Menu/Gui Concepts (Loading/Startup)

[oDDity]

I'm just working out the final look before rendering another video.

[drumple]

it does loop nice now, i know the second hand would add some depth.. but we could fake that in with an image

overlayed with a clock hand, and rotate that.. in one second pulses so it sort of jerks to the next seconds.

 

the reason im bringing up the 640x480 is that it will need to be converted to 512x512 for the roq.. and the

text may not look clear. the gears one you did converted nice, but the text wasnt all that clear.

 

i would suggest for the text, is to omit it altogether, and that can be overlayed with seperate graphics so it

comes out crisp and clear. plus anything else like "Initializing menus..." ect..

 

the clock does look nice the way it is now, and i agree that adding more to the other area's may be to much

clutter. the clock.. some overlayed text ( which could be transitioned in ) plus an opener audio track should

look nice.

 

and as for the 640x480.. im thinking which would come out clearer when converted to 512x512 video wise..

1024x768 may come out clear as well.

[oDDity]

I imagine the reason it didn't convert well is becasue it was already compressed to 500kb with xvid. I will use the orignal 200mb video to compress it.

How can it be compressed to 512x512? THat would mean the clock will become an oval.

So the video has to be square?

IN that case, only the central clock part needs to be a video and the rest can be a still image. I'll just make it 512 in the forst place.

[drumple]

the video should be made at 1.3 to 1, so either 640x480, 800x600 or 1024x768.. then it gets converted to

512x512 which will stretch it vertically a bit.. but when it's played back in doom3, it looks normal with no

stretching. so it should be made at one of those resolutions above.. 800x600 might be a good in-between

if you feel it needs more detail.. i would think higher than that would have to much loss in detail.

 

it's just the way that doom3 fits video's made at powers of 2, they have that vertical stretch which looks wierd

when played in mplayer classic, but in doom3 it looks all normal ( since its played back at a 1.3 to 1 ratio )

[drumple]

if you want to make the clock more clear in such a small vid format ( like the 512x512 ) you could make

your video at 800x600 and maybe the clock image cropped from the large on you did to fit that, like this..

 

 

that way the area's where the characters at the sides are still left in, and the area's above and below

the clock have room for overlayed text. and the clock would look large and clear.

 

then the avi you make at the 800x600 would be converted to the 512x512 and would still look ok,

 

 

something like that.. but of course in-game the 512x512 would look like the top image, normal.. albeit.. less

detail since the conversion.. but good overall.

 

EDIT: this is what it should look like replayed back... quality wise.

 

 

looks virtually the same as the top image ( the original ) but slightly less quality.. hardly noticable, but it's

not a still image anyways, so there's movement.. plus all the other stuff overlayed will make it come out

real nice.

[drumple]

if you want to see what the roq will look like in the end, you can check this post here and download

switchblade 3.12, which for me anyways, works flawlessly to make the roq's. i usually take a source video

( avi ) at either 640x480, 800x600 or higher and use virtualdub to convert it to 512x512 with no compression

so the avi file is usually a few hundred megs, then drop it onto switchblade, the result ( after a while of it

making it ) comes out to a few megs ( for a few seconds of video ) and then i test that in media player classic

to see how well the video converted.

 

it's a good program ( switchblade ), there is that other one.. roq video maker or something, but i could never

get it to work proper.. plus it has an area of settings which never worked for me.. while switchblade is just

drag and drop.. as long as the source video is formatted properly ( ie.. 30 fps and powers of 2 )

 

Post on RoQ videos

[oDDity]

OK then, I'll make a roq video of just the central clock part.

A TGA with an alpha hole for the video to show through can be placed over the top, and it will contain everyting else, including the text.

If we want a second hand to tick, it can be done wiht another rotated TGA.

 

edit: I compressed it to ROQ, but that format is really shit, it's 5 times larger than an xvid compression and it's made it far darker than the original image.

HOw did you manage to compress it there and keep the same brightness/contrast?

[drumple]

thats a good idea.. i was wondering how to do the alpha channel for that.. never occured to me to overlay

the whole image. that cover the best of both worlds. the tga providing the best quality for the outside area.

 

i guess for making good video's for roq depends on the pre-processing... virtualdub can add some to it, but

to test it out in doom3 right away, another thing you can try is to make a folder in the doom3/base called

/video and place your roq there, rename it to idlogo.RoQ

that way when you start up doom3, your video will play in place of the id one, so you can see how well it will

look ingame.

 

that one i converted looks pretty dark, but comes out lighter ingame. ( the gears one )

 

EDIT: the way i do the compressions is a long way, i convert a video to single tga's and then use irfanview

and batch conversion them all, since it resizes with better quality, then take all those images and make them

back into a video. it may be a few hundred tga's, but irfanview's batch processing works like a charm.

[oDDity]

THis is what I get when compressed, whch is not accepatable.

[drumple]

the darker version of the roq will come out brighter ingame.. here is the roq i made from your earlier vid

which was at 1024x768 i think..

 

Gears RoQ

 

and it looks nice ingame, of course not as clear and crisp as the original.

 

there are a few different filters that can be done to the video to help retain the clarity in virtualdub, i think

that information is in the readme for switchblade, i'll recheck that.

[oDDity]

Yup, you're right, it looks almost the same as the original in-game.

 

Here's the roq and the overlay with the alpha already in place.

 

http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/Files/loa...creen_files.rar

 

It's just a matter of getting them to line up properly.

[drumple]

yeah, that looks really good. i did a test also and recropped your previous clock video and it looked ok

in-game also.

 

i'll make a test with those files you made and see how well they mesh, shouldnt be a problem, but i see that

image is 1024x756, but it should work out ok.

[drumple]

whew.. had a bit of a time combining them, that overlay is a bit oval due to the size, here is a screenshot

ingame.

 

 

i had to invert your alpha mask, it was displaying the clock and not the background.

 

EDIT: i will post a testgui of it so you can test it out ingame.. after a coffee.

[oDDity]

I take it it's your compression of the image to post it here that's making look so low res? The clock looks sharp, but the background is really artifacted.

I'm not allowed to say it looks great, since I'd be accused of boasting)

[drumple]

im using jpg at 90% quality, just for a lower image size, i did resize the overlay image to 1024x1024 for the

test, since it also has to be in powers of 2, but that should not decrease the quality of it ingame, if you play

at 800x600 and above.

 

Clock Gui Test

 

thats the gui test, to try it out, start the darkmod and in the console type

testgui guis/loadtest1.gui

( edited, i gave the wrong name. )

[oDDity]

Yeah, it look fine in game.

I've made a version of this for our first wallpaper. We should put it in the public forum. It also shows our name for the first time - broken glass studios.

The website hasn't had an April update, so this will be something to fix that as well.

 

Wallpaper

[drumple]

wallpapers, thats a good idea.

[pakmannen]

Clock looks pretty good Oddity, but these last screens with the ingame shots on the sides are not that great. The forest/city got way more character. (Also, why are you using the low-res parchment backdrop? There is a high-res version in the first post of this thread)

 

Also, I'm still not convinced doing the GUI as a video file is at all a good solution. Explain to me how the FM author will customize the level loading GUI with his own screenshot? It's simply not possible. There is not one GUI in Doom made like this, so why are we doing it? A simple animated model of the clock would be better, wouldn't it? It would also not be restricted to 512x512 res, which, no matter how you do it, will look pretty crappy.

[oDDity]

This is only for the startup screen. I doubt anyone will want to customise it, and if they do, then fuck them.

For the mission load screen, there will just be a screenshot of the level overlayed on the background.

Those old screens with the twigs plastered over it looks like shit. I've no idea what twigs have to do with this game.

This is 10x better, and more professional looking.

THe parchment backdrop has been though several apps, lightwave rendered, then rendered out in AFX, then into photoshop etc, so I'm not surprised it's lost some sharpness, but it looks fine still, it's the sort of wishywashy texture that doesn't need crispness.

 

THis is the mission load screen, with a shot or sequnce of shots from the upcoming level.

[drumple]

every game map has it's own seperate gui for loading, which the fm author can ( and must ) deal with, unless

they choose to go with a generic darkmod one, im not saying that's how it's going to be, im saying that is how

it works. every game map in doom3 uses it's own gui to control the load screen/progress bar.. ect. for its own

map, and those are located in the guis/map folder. the fm author can add any graphics they want to for it, or

as i mentioned, some generic one that can be used for all the maps... either way.

 

and i thought this was the startup/initializing screen here we were covering...

[Macsen]

This might all have been said, but...

 

That loading bar and black borders look a bit too modern. What happened to that great health bar Spring cooked up ages ago? A different version of that would do.

 

I liked the city/twigs design more than (ahem) two pictures from your missions.

 

I don't think the player needs to be reminded that he's playing 'The Dark Mod Made By Broken Glass Studios' on every loading screen.

 

Otheriwes, it looks great.

[drumple]

i always liked the idea to leave an area for a blurb of some kind, like this..

 

 

but that's the beauty of having it's own gui loader, anything can be done that the fm author wants to do.

[oDDity]

That loading bar and black borders look a bit too modern. What happened to that great health bar Spring cooked up ages ago? A different version of that would do.

 

I liked the city/twigs design more than (ahem) two pictures from your missions.

 

I don't think the player needs to be reminded that he's playing 'The Dark Mod Made By Broken Glass Studios' on every loading screen.

My artistic opinion is worth far more than yours however, and the twigs motif looks like shit, that's my verdict.

I'm not that bothered about that mission loading screen, it was just a mockup. Perhaps someone else (shock, horror) would like to attempt some work for a change, so we can have some alternates to choose from.

[New Horizon]

It doesn't really matter what we cook up for 'level' loads right now anyway. FM authors can use our templates or make their own.

[oDDity]

I overlayed the parchment again, and it looks sharper.