[Scummvm-devel] Adding splashscreen to ScummVM

Willem Jan Palenstijn wjp at usecode.org
Thu May 20 16:58:02 CEST 2010


On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 05:37:14PM +0300, Eugene Sandulenko wrote:
> Hi Team,
> 
> We are considering to copycat DOSBox team and add a splashscreen to ScummVM.
> 
> The splash will serve several purposes:
>   * Add visibility
>   * Protect us from illegal and silent borrowings of our product.
> 
> I am thinking of showing this only when ScummVM is launched with
> target specified in the command line, i.e. otherwise our GUI will show
> up and that one already contains our logo. The time of the display
> will be something along 0.6sec, i.e. noticeable but not annoying
> during the development, and it will not be optional at compile time.
> 
> What do you guys think about it?

I rather dislike the entire concept of a splash screen. (With the possible
exception of showing some activity during extensive load times, but I don't
think we have noticable loading times on all platforms.) I kind of feel that
good tools should be unobtrusive... 

Do we really have a visibility problem that needs to be addressed?

I'm guessing "Illegal borrowings" would already have to strip out things like
the in-game About dialog, so stripping out a splash screen as well won't be
much extra deterrence, I think.

Also, a large part of the point of specifying a target on the command line is
to speed up launching the game, while a splash screen would only slow it down.
(And the slow-down it causes would possibly be even greater when running in
debuggers like valgrind.) I don't know the length of the one in dosbox, but
it's definitely long enough to annoy me (and so I have it disabled in my local
copy).

-Willem Jan




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