New Title Screens

The past few days, I spent a lot of work redoing and re-redoing the title screens. I admit, I don't have any artistic talent but I have spent a fair amount of time toying around with Photoshop and I've picked up on a few tips and tricks to make something decent looking.

First I started out with a simple orange background with transparent gray and a font change.

Old title screen, a little borring.

New title screen with moving background.

I decided to redo this by keeping the buttons but changing the simple background with a moving one of  a blurred image of one of the maps. The map moves slowly back and forth with a animation component.

I also improved the method in which the loading was displayed. Previously, I had a complicated system where a black background and loading texts were activated as GUITextures and then the scene with the map was loaded with the camera from the title screen not being destroyed. A few seconds later the Loading GUITexture would turn off and a Touch to Start GUITexture would be loaded and the player could touch it to start the game.

New select player buttons, instead of the 3D models.

This system created a lot of gaps and was mostly unreliable. Instead the new system in use now is the scene is loaded with the HUD camera of the map scene looking directly at a few planes that have the black background and loading text. A few seconds later, when the level is loaded, the player will be able to touch the text to start the game. This is a much more solid approach as there is no discontinuity between the items the player needs to start the game and the scenes being loaded.

Also, this morning, I created a few loading screens so the player doesn't have to stare at a black screen while waiting. The corresponding loading screen is shown depending on what character the player has selected.