Main menu for game

You are a programmer which is cleary obvious from this picture
You make the menu as 2D image, you don't put anything there using code (like the font), you instead insert there a menu made fully by the artist in Photoshop. It will be several levels better and also faster and easier to make.

Save procedurally generated graphics for things inside the game that would be prohibitely expensive to made one by one by the artist.

You are a programmer which is cleary obvious from this picture
You make the menu as 2D image, you don't put anything there using code (like the font), you instead insert there a menu made fully by the artist in Photoshop. It will be several levels better and also faster and easier to make.

Save procedurally generated graphics for things inside the game that would be prohibitely expensive to made one by one by the artist.

Not everything is an image and code controls every aspect of the menu, as you can see here and im pretty sure that 4 images wouldnt cause any performance drop


[........]
UI.drawImage( 400.0f, 100.0f, 460, 100, ALIGN_CENTER, gfx[5] ); //logo
GLuint offset = 300;
button( 0, 0, offset, "START NEW GAME" );
offset += 44;
button( 0, 1, offset, "SELECT MISSION" );
offset += 64;
button( 0, 2, offset, "OPTIONS" );
offset += 44;
button( 0, 3, offset, "CREDITS" );
offset += 64;
button( 0, 4, offset, "LEAVE GAME" );
UI.drawText( FONT_DEFAULT, 790, 595, ALIGN_RIGHT, "BXEngine © BraXi 2012 [%s]", __DATE__ );


I like the background. It's hard to give a full opinion without seeing it animated, but generally I'd say the background looks good.

The buttons, on the other hand... I think they need some work. They don't look like they belong there. Normally, you want things to "flow" visually, or have some kind of relation. Artists often work with a set color palette to help give things a visual "flow" so you don't have a dark, mysterious background and then BAM! RED BUTTONS THAT LOOK LIKE A PROGRAMMER MADE THEM! Checking out some color palettes can help (Adobe has a cool site called Kuler devoted to this). In addition to a good color palette going on, you may want to add some motifs to your buttons or something.

Also, if you are simply looking for artistic feedback, this probably belongs in the Visual Arts forum...

I'm not an artist, so I can simply give you feedback as a player.

I spend about .05 seconds within any given main title screen of a game before choosing an option. I think the background's fine, but the buttons look pretty rough, and are kind of hard to read. Even though I spend so little time on a title screen, I do usually appreciate a nice animation when an option is chosen (all the buttons ease out and fly off screen or something).

Players probably won't judge your game too much by the title screen, since if they're looking at it they already intend to play it. Otherwise they wouldn't have downloaded/bought it. So it can't harm you that much, but a really smooth title screen with some creative interactivity can definitely help.

Check out "Gemcraft Labyrinth"'s title screen. That's probably a good style fit for what your background looks like. Smooth animations too!

I'm going to nitpick: the cursor is stretched horizontally more than vertically (the amount of scaling should be the same on both axes). May want to fix it so it shows with its proper proportions. Unless that thing is animated and I can't tell from the screenshot, that is...

And yeah, this probably belongs to the Visual Arts forum, given that you're looking for feedback for how it looks like. Unless you want us to criticize the options available, but we really can't do that if we don't know what the game is about.

Not everything is an image and code controls every aspect of the menu, as you can see here and im pretty sure that 4 images wouldnt cause any performance drop

I wrote it in a bit confusing way. To clarify, I know it was all done by the code, that's painfully visible. I recommended to NOT generate it by code but make it all as images that are prepared by an artist.

I'm a programmer myself and what you posted is the thing I would do myself as well So, I can say with a decent confidence that you are not able to do it, just turn it into a set of images and ask an artist to do it. It simply is not something that people like you or me can do, it should be done by those strange creatures they call "artists"

What would be cool is to show the 3D/2D background there, and when you select an option you fly somewhere in the previously background scene and appear in the game after some fancy effects to hide the transition. It should take just like a second though (or enough to load the actual scene)

Honest opinion: Not polished enough for release. Perhaps you can hire an artist for the title screen. You are probably going to get one for the logo right?

The background is awesome.

I think the buttons might work if you make them (quite a lot) darker red. Being as bright as they are now, they really stand out from there ^^

"One of them almost punched me in the face" is how much they stand out. Other than the button color, seems like a very nice menu.

I love the background, however like Alex said, the buttons do stand out rather strongly and to me, don't fit in for some reason. It should blend in a little more, in way that makes people feel like it should just be there and that its not part of a menu screen. < sounds weird, i know. BUT, doing a quick google search i found this:

http://www.decane.net/external/bos/diary/13_menu.jpg. And from it you can see what i mean. The menu buttons look like they belong on the background and don't pop out at you so much. But then again if a pop-out look is what you're going for. Stick with it.

I see you're right and i need to change these buttons, i will upload new picture when its done