Loading Screen Artwork

Howard Day

Random art guy.
Both awesome. I especially dig the Privateer-style setup of the first one.

I don't find the second one as compelling because it only shows ships from the rear. The Hauler is colorful and visually happening (and it looks nicer from the back, IMO)... but I would not mind seeing some ships front the sides or front.

I also find the space backdrop to be a bit too bright+blue. The space backdrop is much darker in the ship 'wallpapers' that have been released so far. Is there any particular reasoning for this?

The shadows on the asteroids in the second one are much much lighter than the shadows on the ships.

And finally... it would be nice if there were a few more bolts coming from the ships that are shooting. Even if it doesn't logically match how high the refire rate is in the final game, tweaking it a bit for static scenes would give more of a sense of 'volume' of fire, as well as better establish the direction that the fire is traveling in. If that makes any kind of sense.
 
Those are real neat. Wish Reckoning had that sort of graphic talent :)

The only thing I'd change is that the first pic is very obviously the Privateer menu with different ships. I love the retro feel as much as the next person, but it just screams ... I don't want to say rip-off, but that's the first thing that comes to mind. I think the second picture is what you should be aiming for ... capturing the Privateer quality without causing immediete memory comparisons in flashbacks, if that makes sense.
 
Lookin' sharp... literally :p. These two images look really nice, but there's something that bothers me about them.

These have no depth of field in these. Usually, in a photo, the lens is focussed at a particular distance, and everything that's closer or further away is out-of-focus. Our eyes have lenses too, so the same thing happens there. Field of depth becomes especially important in images like this, where there is no ground or horizon. As long as two objects overlap, it's easy to tell which is in front and which is further back. But consider, for example, the little fighter positioned in the middle of the second screen, under the "R". Is it far back, flying somewhere under the big ship, or is it actually that the size difference between the two ships is so huge, and this ship really is about to fly into the big ship's engine exhausts? The green bullet next to the small ship would seem to indicate that the small ship is probably much further back, but I just can't tell. Similarly, I can't tell if the fighter in the bottom left corner is about to blast that asteroid into pieces, or if its bullets are gonna fly above it. That afore-mentioned bullet near the small ship seems to indicate that the bullets fly above the asteroid, but again, it's hard to be sure, because for all I know the fighter could have moved five metres down between shots.

The same goes for the first screen - the ship in front looks great, don't change it - but the ship behind it should be at least slightly out-of-focus, so that we can tell that it is indeed far behind.

The one other thing that bothers me is the style of the outside frame. It looks really nice... and if you made it gold instead of steel, it would look perfect for a Victorian-era game like Martian Dreams :p. I know, this is probably a conscious effort on your part to refer back to the 19th century as the most pioneerish period in history, but it just feels out of place in the 27th century.


For the record, I very much disagree with Bob about the first image. If you were making a Star Wars game or something, yeah, it would be a ripoff to make something so Priv-like... but since this is supposed to be Priv with different ships, I think that image works perfectly. It works precisely because everyone knows the composition was taken straight from the original.
 
Okay -
PeteyG: The space background is actually very, very close to the background brightness in WC1/2 - that's the reasoning. Since that's the general visual style we're heading for, space will never be completely black. Dark, dark blue, yes - but not black. As for the shadows - good catch. I'll fix that straight away. I won't be adding more bolts, though - I don't want to clutter it up. It should be easy to figure out what's going on right away.

Bob Mcdob: Well, the first image is intended to be a rip-off, so.....I guess I succeeded? :D

Quarto: The other thing about photographs is that you almost never get both front and back DOF in a single shot. Also - in the majority of space photography (i.e all or it) I've never seen any sort of DOF. It's a cool effect - and it might very well make it into the game itself - but I find it detracts to a large extent from the image. t forces you to focus on a part of the image - when what these images are designed to do is entertain you while you wait for the game to load.
The difference in size between the two types of ship is in fact that large. The pirate fighters are just tiny short-range raiders.
As for the outside frame - I'm actually trying to reference the original pioneer main menu and options screen. So it's just bit of a tribute to that original artwork. it's probably going to change.

Anyhow, like I said, these are almost placeholders - but they're close enough to the finished thing for me to post them here. I will be changing them to reflect the feedback I get here, however.
Thanks for the comments!
 
First thing that comes to mind when I saw the images were just, WOW!

I loved how the first picture attempts to recreate Privateer in the Pioneer time frame. It instantly transports me back to the time when I was buying and selling Brilliance from planet to planet. :D

The second picture is simply colourful. I love the way that the exhausts provide different flame colours (blue and orange) and the guns give much-needed variety of colour in the blackness of space.

Anyway, I've been following the progress of this project, and I must say that I am impressed but the features of this game (wonderful 3D textures, randomised base, upgradeable turrets?). Great job!! Do continue to progress on this game. I can't wait till it is released!
 
Quarto said:
These have no depth of field in these. Usually, in a photo, the lens is focussed at a particular distance, and everything that's closer or further away is out-of-focus. Our eyes have lenses too, so the same thing happens there. Field of depth becomes especially important in images like this, where there is no ground or horizon.

The human eye cannot distinguish between distances farther away than a few hundred meters--an object five hundred meters away uses the same "focal setting" as an object light-years away (i.e. the background stars). Unless the scene is being viewed zoomed-in, then having everything focused "at infinity" is perfectly normal.
 
Looks very good, the only suggestion I would have would be to lower the Hornet in the back a little bit and angle the nose upward a bit and tilt the wings more towards the planet. Possibly you could brighten the light from the "sun" to make it more of a key light. Other than that looks really good. Depth of field is difficult to emulate in a space environment and truly could look out of space. Space is a very vague backdrop, its difficult to show a sharp focus on a single object in space to show a muddled contrast of such a dark background. Now perhaps if a planet were framed in the background then you could better display depth of field.
 
I don't quite like the second shot, which right now just seems too busy for my taste. I don't know which way I'm supposed to look, and it looks like the big ship is about to crash into an asteroid, and the guy with the green guns seems to be shooting at empty space.

I also agree that everything is too "focused", so it ends up looking like four models rendered on top of a space background instead of four ships that were caught in the middle of some action (specially since they all seem to be in front of the asteroids, even though the asteroids vary wildly in size).

They need some motion blur or some DOF (which really helps in space scenes, IMHO... it doesn't "force people to look at a single area" any more than a good composition already does. ;)).

The fact that the second shot has asteroids of all kinds of sizes at all kinds of distances only makes it worse... maybe you could get away with not having DOF if you showed a huge asteroid field with asteroids growing smaller in the distance, and some of them overlapped small corners of some ships? That'd let us place the ships better, I think.

Overall, I guess it just needs to be more of "a glimpse at the exciting action in the game!" than "models posing for a still image."
 
Howard Day said:
Quarto: The other thing about photographs is that you almost never get both front and back DOF in a single shot. Also - in the majority of space photography (i.e all or it) I've never seen any sort of DOF. It's a cool effect - and it might very well make it into the game itself - but I find it detracts to a large extent from the image. t forces you to focus on a part of the image - when what these images are designed to do is entertain you while you wait for the game to load.
The difference in size between the two types of ship is in fact that large. The pirate fighters are just tiny short-range raiders.
Well, I get Eder to use it in just about every splash screen he makes for Standoff, and it really helps a lot. From the point of view of photographic technology, there is of course no reason why DOF would be necessary - there's cameras out there with such depth that everything from a metre to hundreds of metres away is in focus. But that's not the point - the point is that the absence of DOF in a scene like this makes it impossible to tell whether things are far away or merely very small. Are you gonna put up a notice explaining to everybody looking at this image that the difference in size between those two ships is in fact that large? What I'm saying is that you should make the image speak for itself.

As for the outside frame - I'm actually trying to reference the original pioneer main menu and options screen. So it's just bit of a tribute to that original artwork. it's probably going to change.
Right, but I was referring to the line art on top of the frame - maybe my memory is fooling me, but I'm nearly certain there wasn't anything like that in Priv, so your inspiration for that must've come from elsewhere :).
 
the pictures look good, is ther going to be a slide show of pictures going on as the game loads, u know like you get in some installations of games, maybe show importants specs of ships of places?

I am not sure whether you guys are going to have intro or anything like that, but it would be cool for an intro to play there while the game was loading or something, just suggestions, if some1 had seen the intro more than once then you could press a key and it would go back to the ships or something.

I think that would be good to introduce people to the game
 
Okay - lotsa comments here - too many for me to go in-depth and reply to every one. I have read them all, and I've come up with a couple of new modified images based on everyones' feedback. All of it was good - and I appreciate it.

http://www.hedfiles.net/wcpioneer/loadingscreen01.jpg
http://www.hedfiles.net/wcpioneer/loadingscreen21.jpg

Now I hope those are more to everyones' liking. I think I'm still going to go back and mess with the second one - but I'd like to see if this is the direction I should be going in.
Quarto: It's not an exact replica of the scrollwork on the privateer main menu and options screen. I put it together rather quickly (under 2 hours) and I wanted something quick that looked similar. I do kinda like the look - but I admit it needs work to truely feel "right". Any suggestions on what should change? I have some ideas of my own, but most of them would be minor tweaks.

As for the rolling demo...soon. Very soon. Less than a month.
Enjoy!
 
The first give you these nostalgic feeling...thats what I like about it. Can't find any big things I would change in it. Maybe the moons ligth side a bit darker.
What I only noticed later was that their are some ships in the background. I would make them more present in the pic or leave them out.

The second one is to confusing for my taste...can't discribe it better. Maybe if their would be just the trader and one chasing+firing ship...maybe its because we are viewing at the back of the freighter.

I would say go with the first one.
 
gevatter Lars said:
The first give you these nostalgic feeling...thats what I like about it. Can't find any big things I would change in it. Maybe the moons ligth side a bit darker.

Yeah, you don't want the Hornet to blend in with the moon.


gevatter Lars said:
What I only noticed later was that their are some ships in the background. I would make them more present in the pic or leave them out.

I don't mind the little ships.

gevatter Lars said:
The second one is to confusing for my taste...can't discribe it better. Maybe if their would be just the trader and one chasing+firing ship...maybe its because we are viewing at the back of the freighter.

I don't mind the second one, but I don't think any of the layout changes in this revision help make it any less busy. I really like all the colors.

gevatter Lars said:
I would say go with the first one.

I don't think there's a need to use just one. You can have them randomly cycle.
 
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