This tutorial is to show how you can make an attractive loading screen that's simple and transitions nicely into the actual game.
Using this technique can help you to set player expectations of what they'll find once the game starts and help to build excitement during what is most likely the most boring part of playing any game.
To demo, I created a small map that uses an overhead camera and swings down to the players view.
Step 1
Decide on what you want the player's first impression to be. Is it an eagle's eye view of the whole map (like in my demo) or a close up shot of a character that will present an in-game intro?
Using the terrain editor, select the Cameras (C) palette and create a new camera that showcases your target material. For this tutorial, I named my camera Intro Camera, but name it whatever seems fitting to you.
Step 2
Create a trigger to apply the camera on game initialization.
Events:
Game - Map Initialization
Actions:
Camera - Apply Intro Camera for player 1 over 0.0 seconds with Existing Velocity% initial velocity, 10.0% deceleration, and Include Target
Camera - Lock camera input for player 1
Cinematics - Turn cinematic mode On for (All players) over Immediate seconds
Replace Intro Camera with the name you gave your camera.
If your map has more than one player, you can loop over the active players and replace "player 1" with "player Picked Payer" in the camera triggers above.
Step 3
Now that we have our intial view ready to go, we can get a screenshot for our loading screen.
Ensure your settings are for high resolution (at least 1920 x 1080) if possible. Start your map up. It should apply your camera and do nothing else (you may need to temporarily disable any other triggers you have going). Now.. take a screenshot (the Print Screen button on your keyboard is an easy way to copy the screen to your clipboard).
Using your preferred image editing software, open your screenshot or paste your clipboard to a new document. If it's not already, scale it to 1920 x 1080. This is the preferred size for loading screen images. Finally, save it as a TARGA (*.tga) file. This seems to be the preferred image format.
Step 4
Back in the Starcraft II Editor, open the Import (F9) window and import your new loading screen image.
Once imported, you can navigate to Map > Map Loading Screen... in the menu and set it as your Image. While I haven't tested this beyond my demo, I believe Aspect Scaled would be the best Image Scaling setting.
I also set Type to Custom and I set Body, Help, Help Restart, Subtitle, and Title all to a single empty space. This is why my screen is blank except for the loading indicator. It's up to you if you want text on the screen... many maps do you use it. I prefer a minimum of text.
Step 5
At this point if you start your map, your loading screen should look good and once the map does load there should be only a very subtle change between your image and the in-game view. There's one last part.. the transition.
Back in the Triggers (F6) window, create 2 new triggers.
Events:
Timer - Elapsed time is 0.5 Game Time seconds
Actions:
Camera - Apply (Default game camera) for player 1 over 2.0 seconds with Existing Velocity% initial velocity, 10.0% deceleration, and Don't Include Target.
Camera - Pan the camera for player 1 to Player Start Location over 2.0 seconds with Existing Velocity% initial velocity, 10.0% deceleration, and Do Not use smart panning
Cinematics - Turn cinematic mode Off for (All players) over 2.0 seconds
Events:
Timer - Elapsed time is 2.5 Game Time seconds
Actions:
Camera - Unlock camera input for player 1
I find that the 0.5 second wait on the first trigger adds a nice, albeit very brief, delay between the game loading and when the camera starts to reorient itself. I also find 2.0 seconds to be a small enough wait that I'm not bothered by long enough to enjoy the transition. Tweak values to your liking. :) The only real point of importance here is to not unlock the camera for your players until the full effect has finished (unless you really want to let them disrupt it, then by all means...).
Like before, you can put the player triggers in a loop if you have multiple players and change Player Start Location to wherever their camera should be initially centered... likely on their unit or base or some such thing.
Conclusion
I put this together very quickly for my unit test map because it's a map I load often and I wanted something a little more pleasing to look at. Please feel free to leave comments/suggestions or point out any issues you run into. I do think too many maps rely on walls of text and dialogs to explain themselves to new users and it gets tiring so I hope we can see more creative use of the loading screen and more creative map introductions in the future. :)
Oops
Of course I read over the description a hundred times to make sure everything looks right before submitting, and I miss the typo in the subject. The one thing I can't fix. Can anyone help? "Creating a smooth loading screen transition
Overview
This tutorial is to show how you can make an attractive loading screen that's simple and transitions nicely into the actual game. Using this technique can help you to set player expectations of what they'll find once the game starts and help to build excitement during what is most likely the most boring part of playing any game.
To demo, I created a small map that uses an overhead camera and swings down to the players view.
Step 1
Decide on what you want the player's first impression to be. Is it an eagle's eye view of the whole map (like in my demo) or a close up shot of a character that will present an in-game intro?
Using the terrain editor, select the Cameras (C) palette and create a new camera that showcases your target material. For this tutorial, I named my camera Intro Camera, but name it whatever seems fitting to you.
Step 2
Create a trigger to apply the camera on game initialization.
Replace Intro Camera with the name you gave your camera.
If your map has more than one player, you can loop over the active players and replace "player 1" with "player Picked Payer" in the camera triggers above.
Step 3
Now that we have our intial view ready to go, we can get a screenshot for our loading screen.
Ensure your settings are for high resolution (at least 1920 x 1080) if possible. Start your map up. It should apply your camera and do nothing else (you may need to temporarily disable any other triggers you have going). Now.. take a screenshot (the Print Screen button on your keyboard is an easy way to copy the screen to your clipboard).
Using your preferred image editing software, open your screenshot or paste your clipboard to a new document. If it's not already, scale it to 1920 x 1080. This is the preferred size for loading screen images. Finally, save it as a TARGA (*.tga) file. This seems to be the preferred image format.
Step 4
Back in the Starcraft II Editor, open the Import (F9) window and import your new loading screen image.
Once imported, you can navigate to Map > Map Loading Screen... in the menu and set it as your Image. While I haven't tested this beyond my demo, I believe Aspect Scaled would be the best Image Scaling setting.
I also set Type to Custom and I set Body, Help, Help Restart, Subtitle, and Title all to a single empty space. This is why my screen is blank except for the loading indicator. It's up to you if you want text on the screen... many maps do you use it. I prefer a minimum of text.
Step 5
At this point if you start your map, your loading screen should look good and once the map does load there should be only a very subtle change between your image and the in-game view. There's one last part.. the transition.
Back in the Triggers (F6) window, create 2 new triggers.
I find that the 0.5 second wait on the first trigger adds a nice, albeit very brief, delay between the game loading and when the camera starts to reorient itself. I also find 2.0 seconds to be a small enough wait that I'm not bothered by long enough to enjoy the transition. Tweak values to your liking. :) The only real point of importance here is to not unlock the camera for your players until the full effect has finished (unless you really want to let them disrupt it, then by all means...).
Like before, you can put the player triggers in a loop if you have multiple players and change Player Start Location to wherever their camera should be initially centered... likely on their unit or base or some such thing.
Conclusion
I put this together very quickly for my unit test map because it's a map I load often and I wanted something a little more pleasing to look at. Please feel free to leave comments/suggestions or point out any issues you run into. I do think too many maps rely on walls of text and dialogs to explain themselves to new users and it gets tiring so I hope we can see more creative use of the loading screen and more creative map introductions in the future. :)
Oops
Of course I read over the description a hundred times to make sure everything looks right before submitting, and I miss the typo in the subject. The one thing I can't fix. Can anyone help? "Creating a smooth loading screen transition