Rotating ship in menu - Would be nice
- Thread starter Nutter
- Start date
It could pull the assests...just like it pulls the hangar.
So you would like the game to load before selecting "continue"?
Deleted member 38366
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Hmmm... The Menu itself discerns between "Idle" (Deep Space), "Landed" (Planet Surface) and "Docked" (Outpost/Station/Planetary Base).
I don't say it'd be a must-have - but yeah, an External Camera slowly zooming around and showing various scenes based on the known environment around the own Ship... why not?
I don't say it'd be a must-have - but yeah, an External Camera slowly zooming around and showing various scenes based on the known environment around the own Ship... why not?
No.
I'm guessing a modern twist on this:
And it really does seem like a missed opportunity for 84ers.
Currently (for the new menu screen) the game needs to know what the ship type is, what paint to apply & I guess what ship kit modules to apply too. That's it.
It then puts the model into a generic hanger with a static camera view. I'd be happier with a rotatable ship floating in empty space (inside a picturesque but generic skybox). By rotatable I mean like the ones in the shipyard screen but actually rendered rather than wireframe style.
I'd also quite like it if it could be disabled - having the main menu eat up a tonne of electricity on such a simple static view seems a bit of a waste imo.
Information about your ship can be read from journal files that are stored on your disc, therefore you can still start the game offline and see your ship in a hangar. Information about system you're in and other stuff must be fetched from servers, so... game loading.
Other than that, I prefer menus that are clean, simple and fast to load. I would be happy with just options on black screen really. After a while you don't even notice all those background crap, but you start to notice milliseconds spent on waiting for it to load.
Having said that, I haven't really noticed this menu loading longer than previous one, so I'm not complaining.
Other than that, I prefer menus that are clean, simple and fast to load. I would be happy with just options on black screen really. After a while you don't even notice all those background crap, but you start to notice milliseconds spent on waiting for it to load.
Having said that, I haven't really noticed this menu loading longer than previous one, so I'm not complaining.
Absolutely. I love minimalism.
I must admit I was a bit disappointed that the "wireframe" (which isn't, but kinda is) ship displayed on the first loading screen, where the new game hints are, is still only rotating in 2D. I'd have thought this a golden opportunity to pay homage to the BBC original and have a fully 3D spinning wireframe.
As for the generic hangar shot, it works when you're actually docked. But for a ship sitting on a random planet, or hanging in space, tens of thousands of light years from civilisation it does feel odd. I would have preferred it if, when you're exiting the client, the game took a virtual screenshot from the same vantage point as the hangar POV, as though you'd engaged the camera suite, and used that as the main menu background the next time you launched the game. If the positioning was accurate enough it could even overlay the current 3D ship model over the static screenshot so the little animations on thrusters etc. would match. Hell, store some basic lighting data at the same time as the screenshot and it could even match the lighting conditions.
This would work for exits in free space as well as wilderness landings. The actual environment might look different when you loaded in due to movements of planets and stars (or asteroids, if you logged out in a ring) but surely only a champion pedant would complain at that? Better than seeing your ship snug in a hangar, then 30 seconds later sat on an airless moon.
(It might also get out of sync with edge cases, like deploying an SRV then losing the ship before exiting the client, or when the client crashes, but I think those cause problems with the existing system anyway).
As for the generic hangar shot, it works when you're actually docked. But for a ship sitting on a random planet, or hanging in space, tens of thousands of light years from civilisation it does feel odd. I would have preferred it if, when you're exiting the client, the game took a virtual screenshot from the same vantage point as the hangar POV, as though you'd engaged the camera suite, and used that as the main menu background the next time you launched the game. If the positioning was accurate enough it could even overlay the current 3D ship model over the static screenshot so the little animations on thrusters etc. would match. Hell, store some basic lighting data at the same time as the screenshot and it could even match the lighting conditions.
This would work for exits in free space as well as wilderness landings. The actual environment might look different when you loaded in due to movements of planets and stars (or asteroids, if you logged out in a ring) but surely only a champion pedant would complain at that? Better than seeing your ship snug in a hangar, then 30 seconds later sat on an airless moon.
(It might also get out of sync with edge cases, like deploying an SRV then losing the ship before exiting the client, or when the client crashes, but I think those cause problems with the existing system anyway).