[Religion and Revolution]: Starting Screen

KJ Jansson said:

Next attempt with the same images.

Click to expand...

This looks very good to me.
(I really like it !)

Will there be the title "Religion and Revolution" on the Starting Screen ingame ?
(Maybe written on something like a pergament ...)

KJ Jansson said:

Let's wait some feedback from our colleagues and the visitors.

Click to expand...

P.S.:
Thanks for your patience with me.

raystuttgart said:

This looks very good to me.
(I really like it !)

Will there be the title "Religion and Revolution" on the Starting Screen ingame ?
(Maybe written on something like a pergament ...)

Click to expand...

Just a moment, I will try....

OK, I added pergament with the title. Result is here:



As you see both parts of collage are required serious corrections (center is shifted), some elements are closed by pergament, but this pergament cannot be too small because the title will be also very small, too, some other details are rather far from optimum.

Some suggestions:

1. The pergament does not need to be centered between the two parts.
Put it in the upper part.

Everybody will understand the 2 aspects.

2. The pergament should be broad instead of high.

Instead of

Religion
&
Revolution

do

Religion and Revolution (all in one line, and please write "and" as a word)

Reasons:

1. The Menu of the Starting Screen -> The Pergament should be above the menu not behind.
2. It will simply look better.

Another little point:

Could you try a different styles of "pergament" or paper ?
(It does not need to have "curled" parts on the top and on the bottom.)

I would simply like to see which style of paper / pergament looks better.

Last little point:

Could you try another font ?
Something that looks a little more old fashioned meaning a little more like the people of that time acutally wrote ?
(As an example you can see what I used in my variant.)

Variant 7:



Ops! Sorry I forget to change font.

KJ Jansson said:

Ops! Sorry I forget to change font.

Click to expand...

Otherwise it is excellent.
(A real masterpiece. )

raystuttgart said:

Otherwise it is excellent.
(A real masterpiece. )

Click to expand...

Thank you! Let's wait critical remarks from our colleagues and visitors. Tomorrow I will try this background with some screen resolutions in the game.

Hi KJ,

Great work on the screen. I particularly like Trumbull's painting of "The death of General Warren at Bunker Hill." Very apt. However, I did notice an anachronism with the screen. The image of the rifle is a Kentucky Longrifle, which is fine aside from the small fact that it appears to be a precussion lock rifle. Precussion locks did not come about until the 1830's, a little after the timeframe of our mod. A matchlock or Flintlock rifle/musket would be more historically appropriate. With this in mind I'm not sure if we would want to change the image of the rifle? I'll let the other members weigh in on this.

Sorry, I don't mean to sound critical, apart from the rifle image, I really like the screen.

PS

Ray, the flag with a tree in it, in the top right hand corner of the lower image, is a flag that was used very early on in the revolutionary war to represent the colonies of New England. It is based on an earlier British colonial flag used to represent that region of the colonies.

colonialfan said:

Hi KJ,

Great work on the screen. I particularly like Trumbull's painting of "The death of General Warren at Bunker Hill." Very apt. However, I did notice an anachronism with the screen. The image of the rifle is a Kentucky Longrifle, which is fine aside from the small fact that it appears to be a precussion lock rifle. Precussion locks did not come about until the 1830's, a little after the timeframe of our mod. A matchlock or Flintlock rifle/musket would be more historically appropriate. With this in mind I'm not sure if we would want to change the image of the rifle? I'll let the other members weigh in on this.

Sorry, I don't mean to sound critical, apart from the rifle image, I really like the screen.

Click to expand...

Hi colonialfan!

Thank you for your critical remarks. I used the gun only to cover a borderline region between both parts of image.

Here the corrected image:
1. Matchlock Musquette 1600-1660 is used instead of Kentucky Longrifle
2. the title font is changed



All credits to Victor Meirelles and his "Primeira missa no Brasil" (1861) (top part), John Trumbull for his "The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill" (lower part) and agaro for his composition.

Hi guys,

I just checked how it would look like ingame.
Perfect.

I do beleave you have nailed it spot on. Great work!

raystuttgart said:

Hi guys,

I just checked how it would look like ingame.
Perfect.

Click to expand...

Here the background in dds format with CIV4MainMenuBG.nif. The ingame image was made at screen resolution 1280x1024.

The screen looks Fantastic! Great job.

Well done KJ,
The reason I moved to a photo for the bottom image was that most of the WOI paintings and prints I looked at had a central event as the focus and then the surrounding characters and action was stylised in a way to make the viewer look at the central image.
I was concerned that the menu would cover this central event in the bottom photo and so remove a lot of the impact. So I started looking at photos with interest in the left and right third, as well as the middle third (which would be covered).
With the menu this has happened a bit to the bottom image with your screen, but I think this is always going to happen if you want to use paintings from this time period.

Well done! How is it looking in Full HD resolution? 1920x1080?

Gomer_Pyle said:

Well done! How is it looking in Full HD resolution? 1920x1080?

Click to expand...

Some distortions should be in Full HD resolution (1920x1080) because the source image is 1024x1024 in size. You can try by yourself: just re-size the image in any graphics redactor (InfanView, for instance).

I see only one way to prevent such distortions: to create to separate images for normal and widescreen monitors. Maybe there is another technique.... I don't know.

Sorry if I'm a little late...
I like the screen!

I really think we can thank agaro. Your rifle idea agaro was really good
I also like the idea of putting the title inside a box (agaro's initial idea), or inside a pergament (good idea KJ Jansson...)

I like this last version. I couldn't do better ! Good job KJ
I like both pictures...

The only thing that doesn't look perfect to me is the title (both pergament and text font seem suitable but not perfect)
By the way, I actually liked agaro's font! It was kind of bloody. Your's Ray was quite good too!

Robert Surcouf said:

I really think we can thank agaro. Your rifle idea agaro was really good

Click to expand...

Yes, thank you agaro for your input and help.

Robert Surcouf said:

I like this last version. I couldn't do better ! Good job KJ
I like both pictures...

Click to expand...

Great, we all agree.

Robert Surcouf said:

The only thing that doesn't look perfect to me is the title (both pergament and text font seem suitable but not perfect)

Click to expand...

"Perfection" is not easy to achieve, especially as there are always different tastes involved if you have several team members.

@KJ:
Would you mind experimenting a little with different fonts and different underlying pergaments to present us some alternatives ?

Hi!

Robert Surcouf said:

The only thing that doesn't look perfect to me is the title (both pergament and text font seem suitable but not perfect)
By the way, I actually liked agaro's font! It was kind of bloody. Your's Ray was quite good too!

Click to expand...

raystuttgart said:

Would you mind experimenting a little with different fonts and different underlying pergaments to present us some alternatives ?

Click to expand...

Let me explain my position.

1. I can change/edit all part of the collage including both pergament and fonts practically "on the fly". However, I need to understand the direction of changes.

2. "underlying pergament"

Whan exactly I have to change? Size, color?

To my opinion the size of this pergament is rather optimal. Title is very difficult to read on the pergament of smaller size. Even on this pergament I cannot use the font from post #7. It looks too small. At the same time the larger pergament covers a large part of top image.

The color of pergament is also cannot be too different from the top image. Moreover, it should be yellowish taking in the account the age of pergament.

I edit a little bit the color of pergament and now it looks as a color of original Declaration of Independence.

3. "fonts"

I agree with Ray, when he asked to change a modern font (see post #44.) on the older one.

Pardon-moi Robert, however, your variant of "agaro's font" cannot be accepted exactly due to "bloody".

To my opinion, all parts of collage should be in harmony. We used old-style art paintings as top and lower images. This means that a text also should be also of "old-style" or closed to "old-style", as we have on two last variants (previous one and this post).

Unfortunately, Gimps program has rather limited number of old style fonts.

Here the next variant of starting screen
- with another "old-style" font
- with slightly changed pergament.

raystuttgart said:

"Perfection" is not easy to achieve, especially as there are always different tastes involved if you have several team members.

Click to expand...

I agree.

About pergament:

I really like it, as it is in the current variant.
(Size, coloration and style look good to me.)

About font:

The current font looks a little better, than the one before.

From my side:

Let us go with this screen.
It is all very harmonic.

Fantastic work KJ !

raystuttgart said:

About pergament:

I really like it, as it is in the current variant.
(Size, coloration and style look good to me.)

About font:

The current font looks a little better, than the one before.

From my side:

Let us go with this screen.
It is all very harmonic.

Fantastic work KJ !

Click to expand...

Thank you, Ray!

At the moment I don't know what to do with widescreen monitors. This image (1024x1024) is very deformed at 1920x1080 resolution.

Any ideas?