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?http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/attachment.php?attachmentid=57675&stc=1

[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.

https://i.imgur.com/iopjuj9.jpg

[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



http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/attachment.php?attachmentid=57711&stc=1

[MajorMagee]

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

https://i.imgur.com/YnkB4E8.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/5f1ZeVh.jpg

[MajorMagee]

https://i.imgur.com/RvS25IN.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/RW9SvDM.jpg

[MajorMagee]

https://i.imgur.com/fqpd86L.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/gVERNvo.jpg

[MajorMagee]

https://i.imgur.com/GtOkY8t.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/0Lz0cIN.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/wZGYkBP.jpg

[MajorMagee]

https://i.imgur.com/VWM0Oi5.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/upS9P0j.jpg

[MajorMagee]

https://i.imgur.com/oS4AeK4.jpg

[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.:applause: get me some nice NJ v. BC night shots and I'll bow down!:wiggle:

[MajorMagee]

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

https://i.imgur.com/n9sgRZB.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/z6t9QdQ.jpg

[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.

[MajorMagee]

It was a full moon, and I brightened the picture so you'd have a chance of seeing the night fighter they were shooting at. It was actually pretty dark looking at it live.

If you want the terrain at night to be darker there are parameters in the suneffect.xml that control that. The version I provided for use with AnKor's shaders are a lot darker than the CFS3 defaults, but you can edit them to something even darker if you like.

[mongoose]

Ah! Missed the night fighter. Any chance of grey scale land at night or would that involve terrain changes and night eras only (which I have)?

I have used this way back which is not too bad. Might resurrect it.

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/attachment.php?attachmentid=57754&stc=1

[gecko]

Andy, the code you posted was a nice improvement over what I had before, thanks!

[mongoose]

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"/>

There are 3 splash screens:-

The splash24b being changed (in ETO) through the era batch file. I changed this to a jpg and enlarged it. That seemed to mess up my install and CTD
There are 2 in the uires folder. I changed both to jpgs. there are 2 files in the dialogs folder (dlgsplash and dlgsplash2). I changed both to

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

The result was centered but not scaled to screen. I changed them back to bmps and they scaled to screen.


What I imagine you mean; or at least it;s what I want, is the original picture is either screen size (1920 x 1080 in my case), or scaled up to it; and only then made into the 3 splash screens. You dialog entries would then ensure that all were full screen. ??

[MajorMagee]

Yes, if I remember correctly the jpg format does not work with CFS3'c code for scale to screen, so make the file the size you want to display. The center command is needed to keep it from being shifted to the bottom and clipped.

I'm not sure what the Era selector might be doing to get in the way of this working, but since it renames files it's probably just a matter of presenting it with the right names (meaning bmp and not jpg) so it can change them when it wants to. The only way around this would be to update the ETO startup script.

p.s. I've also noticed that the CFS3 display code for this adds an overall layer of random noise dithering so your picture won't be as clear as the original screenshot you took. My guess is that they were assuming that the small size 16 bit files they were using would need some dithering to make them presentable.