Request For Feedback: I'm considering two different possible screen layouts for the title screen, showing the difficulty selection. In either case, the currently-selected level number is flashing to indicate that it's selected. Furthermore, there's a hidden 5th difficulty level "Dark Souls" - When Dark Souls is chosen on the existing layout (the full menu version) - Dark Souls slides up from the bottom, and it slides back off-screen if you select something else. In my mock-up version, it wouldn't bother doing that - I'd just make none of the numbers flash, but "Dark Souls" would be shown below as the difficulty level.
Which one looks better to you?
Does either / both / neither version give you the intuitive cue that pressing keyboard 1-4 is how to select difficulty?
In whatever case, pressing select on the controller will cycle through the difficulties as if you had pressed a key (skipping Dark Souls unless you do the "unlock" input)
Would this interface add confusion in the sense that pressing ANYTHING else is what starts the game?
The full-menu version is what's currently implemented, but I'm not completely happy with it, so I decided to do a mock-up of what my other idea is, and get feedback from the community as to which is more eye appealing and/or makes intuitive sense as to what you're expected to do.
Bear in mind that this all has to be done with sprites / graphics, as the one and only tilemap is devoted to the scrolling pipes/ground, and it would require implementing a raster IRQ to bring an area of writable text display up - so adding things like "press ANYTHING to begin" is not a simple task....
