How to Make Splash Screens? Help Please

[Daiwilletti]

I am having problems with making a working splash screen for MAW 1943.

It turns out there are two images that pop up on your screen when you start cfs3.exe in your install.

The first image is located in your root files - can be called something like Splash24b.bmp. This is an 800x600 bmp image, 24 bit colour, stock is 72dpi (IIRC).

I can get this showing up, it is the second image which is giving me trouble.

The second image is located in the uires/Common Screens folder, and is called Splash.bmp. AFAIK it needs to be the same format as the Splash24b image.

When I run MAW 1943, the first image pops up and looks OK, then the second image pops up, stretched to fit the screen, BUT the colours are inverted/negative!

I have tried several things like making the DPI 72, copying the format of the stock splash images carefully, but I not that in some other installs, the 72DPI for the image is not important.

Can anyone tell me why the second image is displayed as a negative?

[MajorMagee]

I play on a 3440 x 1440 monitor and when it stretches the 800 x 600 format to fit the distortion and pixelation is terrible. I start with a 3440 x 1440 and shrink it to 800 x 600 in Photoshop to fix the distortion, but we're stuck with the pixelation since the program won't read anything other than 800 x 600 without clipping the result.

The color shift happens when it switches your 24 bit picture to 16 bit, so saving it as 16 bit or index color format should take care of it.

[gecko]

I'm away from my PC right now, so I can't give details, but I changed the xml in the dialogs folder that has to do with the second splash screen to call for a jpg instead of a bmp and matched it somehow to my screen resolution. The result was no pixelation or distortion.

[MajorMagee]

To make a full size jpeg work for me I had to turn off scaling, and center the position.

Original:
<Dialog Image="common_screens\splash.bmp" ScaleToScreen="Yes" ZOrder="Background" Clippable="No"/>

Revised:
<Dialog Image="common_screens\splash.jpg" ScaleToScreen="No" ZOrder="Background" Clippable="No" Position="Center"/>

[gecko]

I'm curious to see if that code will work with multiple screen resolutions. Whatever I did only worked in 1920x1080.

[Daiwilletti]

Thanks very much guys!

Which dialogue exactly contains the script you showed? Anyways I'll take a look.

In terms of pixellation, its funny how the old original splash somehow stretches to fit without too much distortion, but its obviously not ideal to have an 800 x 600 bmp stretch to fit a 1920x1080 screen.

[MajorMagee]

dlgsplash.xml

[MajorMagee]

I'm having fun updating all my splash screens. Thanks!

[mongoose]

I'm having fun updating all my splash screens. Thanks!

Me too! I have some great pics from a guy called Adam Tooby which I use especially for my TOW eras.

[gecko]

Adam Tooby is great, I love his work. My dad owns a tabletop book of his artwork and it's great.

[MajorMagee]

Here's a screen capture that I ended up not using as the new splash screen for BoB, but it was nice enough that I didn't want it to go completely to waste.

[mongoose]

That's really great.

Robert Taylor is another good artist whose work I use.

Years ago I did this one but the size isn't good for 1920 x 1080

[MajorMagee]

Here's what the last 24 hours ended up producing.

[MajorMagee]

[MajorMagee]

[MajorMagee]

[MajorMagee]

[MajorMagee]

[Daiwilletti]

Those Splash screens look great, Majormagee! Oh to have a widescreen.

I guess I will have to leave the scaling option on for release of MAW 1943, so will have to compromise on image quality.

[gecko]

Andy has my dream monitor, can't imagine what it's like to fly with it. One day when the price drops low enough...I expect to be waiting a while!

Impressive shots Andy!

[mongoose]

I defer to the Major. get me some nice NJ v. BC night shots and I'll bow down!

[MajorMagee]

For some reason Imgur adds an annoying magenta color-shift to these night shots that is not in the originals.

[Dutch_P47M]

Were is the SPAD plane from, is it WOFF?

[MajorMagee]

It's actually from back in the Phase 3 / OFF days. I created a Modified version of it with the traditional CFS3 front end to make it easier to play QC, since I never really got drawn into their campaign only dead-is-dead mindset.

[mongoose]

Pretty good! I like the 2nd one especially as I still think the ground shows up too much at night. Even with a full moon I feel it should be more grey tones if anything.