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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

New Game Menu


Guest Jim69

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And remember that there will be the opening sequence that people can watch to see all kinds of fancy graphics and animations, this should be a little less active IMO. Even WC3's menu is pretty active, I don't know if you need that much going on as eye candy.
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I don't know if you had more options planned for the middle box or not, but what if it was slid up to dock in the indentation beneath 'new game'? The box could be shortened a little as well if no other options are going there.

If that was moved up there, you'd have an open space in the lower left, lower right, and upper right where small boxes could be put showing different shots or video clips of alien sightings. They would be overlays around the globe, along the edge of the screen like your dialog currently is. It could cycle between the three spots, it would be blank like your picture now, then a clip would fade in, go through it's animation, then fade back out. Then the next position does the same. We could find maybe a dozen different clips of grainy, real ufo sightings, I think that would look pretty good.
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Here's the positions I meant if it didn't make sense. The green areas wouldn't actually be there, that's just where the video clips would fade in and out. There would be the stars there normally.
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Sorry, didn't read ur post very well, I was pretty tired and I was using my supervisor's computer quickly while he was off doin something for 5 minutes :)

Sounds good 2 me, could definatly work. Can someone who knows about these things tell me if we could do this for v1.0? Seems viable, one thing we would need is a video format we can definatly use without copyright issues. For that matter they could be stills that show up every 30 seconds in a random box, just a matter of getting the photo's. Considering how much "information" there is on the net about UFO's that shouldn't be a problem if we want to use real pics. Also, since they are all amature photo's ( and probably fake ) there is no problem with using them.
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There are a few open source video codecs, the best known being div-x (or a variant thereof.)

Using video clips suddenly adds a big chunk of work though.

I quite like the stills idea, it would tie in with ufo culture, less work too.
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Does someone know exactly what effects we can reproduce in game? Like fading, overlaying filter layers etc. These can all be done in PS but how much can we code in? Stills does seem like a good compromise, however we probably will need video at some point 4 the intro etc. I didn't know Div-X was open-source, that means we can include it without asking right? Or do we need to give them a mention somewhere?
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AFAIK Deimos is working on an opening video sequence using models and animation. I expect he would just run the animation and record it all as an avi/divx or something like that, and then the file is called when the program starts. With multithreading I would guess(big guess, I really have no clue!) that while this screen is open we could have the stills fade in and out like you said as an overlay. Still are fine with me, I didn't think the video would be any harder as it would be clips that people have already made as "real ufo footage". So fading a pic in and out would be similar to fading a video clip in and out.
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Jim, that design is much more stiking. I like the amount of detail you've got on the earth, its just right without being too much.

I also like the idea of pics fading in an out in the areas Breu placed in. Maybe we could doctor up some of our own "official" ufo photos that could fade in and out as suggested.

Finally yeah I'm working on animations for the intro and end sequence, (very slowly though, I want it to look right oh and it take ages to render a sequence ;)). As for the codec what we'll be using in xenocide is the xdiv codec which is the open source version of divx.
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[quote name='Vaaish' date='Sep 10 2003, 09:50 PM'][quote name='Jim69' date='Sep 10 2003, 06:42 PM'] I haven't actually given up on the static yet, tho if peeps still don't like it I will get shot of it. Well, here is the new background in glorious technicolour :D

Edit: I want something that will give a hint of the impending alien invasion as well, but not quite sure what. Ne1 got any idea's? Subtlety is key methinks.[/quote]
hey I like this. for the final we could put the in game globe in there and have the meu fade out into the geoscape once the new game is started. [/quote]
I'm going to echo this again as it's a great idea and pretty easy to do.

we just draw a couple of polys with the static texture on them , over the existing earth model, then we fade them out once the choice is made and the game kicks off
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If someone sends me a .3ds file and the needed textures for the Earth globe I can do that 2nite. Never thought of that. How easy is it to change the poly's opacity ingame? I can do it in 3ds but can the engine do it independantly. This would mean needing a render window just for this screen, is that really necessary?
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Just one suggestion, try to make the opening menu the same as the initial one that it is in another thread, and just change buttons and that stuff, not the whole UI from one to another... Just make some buttons fade in and out when needed... (Looks good and it is pretty easy to code)...

About the globe, we just can use the geoscape globe and get that strange effect you are using in realtime (blending trick or shader)... and then take out the effect and move the camera toward the final destination on geoscape... Just an idea...

Greetings
Red Knight
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And to tie that into other menus, when you go to game options you could have the camera pan back from earth and over to the moon, and have the menu appear over it. Or maybe not...
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Just continuing on that thinking: What if both this screen and the startup screen were averaged out so they have a compromise between the lengths and we use a different part of space for that one also? Maybe not, but the entire menu could be a trip around the Earth part of our solar system. Just a idea :)
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[quote name='red knight' date='Sep 16 2003, 02:51 PM']Just one suggestion, try to make the opening menu the same as the initial one that it is in another thread, and just change buttons and that stuff, not the whole UI from one to another... Just make some buttons fade in and out when needed... (Looks good and it is pretty easy to code)...

About the globe, we just can use the geoscape globe and get that strange effect you are using in realtime (blending trick or shader)... and then take out the effect and move the camera toward the final destination on geoscape... Just an idea...

Greetings
Red Knight[/quote]
I like this. it would look good and it follows the KISS principal, which is always a good thing.
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