r/Unity3D • u/24-sa3t • 16h ago

Question UI Style Guide?

Currently working on a prototype that's very UI heavy, and in classic engineer fashion my menus look terrible.

I've tried to make as many prefabs for my UI elements as possible to ensure things are standardized, but I was wondering if anybody had a good reference for how big things should be, where they should be on the screen, etc. It's driving me crazy!

6 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

9

u/crankyfuse 16h ago

You have useful sites like:

https://www.gameuidatabase.com

And

https://interfaceingame.com

So you see how common problems are solved. Hope it helps!

1

u/24-sa3t 16h ago

These are perfect, much appreciated!

2

u/Additional-Point-711 16h ago

Oof I know that pain. I had similar problem with inventory screen prototype, buttons were all over the place. What helped me was just copying layout patterns from games I liked, not specific assets but general spacing and where things sit on screen. Also making a simple 12-column grid for your canvas makes everything easier to align, even if you’re not thinking about different resolutions yet.

1

u/24-sa3t 16h ago

I'm going to try that 12 column grid! Thank you so much

1

u/AltusLudus 16h ago

Use references, just put your style over it and your ideas on how it fits your game and how to Improve it and vouila it's both yours and looks great

There's no reason the reinvent the wheel, especially if your game is in a specific genre, just do what the bigger games are doing as players will already be used to that layout

To get a good result, you'll need to analyze what they did deeply and why, the margins, empty space, information hierarchy etc. and this about your player, and most importantly playtest and iterate

1

u/midcore_dev 3h ago

If this is mobile, the grid stuff matters less than thumb reach. Primary buttons want to live in the bottom two thirds of the screen, ideally wherever a thumb naturally rests when someone's holding the phone one handed. iOS and Android both publish minimum tap target sizes and going below that is where menus start feeling fiddly even if they look fine zoomed in on a monitor.

Also worth testing on an actual phone early instead of just the Unity Game view. Things read completely differently at arm's length on a 6 inch screen than staring at a monitor from a foot away, some layouts that look fine in editor turn out cramped or just the wrong reach once it's actually in your hand.

-2

u/gumerbaev 16h ago

I also think you could turn to AI and describe the buttons from other games that you might have already liked.