't need to cache all of the icons, just a few either side of the screen. Loading one icon at a time shouldn't be too slow.

 

[Technicmaster0]

Alright, so far, the general consensus is that everyone wants smooth scrolling lists (and or grids too) with icons.

Now in order to do this, every icon would need to be cached ahead of time. This means that some limits will need to be enforced, such as the maximum number of icons per screen. This could be limited through a maximum number of files per folder, but too few files per folder is frustrating, and too many files eat memory.

Lets say we want to use 16 x 16 icons for files. Each icon in ram will use slightly more than 512 bytes. If we limit each folder to 256 files, thats a minimum of 128 kilobytes of memory used right there. Now, how slow do you think your sd card could load 256, 512 byte files? There are lots of factors to take into consideration here. Of course, increasing the icon resolution would increase the memory requirements, unless it is scaled upward in software, which won't look too amazing.

So make sure to keep such thoughts in mind with your menu designs as well. I only have 30 megabytes of ram to work with here, not the hundreds that other touch screen devices have.

I'm not saying these ideas are bad, its just we also need clever ways of applying said ideas within the design so that it appears possible within our hardware restraints.

Maybe you could make a loading screen for the icons. But it shouldn't be too long because it's annoying to wait after each folder. Moonshell got a MP3 player and a filebrowser at the same time without extra hardware.