[Scummvm-devel] Please give feedback on splash screen mockup

[Jordi Vilalta]

Hi,

2010/6/8 yotam barnoy:
> First I want to say that in general, this is a fine effort, and it
> would serve us very nicely.

Indeed.

> However, were I to put on my picky hat -- which I am -- those yellowy
> flows, while cool, are foreign to us. They also don't reflect our
> general theme, which is a shame. Consistency makes the difference
> between a professional looking application and one that looks just put
> together from different pieces. Even with my picky hat though I like
> the Powered by www.scummvm.org bits and the cutouts there, though I'm
> not sure about capitalizing the URL.

Those are exactly my feelings. If we removed the ScummVM logo from it,
I'd say it's a (cool!) splash screen for another program. I wouldn't
identify ScummVM with it. I share the notes both Yotam and Henry said
and I add some more:
- The yellow tone. It would be much more consistent if it used our
standard, more orangy colours.
- The wavy shape of the background (I'm used to the classic gradient,
though maybe with closer tonalities it wouldn't feel that strange).
- The diagonal line, though I guess I could get used to that too.
Maybe tweaking this line would make it fine (like making it curved, a
bit more subtle, and more horizontal, like in the iPhone icon/splash?)
- Another issue I see is that the logo is too big, it touches the
borders of the image. I think it would look better with a bit more
space around it.
- The "Powered by" text could make sense in commercial releases that
only run one game and don't show the menu at all, but it feels a bit
strange for the standard releases. I open ScummVM, not something
powered by it. Maybe it could be replaced by "Loading", or something
more creative :P
- As a proposal (I don't know how it would look in practice) I think
the border line would look good in the dark red from our main site
side menu.
- The background of the top and bottom boxes looks too... white. Could
we try with the same dark red of the border (with white text on it,
like on our website) or at least with the pale yellow or light gray
used as backgrounds on our website?

By the way, do we want to show the version number or other information
on the splash screen? I vote for showing the version number (Oh! It
could be placed where "Powered by" is now ;)) and maybe a note about
it being released under the GPL.

Of course, if the intention was to define a new look, this proposal
would be a very good start as it was sent, but that would be a
different discussion ;)

> Would we be able to plop purple tentacle in the bottom right, like we
> do on the website, or would that be a no-no? If not, then at least we
> could do a monkey hanging down from the logo?

For a generic release of ScummVM the purple tentacle would be awesome,
or other easily identifiable graphics from other supported games. That
would give our users a warmer/friendlier welcome.
I think the problem comes with companies wanting to include it on
commercial releases: I don't think they'd like to show advertisement
of other companies' games, and I don't know what would be the legal
situation of that (since we're already using that on the website I
guess there's no problem while you're not getting money from it, but
there may be otherwise).
I see two solutions to that:
1) Use the standard splash screen for everything.
2) Create an easy (and visually appealing) but limited way to
customize the splash screen by using a user supplied image. This way
commercial releases could reuse our splash screen (without losing our
identity) and it would add their signature, which would make them
happy.

See you!
Jordi

>
> Yotam
>
> On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 3:10 PM, Max Horn <max at quendi.de> wrote:
>> Hi folks,
>>
>> so we got this mockup for a ScummVM splash screen. Feedback is highly welcome! E.g. it differs quite a big from our regular GUI and website look. Is that bad or good? How do you like the look in general? What do you like, what would you like to see changed, and how?
>>
>> BTW, other resolutions are of course available, too. I am not sure whether any work on a mockup for an optional progress bar / display has been done yet. Probably not.
>>
>> Finally, please note: This does not mean we will change all ports to always change a splash screen -- nothing in this matter has been decided yet. But independent of that, some parts already do show a splash screen, and it would be nice to have a unified splash screen for all of them! This is the main driving force for me right now.
>>
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Max
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ThinkGeek and WIRED's GeekDad team up for the Ultimate
>> GeekDad Father's Day Giveaway. ONE MASSIVE PRIZE to the
>> lucky parental unit.  See the prize list and enter to win:
>> http://p.sf.net/sfu/thinkgeek-promo
>> _______________________________________________
>> Scummvm-devel mailing list
>> Scummvm-devel at lists.sourceforge.net
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/scummvm-devel
>>
>>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ThinkGeek and WIRED's GeekDad team up for the Ultimate
> GeekDad Father's Day Giveaway. ONE MASSIVE PRIZE to the
> lucky parental unit.  See the prize list and enter to win:
> http://p.sf.net/sfu/thinkgeek-promo
> _______________________________________________
> Scummvm-devel mailing list
> Scummvm-devel at lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/scummvm-devel
>