New loading screens have been a LONG time coming. Just as a thought exercise, have a look at the Steel Canyon loading screen and note the buildings lit up at night. All the windows are lit up, which is something that was changed in... 2004? 2005 at most. Those are the original loading screens the game had in Beta. They are old, they are grainy and low-res, they display the game in a way that it hasn't been in for years, and they're overall due for an update. And, really, can it be THAT much work to update them? I'd understand if they were some kind of custom artwork that required an artist's time for days and weeks, but they're just screenshots of the zone overlaid over sights centred on the zone over the larger city map. The picture itself half an hour to an hour's work in Illustrator, Photoshop, Gimp, Flash or whatever you can use, and the screenshots themselves can't be more than 15-20 minutes' worth of work.
A while ago I made a couple of simplistic posters for my Dual Pistols character in about an hour for both of them, including taking, cropping and resizing screenshots as well as putting the whole thing together in Flash, and I'm about as ungifted artistically as you can get. These loading screens just make the game look a LOT worse than it actually is.
Personally, what I feel needs to happen is someone needs to go around the zones after Ultra Mode and take screenshots with MAXIMUM details, then craft completely brand new loading screens for everything, including the main menu, and compile those in as high a resolution as possible, which I assume is 1920x1200. No more grainy, distorted backgrounds.
Which reminds me - can we PLEASE allow full-screen pics and menus to scale to maintain their own aspect ratio, rather than stretching to fit whatever the resolution is? Currently, all of our backgrounds and full-screen menus (i.e. the enhancements screen, the tailor and so forth) are all designed around 4x3, which means they stretch vertically on 5x4 (1280x1024) or stretch horizontally on 16x10 (1280x900, 1920x1200, etc.) and neither looks good. The actual in-game UI looks just fine, but everything else is stretched, and it doesn't have to be. Just scale it up and let it leave black borders on the sides if it has to.
It's the little things that keep reminding us how old this game is.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
|
Id' like a new default loading screen, that showed Heroes, Villains and Praetorians together.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
Quote:
That, and widescreen-friendly please
|
Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Id' like a new default loading screen, that showed Heroes, Villains and Praetorians together.
|
/Signed and /Signed
New log-in screen, new loading and zone screens, please.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Zwillinger
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
 |
Loading screens that look good on 1920x1200 resolution please. 
Playstation 3 - XBox 360 - Wii - PSP
Remember kids, crack is whack!
Samuel_Tow: Your avatar is... I think I like it
I don't really care much about the art, but some new ones for GR would be cool.
Quote:
But then you went and said this^^^ and won me over. Please, no more stretch screens |
Originally Posted by Ramen
That, and widescreen-friendly please
|
There are no words for what this community, and the friends I have made here mean to me. Please know that I care for all of you, yes, even you. If you Twitter, I'm MrThan. If you're Unleashed, I'm dumps. I'll try and get registered on the Titan Forums as well. Peace, and thanks for the best nine years anyone could ever ask for.
All of the above.
While it'll probably be too small and unnecessarily time consuming to be high priority, but I feel it's worth the effort. It doesn't have to be complicated like making a new skin/screen from the ground up, but for the newer players traveling to the zone for the very first time, they get to feel the "Wow... In a few moments, I'll get to see that up close!" And yes, while some players will feel disappointed that their game doesn't look as good as it could be, that may just be all someone needs to decide that it's time for an upgrade.
I know I just upgraded my computer last october, but I darn well want to keep upgrading! I want be Ultra Mode ready! I just... Don't have the money right now... But I will! (Mark my words... >_>)
- Fire Lilly
Quote:
Could we also call them wideload screens?
|
Originally Posted by Demobot
Yes, widescreen loading screens would be very, very awesome.
|
Playstation 3 - XBox 360 - Wii - PSP
Remember kids, crack is whack!
Samuel_Tow: Your avatar is... I think I like it
Since we can switch sides in GR, can we go back to the old origin graphics that were used in the character listing screens? Pretty please?
Yes, PLEASE. This would be such a nice QoL update. If Paragon's taken so much time developing Ultra Mode, a feature entirely made to make the game more attractive, it would seem absurd that they can't go the extra mile and redo the loading screens.
Quote:
Ugh... This isn't something that should take a lot of effort. Just to put my money where my mouth is, here's a loading screen I made for Founders' Falls. It took me around an hour including getting the screenshots, drawing up the overlay and rendering the final image. And I'm a talentless git who's doing this as an amateur hobby. A professional graphic artist who gets paid to do this ought to do it even faster and with less of the troubles I had just learning the tools which I hadn't used in a year.|
Originally Posted by Fire Lilly
While it'll probably be too small and unnecessarily time consuming to be high priority, but I feel it's worth the effort. It doesn't have to be complicated like making a new skin/screen from the ground up, but for the newer players traveling to the zone for the very first time, they get to feel the "Wow... In a few moments, I'll get to see that up close!" And yes, while some players will feel disappointed that their game doesn't look as good as it could be, that may just be all someone needs to decide that it's time for an upgrade.
|
Basically, I pulled the only city map I could find off the 'net, which was 800x800. I blew that up to 1280x1280, which is why it's grainy, but I assume Paragon Studios would have access to a better map. The rest is basically lines and gradient colours in Flash. The inner circle has a gradient that goes from transparent to greenish cyan, and the rest have gradients that go from black to cyan to cyan to white and are copies of the same rectangle I rotated around and cropped. The three pictures are a fill for the three shapes formed by the lines and the containing box, and I actually had to flip the top-left and right left-to-right to match the incline of the lines, which I hadn't counted on. The lower-most picture I altered from the original loading screen because I think this one looks better. All are taken with as much detail as I could pump in. The text is basic orange text of some odd font that I put a lot of low-res glow on with a knockout effect that basically renders the letters as empty sapce inside the glow itself
I forgot to put in a border and, frankly, I'm not going to bother at this point. If I did, I'd just make a box gradient colour between two boxes, with the bulk of it black, to cyan to cyan to white.
This isn't to show off. It's to demonstrate that new loading screens SHOULD be part of Going Rogue, because it shouldn't be that difficulty to give the game a cleaner look.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
|
Nice work Sam.
My only nit-pick is it should be 'New Venice' technically
Other than that, looks good. And does to show that any Rikti Monkey can run up some new load screens.
...
Get marketting to do it.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Zwillinger
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
|
Quote:
Well, I went off the current load scree, and that says "Founders' Falls" in a font that I can't really replicate, which is why I had to get creative with glows |
Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
Nice work Sam.
My only nit-pick is it should be 'New Venice' technically |
Also, my pic is 1280x1280, because the map of Paragon City I found was square and cropping it down to even 5x4 put Founders' Falls and Croatoa so close to the edge the circle ended up going outside the map. Again, though, I had to improvise on the actual map, and I could only find an 800x800 one via Google.Quote:
|
Other than that, looks good. And does to show that any Rikti Monkey can run up some new load screens. ... Get marketting to do it. |
I still couldn't replicate the shadows of the lines that make them look like they're elevated off the map, and I wasn't able to replicate the nice highlings on the circle as working with radial gradients is somewhat of a problem of mine. I couldn't replicate the fancy font because I didn't have it ready-made and lacked the skill and time to copy it by hand. And I still goofed up on the screenshots, as they ended up not big enough to fit into the spaces I left for them. You can't really see it, but the right one actually tiles right at the very bottom. I shot them at 1280x1024, but applied them to 1280x1280, so they were a little small. I also didn't pay attention to the angles of the straight lines to see and line the screenshots up to them. That's why I had to flip the one on the upper left - I'd shot it with the water on my left, whereas I needed it with the water on my right.
Basically, this is a REALLY amateurish attempt at it, as are most of my works, but it wasn't really intended to be great, merely decent. It meant to make the point that redoing the loading screens shouldn't be such a huge investment. VidiotMaps lists 48 outdoor maps, including things like the Troll Tunnels but not counting Mayhem and Safefguard missions, which does amount to a fair bit of work, but to my eyes, it'd be work well worth doing.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
|
honestly, I think this would be a perfect situation for a contest. Prize? costume codes and/or character titles. I'm sure great stuff would result.
Quote:
Er... I wasn't trying to say that it was difficult, it's just something that some of the devs wouldn't be entirely interested in doing. If I was a dev, I'd be all, "Great... Now I need to go to all the zones and... *Grumble - grumble*" >_>|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Ugh... This isn't something that should take a lot of effort. Just to put my money where my mouth is, here's a loading screen I made for Founders' Falls. It took me around an hour including getting the screenshots, drawing up the overlay and rendering the final image. And I'm a talentless git who's doing this as an amateur hobby. A professional graphic artist who gets paid to do this ought to do it even faster and with less of the troubles I had just learning the tools which I hadn't used in a year.
|
Edit: But you're right... Won't happen again. I'll go back to forum lurking.
Honestly, I doubt they won't. If not for Going Rogue, then for I18 or I19 if we assume that I18 is Going Rogue.
to 
TO THE END!Villains are those who dedicate their lives to causing mayhem. Villians are people from the planet Villia!
Quote:
I don't agree at all. I think your quick job looks great.
|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Yeah, if I can make one, an actual professional graphic artist should be able to make a few in his sleep. I suck at this sort of thing...
|
Meet my characters: Marqaha's Managerie
Adversity/Animosity: Strength through Diversity. Respect and Fun.
Quote:
While we're at it, can we fix widescreen TVs so they don't squash the picture? I'm tired of watching hockey players that look like Godzilla sat on their heads...
|
Originally Posted by Demobot
Yes, widescreen loading screens would be very, very awesome.
|
I've been asking around and it seems that people are either not bothered, because ... well hey its a loading screen or they're generally in favour of an update. I asked whether they'd prefer an updated version of the existing screens and more often than not people either wanted an animated (short 5-10 second animation) version of the loading screen, or a completely new design.
I even had an attempt at making a version myself which I won't post here, but Sam's right, it doesn't take too long to do. Heck I'd even give it a go myself if the dev's would give me any specifics!
I'd rather see a dynamic loading screen with a section for part of a newspaper/monitor containing information about the latest news of the zone you are entering. The latest news would be about whatever that zone's TF was the most recently completed giving the names of the participants. It would make the game seem more personally alive, and people could see their hero's (or villain's) name in lights (so to speak).
First off, sorry if this is in the wrong place. I wandered around both Player Questions and Suggestions, but overall felt that as a discussion it would probably fit best here among its speculatory brethren.
With Ultra Mode just around the corner, do you think that new loading screens are down the pipeline? They're just dandy for showing off Atlas and City Hall looking their best now, but soon enough they'll look better to some. Of course, this would be a small change with little impact. But if this game lasts, those loading screens are going to look less and less impressive to more and more people as time progresses. Hell, if Praetoria's loading screens are already in Ultra Mode they're going to look inferior as soon as GR hits.
But not only do I want to hear opinions on if it's likely. I want to hear if you think we should get them. Should we preserve the old loading screens for nostalgic value? Should we keep them as not to rub "Hahaha you can't run ultra mode. Take a look at everything you can't see." in peoples' faces? Especially considering the sheer amount of people that won't be able to run it.
Thoughts?