[http://sourceforge.net/p/ufoai/feature-requests/468 Item 468] imported from sourceforge.net tracker on 2013-01-28 20:20:07

@ the present time we have a loading-screens-system that has 3 small 128x96 preview pictures for skirmish-mode & 1 loading-screen with 800x600 resolution per level. Details are already lost because of the small resolutions & additional detail is lost because of the formatting (716x537 pixel for the loading-screen)...
Many people nowadays run their computers on 1920x1080 resolutions, so a loading-screen with 716x537 will not really represent the level loaded.
The system also does not care whether we start a day or a night mission.
During a campaign the player will play around 200 missions & will see each of the loading-screens several times.

I am suggesting:
1. We should increase the resolution of the loading-screens to at least 1024x768 pixel (IMHO even higher)
2. We should add code that makes a difference between day or night being spawned & loads the corresponding screen, during campaign-mode the screens should be cycled (012012012...), if that's too much coding effort, then chosen randomly...
3. We should extend the loading-screens to 3 for day & 3 for night for each level (for example:ufocrash.jpg, ufocrash2.jpg, ufocrash3.jpg, ufocrash_n.jpg, ufocrash_n2.jpg, ufocrash_n3.jpg)
4. We should make a rule how the screens should look like, for example: screen1:birdview, screen2:max-normal camera-tilt, screen3: FPV
5. We should design a new Overlay & create a GIMP-file & a short instruction for the mappers on how to easy add their screens & what to take care of (no more cursors or dropships on the loading screens for example)
I WOULD VOLUNTEER FOR DOING THAT ;-)
6. We should delete the small preview-pictures completely & in Skirmish-mode generate the previews from scaled-down-screens which pop-up a little bigger on mouseover.
7. When you change day/night in Skirmish-mode the previews also automatically should change to day/night previews

I would be pleased to make the screenshots, the overlay & the instruction for the mappers if you are willing (once again) to implement the code, Mattn (should be no problem 4 you I suppose)...
This has no high-priority @ all, because the longer we wait with the screenshots, the better they will look like, because of all the new graphical features implemented, so I will set the priority 4 this one to very low.

===== Comments Ported from Sourceforge =====

====== tlh2000 (2010-03-17 08:20:55) ======

i agree - if you start to create the overlay and send an archive with the level shots i will do the rest.
====== tlh2000 (2010-03-17 08:28:24) ======

please create the screenshots without the overlay, i will write a script that is applying the overlay to the screenshots once you are done. also please don't make them fullscreen (1024x768) - as there must be space for a mission briefing in 2.4 or later.

if you want i can grant you write access to our svn and you can commit them all into our data_source/images folder.

about the priority: yes, it's not really a showstopper, but the visual appeareance of the game should be tweaked before we release 2.3 - and imo that is one of the steps that "should" be made to reach this goal.
====== mcr2010 (2010-03-17 13:25:49) ======

sneak preview ;)
====== mcr2010 (2010-03-17 13:30:26) ======

I would be proud to join the team, Mattn !
But this project has to be postponed a little bit, because I am fighting on other fronts @ the moment improving the visual-quality & overall game-feeling with the animated ufo-textures (see attachment) !
====== mcr2010 (2010-03-21 18:23:10) ======

My suggestion 4 the screenshot system would be to really wait with the making of the final screenshots, because so many updates to the gfx are going on @ the moment.
That does not mean that I do not want to make the screenshots anymore, but this task should be made a short time before the final release of 2.3 IMHO ;)

====== mcr2010 (2010-08-03 10:07:58) ======

This is not forgotten, just postponed...
We should do that shortly before v2.4 comes out...
====== natewr (2011-12-21 14:41:34) ======

If this is done, I hope that screenshots will be made WITHOUT AN OVERLAY. An overlay can easily be implemented at run-time via the UI scripts, and this will make it easier for customizing it in the future. If we output every screenshot with an overlay, they will have to be re-made whenever we want to make a change.
====== mcr2010 (2011-12-23 09:47:58) ======

Nate, I agree.
Another suggestion would be to make the screenies from a version where the maps were compiled with -quant 2, so the screenshots would look most impressive...

Maybe we'll make it for v2.5 ;)