| Posted By
retroscener
on 2014-10-20
09:04:37
 |  Loading Screens
So I thought I'd make a separate thread for this after MIK pointed out the loading screen on Aardvark in the Bug-Byte thread. To my surprise they have 4 releases with loading screens by graphician Mike Donnelly. All pretty cool.
So can anyone else think of other cool loading screens? Particularly hi-res ones or any at all. At the top of my head I cannot think of any, just that funny Mr. Puniverse one using the basic commodore ascii graphic symbols. I might remember more after a lie down 
 
 
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Posted By
MIK
on 2014-10-20
09:57:35
 | Re: Loading Screens
To be honest that type of thing was really rare.
TerraNova both C16 & Plus/4
Winter Events being the flag screen. Not sure about Summer Events as it had a full intro of screens and music before the opening ceremony loaded??? It's been a while since I last played it, a year maybe lol.
You could say it was cheating a bit... Finders Keepers
Other stuff was more single colour stuff, logo's mostly...
Some of Shaun Southern's stuff had little bits of GFX but these were done with Basic...
Trailblazer
Bandits At Zero
Tutti Frutti
Big Anco Logo,
Pin Point
Some other fun facts...
Invaders (Livewire) is the only commercial game that played Sound when the game was loading!
Retrun of Rockman it loads a background story and then shows screen info before the game loads.
Storm does the same thing but also shows in-game graphics.
Spore might be another...
I think both Bongo & Legionnaire told you how long the game would take to load as loading screens.
Tom Thumb & Pin Point I believe have no memory left to tell the datassette to stop when the game is finally loaded. I always pull the datassette out to save the tape motor from humming... Don't forget these were meant to be locked down to fit inside the C16 as to why they do it on a Plus/4 also... lacking the code some where.
A shame they never added more loading screens to be honest, but I guess having a loading screen as big as the C16 game it's self was some in-house joke so they never bothered. It would of given us more for our less any way.
I have seen a couple of times before now, some people who never originally had a C16/Plus4 that do now find it neat how quick some of our games take to load vs something on a C64 they have had for many years. 
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Posted By
retroscener
on 2014-10-20
09:44:21
| Re: Loading Screens
Yeah I knew it would as rare as hens teeth finding them particularly hi-res ones. Anyway, there's also Gridtrap by Livewire which has a basic loading screen, where it's really just showing the option and keyboard controls for the game while it loads. Maybe they did this with a few of their other releases seeing as you mentioned Invaders.
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Posted By
MIK
on 2014-10-20
10:10:04
| Re: Loading Screens
Nice, forgot about that.
A lot of Basic ones were made such as Commodore with Icicle Works, Treasure Island and even Pancho got one.
BMX Racers another Basic one, Formula 1 also had a Basic made screen before the game loaded but was removed from the Novaload version.
Manic Miner, both releases, (Normal & Novaload) have a Basic screen telling you the controls.
One or both the Strip Poker games might have the Anco logo again...
Who Dares Wins 2 & Thrust have basic text screens.
Phantom renames the Novload wording to ecoblaster or something like it, that was cool.
All fun stuff any way. 
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Posted By
MMS
on 2014-10-21
14:59:38
 | Re: Loading Screens
OFF
Yeah, I was always though that ZX Spectrum gamers have big luck having such nice loading screens during load. It was kind aof "cool".
In reality it made loading "little" longer (yeah, for a C16 game + 10KB would almost double it), but loading screens like PSSST, Rastan, Dan Dare II, Fairlainght or Finders Keepers virtually made the long loading times shorter.
Unfortunately C16/Plus/4 loading times were really long by themsleves too.
Without turbo, it was a pain, and with unofficial turbo you can forget loading screen, as you had to exchange the original loader to something else.
I do not know, how they managed with Spectrum, but they had no real carrier. So from the original 300baud (I think it was original zx spectrum and c16 speed with tape) they could go up to 1300-1500 baud, even 2700 baud at Ms.Pacman. All these are the official releases. they had no major problems with the cassettes head position too, as I remember. So, with 1500 baud, an extra 7000byte (1 hires spectrum screen) took extra 36seconds loading time, though I think it was always felt less.
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Posted By
Luca
on 2014-10-21
17:05:40
 | Re: Loading Screens
In particular, Démonok Birodalma picture is loaded from tape in a very original way. I'm uploading and adding up all the goodies from Aramir, meantime Démonok Birodalma's tape i just there ready to be tested.
Ah, and the little gfx bug in that picture originally comes from that loading.
PS: also check Karate cracked by BPL, it has its loading picture too (original tape überwanted!).
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Posted By
MMS
on 2014-10-23
17:01:38
| Re: Loading Screens
would be great to re-release few games with proper starting screens...
I do remember my first ELITE version, with a very nice loading screen, though it was from Trantor and did not fully match to ELITE, but still... 
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Posted By
MMS
on 2014-10-28
16:54:20
| Re: Loading Screens
yes, it was. I think at that time it was one of the better title screens, even on C64.
Too bad it is not really made for the ELITE.
Just for fun (after few beers ) I copy-pasted one new, worth to test it in emu
No real effort made, was just interested how an Elite dangerous ingame pic would look like on Plussy
(HIRES and MULTI versions were a little demotivating...)
OK uploaded...(used a little too much dithering, blah...)
(update: Please check James version below)
BTW: I think in the "Crossplatform tools" section Istvan Varga's Picture converter should be listed (with GUI), even if it is the part of his Emulator (I still use :-) )
I think it is one of the better tools (even if has no editing capabilities), and not even mentioning it...
well we all know he left usdue to some reasons... I think his hard work worth some respect, at least.
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Posted By
MIK
on 2014-10-27
19:29:29
| Re: Loading Screens
Resize the picture, no bigger than 640x480 would be great!
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Posted By
JamesC
on 2014-10-27
19:51:47
| Re: Loading Screens
@MIK
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Posted By
MIK
on 2014-10-28
02:07:06
| Re: Loading Screens
James, we already have one clown poster around here, the guys don't need another. What a waste posting it again even if it is resized.
MMS'es picture in "his" own post is so large that it is messing up the site width some what. Not everyone is surfing with a 720p browsing window to see it in it's full and utter glory, as nice as the picture is...
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Posted By
Lavina
on 2014-10-28
16:29:55
 | Re: Loading Screens
Hm. I'd die without full hd.
So no problem here. Nice pic.
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Posted By
MMS
on 2014-10-28
16:51:11
| Re: Loading Screens
@James: Thanks!
@MIK
Sorry for the mess
I made a printscreen, forgetting my 1280x1024 resolution, and I use Plus4Emu in fullscreen, sorry 
I used Printscreen, as my previous experience was that the emulator own picture export somehow forgetting the on-screen ditherin gnd output always looked too pixelized. (I always use dithering Quality 3 in Plus4Emu for more faithful screen). Maybe I am wrong...
Next time I will resize it to better fit to VGA resolution . It is really oversized on my Symbian phone too (has 640x350 resolution, just checked it).
So remove the original big one, and only James version remain active.
BTW I uploaded the PRG file too to the site (viewer PRG + pic generated by Plus4Emu GFX Converter), that will look much better in Emu or Plussy than this poster.
This "poster" is a screenshot of an IHFLI picture, so in real life due to "interlacing" and more colors the final result on screen is much more impressive. I mean: really enjoyable.
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Posted By
MIK
on 2014-10-28
21:20:09
| Re: Loading Screens
My screen mode is 1900x1080 so was a bit silly of James aiming a resized version directly at me... I never asked but hinted, " no bigger than 640x480 would be great!" meaning if you wanted to do so MMS.
No harm done though lol. 
The default version of the site still evolves around 800x600 to 1024x768. The site Logo and main menu's fit nicely inside that so most things on the site it's self fit within the Logo and main menu. Being polite you have to take into account sometimes that others might be using smaller modes or with today's stuff you can also Zoom-In on a web site such as Lemon64 which looks lost on my screen as it has a fixed width, Kim should update that...
But yeah, PC, laptop, notebook, tablet, phone and even games consoles might view the site so if forum pictures are kept no wider than the site logo then some viewers will not be forced to scroll the page over to see the picture in part and have to keep scrolling left to right to read the rest of the text as that auto formats to the new forced width.
Small is good, why the C116 is cool lol.
Great picture though, if I look hard enough I can almost see it moving, the planets are going to collide!!
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Posted By
Luca
on 2014-10-29
04:32:00
| Re: Loading Screens
During my infinite working of continuous updating this site, me too had to choose and respect some guidelines about the dimensions of pictures. That's the reason why any cover has a maximum width of 860px, and any cassette picture has 480px, and so on... Any bigger picture would become a link to it instead. I think I've found a decent compromise, in the end.
Years ago, I posted a long message here just to define those guidelines and collect other proposals from the users, and we all remember how unlucky that post went
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Posted By
MMS
on 2014-10-29
15:53:50
| Re: Loading Screens
yeah, because it is Sparta! I mean democracy! No rules can be set by anyone.
ok, i can see in my post where it leads: chaos and upset members!
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Posted By
MIK
on 2014-11-05
07:02:47
| Re: Loading Screens
One I forgot about.... was having a play last night any way.
Into The Deep aka Space Mission has one, all of 2 seconds. The game starts off loading with Novaload but then for some reason the raster lines go full screen making the picture almost pointless.
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