Is presplash useful?

[PyTom]

Is presplash still a useful feature?

At least on my system, Ren'Py games tend to load fast enough that the presplash appears and disappears instantly. So it's not really conveying any sort of useful information to me. I'm kind of curious as to if that's the case for other people - does the presplash stay up for a useful amount of time for you?

Note that I mostly care about the non-developer case here. Compilation of a changed script can take a while - but on the second and later runs, the ones a player would see, does the presplash last long enough to matter?

I ask because the code that implements presplash is really ugly, and shares very little with the rest of Ren'Py. What's more, presplash is slow - it actually has to run a second copy of Ren'Py to do its thing, slowing down Ren'Py start. So all things being equal, I'd like to remove the feature, if it's not something that does useful things.

(Note that I'm only talking about the PC presplash - the android one is staying, since android devices tend to be slower than modern computers.)

[Applegate]

Whenever I open a Ren'Py game it goes straight to title menu. What is this presplash of which you speak?

[Samu-kun]

Not important at all. The game loads pretty much instantaneously from click.

[Explosions&NickCage]

A presplash lasts less than a second on my computer, but it looks damn good while it's there. Too bad.

[LVUER]

If you can make RenPy much faster by eliminating presplash feature, then yeah, do it. Why do we need presplash if RenPy can start up less than 5 seconds?

[jack_norton]

Agreed, it loads so fast even on a netbook that really is not needed anymore!

[PyTom]

Doomfest made the point (on IRC) that Katawa Shoujo benefits from it. So I'll keep it around for now - the code works, and if there's no presplash file, the only burden is a couple of extra syscalls that hit the disk.

I recommend against using presplash unless you expect your game to take more than a couple of seconds to load. (Basically, unless you have one of the biggest games.)

[jack_norton]

Hmm maybe they're also using cache_pin ? Because Loren is quite big too (100mb of assets+lots of python code to initialize) and takes just 2s to load on my computer which is quite low-end now Anyway if the only downside is what you said and doesn't prevent you from updating yes, you can keep it!

[Parkey]

I'm agree with jack_norton. Also, in Android the games take a while for loading, so it's very usefull from my point of view.

[Parkey]

I've been thinking about this...

It's possible to add music to a presplash screen?

[Keul]

I don't really understand that presplash thing. Is it the "label splashscreen" or presplash.png (or android-presplash.jpg)?

Maybe it would be better to rewrite the "really ugly" code

One other possible thing: code a new version of presplash screen and keep the old for compatibility (so, old games will still work, and new games wouldn't have a second copy of renpy working, witch is not really great on android devices)

I'm using the label splashscreen in my game to display the logo of the team with a fade and BGM, and a warning for the beta version. On desktop PC and on my netbook, it seems OK. On the android version I've made, the game takes quite a long time to start on my nexus4. (but game is not optimized for now, BGM are 320Kbps ogg and the sprites aren't optimized for now)

[Kato]

I've been thinking about this...

It's possible to add music to a presplash screen?

Presplash or splash? The presplash is only there for a second at most, hardly enough time for any kind of sound effect imo

[Keul]

I've been thinking about this...

It's possible to add music to a presplash screen?

Presplash or splash? The presplash is only there for a second at most, hardly enough time for any kind of sound effect imo

I'm using that and it lasts ~ 16sec

Code: Select all

label splashscreen:
    scene bg white
    play sound "xxxxxxx.ogg"
    show bg logo with Dissolve(6)
    $ renpy.pause(2.5)
    scene black
    show text "{size=+6}Text.................{/size}"
    with fade
    $ renpy.pause(8)
    stop sound
    scene black
    return

[Kato]

I've been thinking about this...

It's possible to add music to a presplash screen?

Presplash or splash? The presplash is only there for a second at most, hardly enough time for any kind of sound effect imo

I'm using that and it lasts ~ 16sec

Code: Select all

label splashscreen:
    scene bg white
    play sound "xxxxxxx.ogg"
    show bg logo with Dissolve(6)
    $ renpy.pause(2.5)
    scene black
    show text "{size=+6}Text.................{/size}"
    with fade
    $ renpy.pause(8)
    stop sound
    scene black
    return

Ah yep, that's the splash screen, of which you can add video/audio to (at least from what I've seen, haven't tried it myself). The presplash is a screen you have before that which show's up as the game loads. Unless you have a monster game it only lasts a second.