The image-based menu is another menu-presentation approach. Unlike the text-based menu, the image-based menu uses 2D picture as the content of every menu item and makes the game navigation user interface more attractive and innovative. It gives graphic designers a much bigger space for conceiving ideas for a game. An image-based menu easily stimulates the designers’ and programmers’ creativities. The image menu item can swipe in and swipe out, jump in and jump out, or fade in and fade out. In this recipe, you will learn how to create an image-based menu system and use it in your own Windows Phone 7 game.
As an example, the image menu items are placed horizontally on the screen. When you tap one of them, it will grow up and the current item index shows at the top-left of the screen; once the tapped position is outside of its bound, the menu will restore to the initial state. Now, let’s build the application.