Title Screen mechanics

[marino13]

Hey all,
I'm quite deep into an ambitious project I've been working on for the past 6 months and I'm close to demo release.
I'm just curious on whether people have any experience with "playable" title screens. My title screen will be "playable" in a sense as a "meta" area to the game, without breaking the 4th wall (at least not much).
I'd love to hear peoples ideas and opinions on this kind of concept.
Thanks again!

 

[ShadowDragon]

im not entirely sure what you mean by "playable titlescreen", like it will be
an event titelscreen where you can walk around in order to "start" the game?

if so, it might be intresting, otherwise, explain a bit more on this mechanic.

 

[marino13]

im not entirely sure what you mean by "playable titlescreen", like it will be
an event titelscreen where you can walk around in order to "start" the game?

if so, it might be intresting, otherwise, explain a bit more on this mechanic.

Sorry I didn't quite explain it well.
Yes an interactive event title screen.

 

[JohnDoeNews]

Yeah, hime_pretitleevents.js can do this. Works really well for me.

 

[marino13]

Ah that's good to know @JohnDoeNews .
I personally have evented the whole thing myself and found it to be quite easy actually.
The actual title screen works as a map in itself and adds some extra mechanics to the game.
I was just wondering what people think of such a titlescreen, does it detract too much from the game? Or does it add some extra flavour?
Thanks!

 

[eomereolsson]

How do you expect us to offer meaningfull advice when you have told us nothing about your game and nothing about what these title screen extra mechanics actually are?

 

[ShadowDragon]

it can be fun "like enter a door or read a sign" to show options, credits,
load game, start game etc.

if you add to many, it might be distracting, specially if you need to do it
every single time when you start the game.

it can start off nicely (when no save game exist yet). and set a choice
to activate it or not, so you need to make basicly a interactive menu
when the switch is OFF, and a different menu if the switch is ON, so they
can decide what to do, so speed up the game continue, or otherwise.

I would use Olivia_MetaControls for the switching part as this switch is
remembered when the value change.

 

[marino13]

How do you expect us to offer meaningfull advice when you have told us nothing about your game and nothing about what these title screen extra mechanics actually are?

Hey,
I'm not asking for advice, I was just trying to start a conversation on peoples thoughts about title screens being playable, rather than the classic static new game, continue, options. Perhaps seeing the interest in such a thing.

 

[marino13]

it can be fun "like enter a door or read a sign" to show options, credits,
load game, start game etc.

if you add to many, it might be distracting, specially if you need to do it
every single time when you start the game.

it can start off nicely (when no save game exist yet). and set a choice
to activate it or not, so you need to make basicly a interactive menu
when the switch is OFF, and a different menu if the switch is ON, so they
can decide what to do, so speed up the game continue, or otherwise.

I would use Olivia_MetaControls for the switching part as this switch is
remembered when the value change.

So your opinion is, as long as i'm not forcing the player to go through hoops to access his saved-game that's fine.
That's basically the idea with which i've proceeded to build my start screen, it has extra content only when accessed through a save file. So usually its empty and the player just chooses new game, load or options, but when you save the game and then quit to title screen, there is extra content which also allows me to use the title screen as a purgatory of sorts where nothing carries over to the saved game.

 

[JohnDoeNews]

Ah that's good to know @JohnDoeNews .
I personally have evented the whole thing myself and found it to be quite easy actually.
The actual title screen works as a map in itself and adds some extra mechanics to the game.
I was just wondering what people think of such a titlescreen, does it detract too much from the game? Or does it add some extra flavour?
Thanks!

Yeah an interactive title screen is always good.

And that is exactly how the plugin works, one map will be the title screen.

How did you make that happen, if not with a plugin?

 

[marino13]

Yeah an interactive title screen is always good.

And that is exactly how the plugin works, one map will be the title screen.

How did you make that happen, if not with a plugin?

well actually, I used a title skip plugin, so I kinda Lied, sorry about that, i forgot. But after the title skip plugin everything else is done with a couple of script commands and events.

 

[ATT_Turan]

Hey,
I'm not asking for advice, I was just trying to start a conversation on peoples thoughts about title screens being playable, rather than the classic static new game, continue, options. Perhaps seeing the interest in such a thing.

Aside from nitpicking on the word "advice," @eomereolsson's point stands - you're asking for thoughts about something most of us have never seen So without giving information about what exactly you're having the player do and what you want to accomplish by doing it, almost nothing we say can be valid. That's like me asking you "What are your thoughts on the thing I'm cooking in my kitchen?"

Just on the face of it, I understand that you might have me moving a character on screen to go between New Game, Load, Options, etc. Without knowing anything more, I don't see the point of that - it's not satisfying my (hypothetical) desire to play through your game, and it's taking up more time than simply moving the cursor normally would.

It's like the old DVD menus with the long transitions every time you clicked between things in the options - who actually liked that?

If it's different than that, and there isn't a title screen and it just goes into the game, plenty of games do that and it's fine, if you don't have a save game system or any substantial option settings available.

 

[marino13]

@ATT_Turan Thanks for leaving your thoughts on the matter regarding the "playable" title screen, actually made me think about a couple of things. Also, I was looking for a discussion, rather than "valid" points, just peoples opinions. I was under the impression that this forum is for discussing mechanics in general and not only specific mechanics in our game. I just read the rules and posted.

 

[eomereolsson]

@ATT_Turan Thanks for leaving your thoughts on the matter regarding the "playable" title screen, actually made me think about a couple of things. Also, I was looking for a discussion, rather than "valid" points, just peoples opinions. I was under the impression that this forum is for discussing mechanics in general and not only specific mechanics in our game. I just read the rules and posted.

But how are we supposed to have a discussion without valid points?
Furthermore your description is so vague that it entails no mechanics to discuss.

Like if it's just "instead of selecting 'options' with a cursor your character goes to and talks to a cog" I don't think it is worth the effort, especially since the user now takes longer to just select the options, which further delays them from playing your game.
However I do concede that it may look really pretty and maybe that is worth it. This is however UX design and not game mechanics as I understand them.

If you have actual game mechanics like "beat this boss battle/sidescroller level/puzzle/quick time event to access the options" then I can only ask you why you ever thought that was a good idea.

If you have some meta-mechanics like choosing different bonuses for a new game+ or something like that, I generally like that. However this opinion is very much subject to change depending on the execution and the game it is for.

Or maybe you meant something else, which I can't think of right now. But I can't tell you my opinion as you don't tell me anything about these potential further mechanics.

 

[SGHarlekin]

Yeah, idk. Sounds funny the first time. Would probably stop playing because it's annoying the second time around.

 

[JohnDoeNews]

well actually, I used a title skip plugin, so I kinda Lied, sorry about that, i forgot. But after the title skip plugin everything else is done with a couple of script commands and events.

Do you still get the "new game" and "continue" menu then?

It's not a lie. You didn't actually say you did it without plugins. I just assumed that is what you meant.

BTW, is this youwarcraft project?

 

[marino13]

Do you still get the "new game" and "continue" menu then?

It's not a lie. You didn't actually say you did it without plugins. I just assumed that is what you meant.

BTW, is this youwarcraft project?

I evented a page to act like a title screen, with new game continue and such. The game just starts without the traditional title screen.
Nah, the warcraft project remains in the demo state for now. It was very ambitious and I wanted to do something without RTP assets. I'm actually doing this new one 100% original

 

[HankB]

I use the Yami_SkipTitle plugin. It's super small, is just plug-n-play, and doesn't seem to interfere with any other plugins, at least in my experience. When the player starts the game, they'll just go to the first default map, which you can setup however you like. Things like "New Game", "Continue", Replay Level", etc., can easily be evented if you need that sort of stuff.

EDIT: I just realized it's a bit hard to find the actual js file these days, so here it is:

(function() { Scene_Boot.prototype.start = function() { Scene_Base.prototype.start.call(this); SoundManager.preloadImportantSounds(); if (DataManager.isBattleTest()) { DataManager.setupBattleTest(); SceneManager.goto(Scene_Battle); } else { this.checkPlayerLocation(); DataManager.setupNewGame(); SceneManager.goto(Scene_Map); } this.updateDocumentTitle(); }; })();