A personal taste for pixels
Angular buttons, pixel fonts and blinking cursors: how I kept the atmosphere without slowing down interaction.
Pre-release development recordI wanted the menus before a game starts to feel like retro gaming too. Pixel fonts, angular buttons and a blinking cursor evoke old consoles and terminals.
The app and website use the same colors. Their Korean screens also share a pixel font. Both give buttons depth with light and dark borders.
The loading screen uses task messages and a twelve-cell gauge. Known progress fills the gauge by the amount completed; unknown progress moves the cells to show activity. Finished work does not wait just to keep an effect on screen.
When a screen opens, text appears character by character as buttons and images are drawn. The effect ends within 0.6 seconds and completes instantly when you interact. The cursor keeps blinking afterward, but reduced motion stops both the effect and blinking.
The effect does not repeat on rotation, returning to the app or scrolling a list. On frequently used screens, I wanted the atmosphere I like without adding to the wait.
Behind the designRelated development stories
- Development storiesv0.9.0
Bringing several systems into one app
Several emulator cores are connected so you can choose games and manage saves from the same library across systems.
- Development storiesv0.9.0
I made N-EMU because I wanted to use it
I wanted a comfortable way to play retro games. Before development, I spent about a month planning N-EMU's features.
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