Daggerfall Workshop Forums

Loading Screen
An highly customizable loading screen that appears during loading times instead of the default black screen.

The loading screen is shown during the following transitions:

• Save loading
• Fast travel
• Entering/exiting dungeons and buildings (optional).
• After death sequence (optional).

Installation
Place loadingscreen.dfmod inside StreamingAssets/Mods.

Background
By default a clean black background is used. You can place any png file you want inside a specific folder and the mod will pick one of them randomly every time. Optionally you can have subfolders to use different images according to climates and/or interior/exterior/dungeon transition. See the readme for more informations.

Components
On top of background image, optional components can be drawn. These components can be customized from settings.

This is a list of currently available components:

• Tips: tips and other informations; some of them are chosen randomically, a few others are specific to current character save data.
• Enemy Show Case: random combat sprite graphic.
• Level Counter: a progress bar for next level.
• Loading Label: a simple label stating Loading or a custom text.
• Model Viewer: a random 3d model with background mist (think of Skyrim).
• Quest Messages: a log message from one of the active quests.

Presets
Editing settings for individual components can be overwhelming at first, so you are invited to start by picking one of the presets available from the mod settings window. Custom presets can be exported and shader with the community!

Downloads
Loading Screen on Nexus Mods

Old Downloads
Loading Screen v2.3
Oblivion-style backgrounds v.2 by Kamer

Uninstallation
Delete loadingscreen.dfmod from StreamingAssets/Mods.

Special Thanks
Special thanks to Jay_H and Tealy Wolf for writing some of the game tips.

Gallery

TheLacus wrote:This is a simple mod that shows splash screens (like these or these) during loading times instead of the default black screen.
The nice thing is that you can place any png file you want inside StreamingAssets/Textures/LoadingScreens and the mod will pick one of them randomly every time.

Download v1.0

known bugs: it doesn't work for the first loading screen, but once you are in game it works for both normal and quick loading.

Cool. Much like salt, loading screens are one of those things you really miss when they're not there.

Thank you.

What do you think about a counter? It assumes a loading screen last 3 frames and calculates the corresponding percentage. It's a bit unfair because the first frame is the one which take the biggest part of the time.

A cleaner alternative may be to use three dots, one for each frame.

I love this idea...IIRC there was a basic loading screen very early on (though that might just be my memory playing tricks).

When I transition between interior & exterior, it flashed a red question mark the majority of the time, and when it used one of the images from the /Textures/LoadingScreen directory, it flashed very fast. I think you need to use more than a few frames as they tick by too fast.

I think rather than using frames I would use actual time.

Regarding the Loading text, how about a line of dots in the bottom right corner so the user can see them, but they're unlikely to obscure anything?

I love this idea, I hope you keep working on it! There's a lot of really cool things you could do like animated loading screens and so on.

LypyL wrote:I love this idea...IIRC there was a basic loading screen very early on (though that might just be my memory playing tricks).

I had a static loading screen in the old streaming world demo way back. I dropped it when moving to Daggerfall Unity proper (as it wasn't part of vanilla, and my load times were only a couple of seconds anyway).

This is a very good mod idea though!

Thank you. Lypyl can you clarify a bit here ?

LypyL wrote:I think you need to use more than a few frames as they tick by too fast.
I think rather than using frames I would use actual time.

I think i don't understand what you mean when you say to use more frames or time. My original thought was to avoid displaying the splash screen at all when the loading time it's too short, like when moving between interior/exteriors, but i'm not sure how to handle this because most of the actual loading happens in a single frame.

LypyL wrote: Regarding the Loading text, how about a line of dots in the bottom right corner so the user can see them, but they're unlikely to obscure anything?

I love this idea, I hope you keep working on it! There's a lot of really cool things you could do like animated loading screens and so on.

Right now i'm working on allowing a customization via ini file and displaying different splash screen according to climate/seasons. Something interesting would be displaying a text string, like in skyrim, taken from the dialog rumors or maybe from the active quests.

TheLacus wrote:Something interesting would be displaying a text string, like in skyrim, taken from the dialog rumors or maybe from the active quests.

Yes! This would be fantastic! A fantastic way to integrate new players into DFU. I get the sense the load times may be too short for extensive text, but it's a great idea.

Version 1.1

• Added Loading counter/label in the bottom-right corner.
• Use ini file for customization.
• (optional) Use different images for Summer, Winter and Desert.

Download

TheLacus wrote:Thank you. Lypyl can you clarify a bit here ?

I think i don't understand what you mean when you say to use more frames or time. My original thought was to avoid displaying the splash screen at all when the loading time it's too short, like when moving between interior/exteriors, but i'm not sure how to handle this because most of the actual loading happens in a single frame.

All I mean is always display the loading screen image for a minimum amount of time (rather than frames). It doesn't have to be long, a second or 2 maybe, but long enough that the player will be able to visually process it if they're looking.