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Radial menu

Software concept

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Includes menu(s) where the cursor or selector originates in the center & items are displayed around it.

102
games
18
platforms

Alternate names: Pie menu, Ring menu

Properly designed radial menus can greatly reduce time the player spends using the interface. 4 or 8 items per ring are well suited for digital gamepad directions as well as analog controllers (joysticks, mice, motion control). Once a player learns where an item is in the radial menu, selecting an item, even from multiple sub menus, can be much like a special move in a (Menukey >, Menukey ^ > > v >). This works best when there are a predefined number of slots and each item the player can acquire has a preset place in the menu. This can also mask, somewhat, the inventory spoiler problem. Where as a player can often see empty spots in traditional inventories that are bound to filled with 'something' at some point. The player can wonder about the 20 possible ways to fill or not fill an 8-direction radial menu where each possibility counted does not reveal for certain if there are empty spots left. (the menu may be only 4, 3, or 2 direction)
Apparently constructing a generic radial menu template is so hard that all modern cases of radial menu are custom built.

The most common "generic" radial menus have the pie divided into pre-defined number of slots (commonly 4 or 8) to which any and all actions are assigned with some slots occasionally left empty.

Popular tags

actionadventure actionrpg auroraengine cdrom cpplanguage directx8 directx9 disrupt-engine fmod gtalike leveleditor lootemup lua metroidvania netframework opengl osx physx rageengine sdl serialkey stealthgame steamworks survivalhorror towerdefense ubuntu vorbis win2k win98 winvista winxp x360pad x86-64

Parent group

Interface

Child group

Dialog wheel

Games by year

86889092949698000204060810121416182022 24612180

The first Radial menu video game was released in 1986.

Ubisoft, Rockstar Games, Bethesda Softworks and Atari published most of these games.

Related sites

Platforms

Windows43
Linux17
Mac OS X9
X3608
PS36
PS44
Xbox One3
SNES2
Sharp X11
BeOS1
BSD1
C641
Switch1
Apple II E1
NEC PC88011
MSX21
GBA1
Wii1

Most common companies