New Intro / Menu game (with location jumping)

[Roujin]

I am suggesting that a new intro game is made for displaying in the game menu.

Reason: several new features have hit trunk since that game was made and we want to present them to the players. Examples: one way roads, custom layout under bridges, halftile foundations, rivers, ...

Further motivation: I made a patch based on wolf01's initial work that allows jumping to preset locations in the intro game (using signs alphabetically). This may sound familiar since the rct games had something like this in their menu. Using this (if this gets into trunk), we could show different scenes, each displaying one or some of the features or some nice scenery...

I remember that some time ago, a contest for a new title screen was held. Unfortunately, the one who made it (littlemikey) seems to be inactive since february. If someone else would be interested in holding such a contest (organizing, judging...) based on my patch, please post here or pm me.

Finally, I'd like to know what people think about the jumping intro, so I'm making a poll.

edit: here's the patch thread in the development forum. http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=36925

[leno4]

Meh i dont really care.

[FooBar]

I think that would be a nice addition

[Daz]

Yes great idea, it could show off all of the different climates, old and new vehicles and possibly some examples of networks etc. Would be awsome if you could create your own. If that was possile then there could be a competition to see which ones get into the final version of the intro.

[Yexo]

Yes great idea, it could show off all of the different climates, old and new vehicles and possibly some examples of networks etc. Would be awsome if you could create your own. If that was possile then there could be a competition to see which ones get into the final version of the intro.

It already is possible to create your own: just start a game, save it, rename the save to opntitle.dat and move it to the data folder.

[tb2571989]

But bear in mind that you should have the NewGrf's in your data folder otherwise you would get some problems, I would imagine.

[Daz]

Nice, thanks for that info, this will keep me entertain for a hours!

[Spaz O Mataz]

Roujin this is a brilliant Idea I've wondered how long before someone was going to add this.

Just a quick suggestion could you make it so the sign can read "A:1000" the number being how long it waits that way it could be more controllable by the creator so u could watch trains for a bit longer than planes and ships.

I would offer to host this but like the last one i would like to enter.

[zypa]

I love the idea, too.

There are some "NO" votes anyway.
To the people who voted with "no".

I'm sure they had their raesons, I'd really like to know them.
I do not want to b**** around, I would just like to know if there are any good reasons why this should _not_ make it into the trunk.

[DaleStan]

I can tell you exactly why people (probably devs, or at least programmers) don't want an intro that jumps.

1) Load opntitle.dat as a savegame. Explore it. See why viewing things other than the current location would be a bad idea.
2) There is space in the savegame for exactly one (singular) screen location. Adding more would be a massive hassle, plus then you'd have to add a UI to store all the various locations.

[zypa]

to 1)
Roujin idea was to create a new opentitle.dat. With different locations. That are worth viewing.

2)
Massivly hassle?
Why would more locations be a great hassle? The size of the opentitle savegame is ~130kb. A savegame with more locations would not bigger.

to the UI to store locations:
I'm not sure if I got you here
IIRC the locations are "stored" by using sings in the savegame. There is no need for a hardcoded locations storage.

[Roujin]

I can tell you exactly why people (probably devs, or at least programmers) don't want an intro that jumps.

1) Load opntitle.dat as a savegame. Explore it. See why viewing things other than the current location would be a bad idea.
2) There is space in the savegame for exactly one (singular) screen location. Adding more would be a massive hassle, plus then you'd have to add a UI to store all the various locations.

1) I did. I explored. I saw. Using current opntitle.dat with my patch will result in current behavior, since there are no signs to jump to. So no faking stuff will be seen.
2) With my patch, the already existing signs are used to specify the locations to jump to. No additional space in savegame nor UI is needed.

[LordAzamath]

Actually.. some of the faking screen is already seen with a large monitor .. I wouldn't call it very large what I have (1440*900 Widescreen), but I can see some fakings too...

[Aphfaneire]

Ive been tired of the opening for a long time!

When the planes changed speed they changed in the opening, but since the latest nightlys thats changed again so the game just looks like its TTD not OPENTTD.

Although to really put in the eyecandy you'd have to create the menu to display everything thats in trunk. But also an option to display random maps using the newgrfs that you have set by default? Or a recording of several maps with newgrf's enabled to help advertise what the game can do?


Ive seen some new menu's out there but i have no idea how people did them. If they're patch's ill stop my line of inquiry now, because i cant figure them out. But it would be amazing if we did change the menu, its looking dated compared to how amazing the game is now.

[Trond]

Aphfaneire: Copy one of your savegames into ottd data folder, rename it to opntitle.dat and voila, you have a new intro. You can use all the grfs you have, and it will be only you that have that intro =). Kinda easy...

If you have hidden the file extensions so you cant see the .sav on your savegame or the .dat on your introfile, do a google for properties plus and that will be solved very easily...

Good luck!

[Aphfaneire]

Thank you.

Ill start experimenting with that in time.

Now ill have to choose which game is worthy of being behind my main menu

[Shadowclaimer]

I'd like to see a different title screen everytime I start up maybe it randomly chooses from like 7 or 8? Each one specializing in something, maybe an intercity bus transport, giant raillines going over and through a mountain, etc. showing off all the vehicles/tilesets/a lot of the goods.

[RMJ]

it would be very nice but also the ability to show on the startup intro screen, the lastest NewGRF's that are active instead of it always showing old graphics.

[zypa]

The problem is:

Which GRFs do you want to use?

I want the DB Trainset and I'm quite sure that some people would love to see the UK railset. (In particular the ones that can write english way better than I do.) The use of the standard GRFs is the only fair agreement I see.
Although the GRFs would have to be included in the openttd releases. That could be problematic due to copyright issues.

[Trond]

I think this was intended to use with default grf files only.

Ofcourse, we can make our own intros too, like I can make one I like. Thats for me personally, but if I like I can share it with others, but thats me sharing it, and its not an official part of OTTD. That way I can use whatever grfs I like, and those downloading it, can only complain to me if it aint working.

I feel however that this thread is kinda getting a bit of the topic it was originally opened with...?