Main Menu Status

[Darkness_Falls]

Yep, totally. Oh, and I just saw the gears in the lower-left and upper-right of that menu; those rotated, too! -- as did the gears on his bike. I love clockwork designs.

[Springheel]

Well, the decision was made long ago that we would have map-based graphics in the background. The clockwork mechanics have been done already in T2X and the original Thief. One of the things that will blow people away immediately about TDM is the superiour rendering and graphics, so best to hit them with it right away.

 

As long as an AVI can be made with a decent resolution, I see no reason why we can't go with that. That gives us freedom to include all kinds of animations and moving bits...smoke belching from factory chimneys, signs blowing in the wind, ravens perching on eaves, clouds moving in front of the moon, etc. We could even include some people depending on the length of the loop...it might be nice to see a guard or two idling in front of a doorway.

[Subjective Effect]

Sounds great Springhell. The clockwork thing is old now.

[sparhawk]

I also think that an AVI is the best solution. It allows us to integrate all this stuff without big hassle, and even if we would use a real map, which certainly would be possible, it would just loop anyway. Maybe we can do different AVIs with some sohrter sequences, and then dynamically blend them in, so that the looping is not THAT obvious and repetitive.

[New Horizon]

...Sounds great Springhell....

 

A little slip there?

[Darkness_Falls]

A little slip there?

Ha!

Sounds great Springhell. The clockwork thing is old now.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

An oldy but goody, lol. Well SE, I could argue a scene playing in the background is old, too. I'm good with the AVI scene, though; no prob. It will look very nice, I'm sure.

[Domarius]

Regarding Spar's suggestion, I think its a good idea.

 

I'm pretty sure T2 used "windows" of animations - so they all looped independantly of each other, that way you can make one smaller element take a long time to loop than anythign else without blowing the entire animation into a huge file size. (I think because once I task switched and all the colours were messed up and I could see individual boxes around some of the gears)

 

And animating independantly of each other will mean it will take longer for a user to notice when things have looped, unless they constantly stare at a single animating element.

 

It would be cool to have a sillhouette of a guard (like Springs idea) standing guard at a door, backlit by some blue light or whatever, and he's shuffling from one foot slightly, now and then.

 

Randomly triggering other animations could be a good idea too, rather than just looping.

[Springheel]

If the AVIs can mesh seamlessly, having separate animations would be great. I'm not sure how doable that is though. Otherwise, we could just have one image, but it randomly selects a new 'loop' after a certain amount of time. So one loop just has the street with the sign swaying, which loops for five or six times, then randomly a longer animation--that plays a guard walking down the street, frex--plays, then it goes back to looping the sign again.

[Domarius]

I reckon they should be seamless if the compression isn't too harsh. At the point where you start seeing those blocky artifacts, is probably when the seams would stand out.

[god_is_my_goldfish]

Regarding going the way of AVI, the only real issue is file size. If we want a looping street that doesn't look real fake, we're gonna need at least 1 minute of footage. If we can plug codecs into D3, we can just use Xvid, which will allow 1 minute of footage @ 640x480 to only be about 5-7 mb max. If we want a higher resolution, say 1024x768, that's gonna be about 11-14 mb, and so on and so forth. If we can't use Xvid, and have to use Divx or another codec, expect the filesize to likely double.

 

There's also the issue of what perspective the player chooses for the game. If you choose a widescreen (16:9 or 16:10) ratio, the video will either be stretched, or not play at all. You wouldn't have this issue with a game-rendered menu. (which, if it's small, shouldn't take more than 30 seconds to load, even on a minimum spec machine)

 

Also, splitting avi's to later sync in another program tends not work as expected, though it may be different for Doom 3's video textures.

[Springheel]

Is the default doom menu an AVI? It doesn't seem to change based on resolution.

 

I don't think we need to have a minute of looping either. We have one, basic, five-second loop of a sign swaying and smoke billowing. Then we have (if we want) one or two other fifteen second clips of something happening (like a person walking down the street). We either make those clips insert randomly (if possible) or have them happen at specific moments (like when a button is pressed).

[Fingernail]

it's realtime, the globe is actually a model if you turn on wireframe

[sparhawk]

Is the default doom menu an AVI?  It doesn't seem to change based on resolution.

 

The globe itself is a model, but I seem to recall that there is an AVI involved as well somewhere in the menu. Not sure though as it was a long time that I looked intot the GUI files.

 

We either make those clips insert randomly (if possible) or have them happen at specific moments (like when a button is pressed).

 

Trigger them on a button is probalby a good idea.

[god_is_my_goldfish]

We stil have to find out if running cuncurrent video clips split apart is even viable though.

[Napalm]

The globe is an actual model thats rendered in menu using a renderdef. It should be possible to use a .avi file ingame but I'm not positive that the format won't have to change. As soon as I get the chance I'll look into it, although fro wno we'll continue using a still image

[Springheel]

Ok, the starfield behind the planet obviously isn't a model, so would we be able to put a still-shot of a city and in front have a renderdef of a model in motion?

[Napalm]

well mroe to the point can we just have a 2d animation/animated shader over the sections we want to move, since i assume were not having the entire thing moving. But yes spring that might work best, before we figure out though, it would require knowledge of the exact iage we want to use

[Springheel]

Yeah, we're going to need a really good city map to use before we can start.

[sparhawk]

Actually it should be possible to put anoterh GUI in the background whcih can be the projectionplane for an AVI. Since these actions can be time triggered it should be possible to make at least a looping AVI.

[Napalm]

Well, I have the entire base of menu complete IN that all menus opens to something ect. The options arnt in the options menu yet and the loadsave isnt implemented but for everything else there are at least placeholders. These last two section I'de prefer not to do if we still might change the main menu setup (there was some other thread with another idea that seemed to be getting attention a couple days ago) Besides those two sections everything is easy to change but once those are in it's pretty much locked in in the menu layout without alot of extra change. I'll wait for some sort of for sure go ahead before doing anything else, although if we need HUD work I'll switch over to that

[sparhawk]

Yeah. The HUD should definktely be overhauled. We want to have the currently final HUD in the game for our next release. I think we are pretty locked for our HUD design by now, so we can implement it. What do you need for the HUD to get started?

BTW: Do you have some screenshots of the current menu? I know there is no graphics right now, just want to see the choices per screen.

[Napalm]

Screenies look basically just like concept art. I can zip up the menu if you want though just so you can see what it currently looks like. The choices that currently work are as follows (* beside = doesn't work)

NewGame:LoadFM*/Darkmod:EasyMedium/Hard(leads to hauntcity map)

LoadGame*

Options:Graphics/Gameplay/SOund/controls(all placeholders for options buttons in each menu)

Credits:(leads to short list of names I'de assume we'll change to videorolling credits)

Quit:Yes/No

VersionButton/soundofffordebug

Mainmenu button for exit from all submenus

[sparhawk]

Yes. Please upload it to the FTP and I can put it on CVS as well.

[Napalm]

I didnt wanna put it on CVS since it voids regular main menu and its not complete, but if You want ill upload it to both

[sparhawk]

ok. As long as it is working and doesn't brake D3 that's fine.