Sanctimonia says:

If you go to

http://www.eightvirtues.com/sanctimonia/sience/

and look in the HUD directory you’ll find the images I use for menu borders as well as mock ups and unused variations.

I’d treat menu borders and menu interiors like tiles so that they may be arranged around the choices in any given menu. Make them interconnective with horizontal, vertical and corner tiles (three images).

For the interior you could forgo tiles and just use one image, maybe a parchment or stone type background with a subtle yet clearly visible dark to transparent gradient at a 45 degree angle. Just clip it to fit within the menu border tiles and render it first so the border tiles overwrite its edges.

As far as menu choice arrangements, make it an “obvious to an idiot” type hierarchy starting with maybe three or four choices (never more than four). Things like Play, Audio, Video and maybe Network. Make each sub-menu have -only- things that directly pertain to it; no hybrids ever (no meta-settings or settings with dependencies in other menu choices). All that just confuses people and causes bugs.

Here’s my idea of a good menu, off the top of my head:

Play
–Resume Last Save
–Load Saved Game
–Manage Saves
Audio
–Output Type
–Volume Levels
Video
–Mode
–Detail
Network
–Server
–Updates

From the mockup in TFA it looks like two wood images are used for the main border, just rotated 90 degrees. One thing that would make the main border look immediately better would be to render each side in an orbital order, such as clockwise or counter-clockwise. Would make a recognizable pattern like wicker-work. You could just do it twice for the two rectangular hemispheres, or stage it individually to save rendering time.

The menu shown looks like a directory listing with a bug showing a date rather than a file name. Maybe they’re just variable names?

In any case, draw the menu the same way you would the main border. Drop shadows optional.