Essentially just look at the menu as an alternate state for your Update and Draw features. I.e. If!InMenu - then draw the game, else draw the menu. Then you have your menu show up as you would any other gameobjects, and your updates/interactions are just focused on presenting the menu now.

If you're talking about a particular engine, like Torque, GameMaker or Unity, there maybe some options to purchase an interesting menu system, but you need to include what engine your talking about.

I'm wondering how I would make a Real Time Main Menu for a game? What program? (Free, Please)

This isn't a Game Design question, so I'm moving it to For Beginners.

If you don't know how to make a menu then you don't know how to make a game.

Actually, I do know how to make a menu. This question is for a real time rendering menu...

Actually, I believe that you seems to know how to use an API that provide menu components... You don't seem to understand that your "menu" is just another game element that is managed like other game elements and displayed if your game state tells that it should be displayed.

Actually, I do know how to make a menu. This question is for a real time rendering menu...

Several people have asked this, but I'm interested too.

What kind of menu do you create that is not *real-time*? Why is it not? Are you creating menu's that some how have lag?

And what do you think makes a Real-Time menu? I'm guessing that your just not asking your question in a way that anyone understands. Real-time, is a common term. According to Wikipedia, "Real-time programs must guarantee response within strict time constraints." And so when we create menus, we typically expect a response to the players actions to be instant. I.e. when the player clicks, there is no perceivable time that passes before the program reacts and either begins its animations to the next menu or immediately displays the next menu or what ever other task was expected.

The only thing I can imagine, is that your menus are somehow resolved based on Client/Server interactions. I.e. you see lag/loss of real-time because of the network delays. If that is the case, you should make sure that your client side has all the menu's it needs immediately, and that additional network based options load after the view is already visible. Or, in a separate thread, download the menu options (for the menu items available to click) behind the scenes so that if it is clicked, it already has its content on the way. and if you click something else, stop the loading threads that aren't associated with the new menu.

Again, if you are expecting to purchase a component for this, you need to include what engine or language you are developing your game in. HTML? Silverlight, Unity, GameMaker, C++, Java, etc...? Any menu components that exist are typically dependant on that information at least. But honestly, most people just develop their own, as the menus are far easier than the rest of the game development.

You may also want to consider where you are spending your time and money on this project. Unless the 'fun' of your games is in the menu system, you should really just put the easiest/most obvious thing in for it, and spend your time on the components people will play.