How do I make an animated title screen?

Not like a 50 minute long cutscene, but just like a few info/credit/design pictures.

Assuming Zdoom, it's usually done via a titlemap.

So I could have a completely black room and have scripts open and give messages?

Like:

[THE BEST WAD Ever!]
----[Created by:]----
---[Manhunt21]------------>>>>>

And so on?

Yes, a titlemap is like any other map, you can use all sort of acs tricks on it, including messages

With a bit of clever trickery, you can do that in vanilla.

Is it possible to change where text appears rather than the middle of the screen?

kristus said:

With a bit of clever trickery, you can do that in vanilla.

I was thinking you could have the demos just be a view of your 'screen' (say, as a texture)

Alternatively, you could use the help screen for your credits.

Manhunt21 said:

Is it possible to change where text appears rather than the middle of the screen?

Yes, you'll have to use HudMessage instead of Print I believe

How do I get it to work? I'm trying to do a Fadeinout one, could someone whip up an example for me, please?

I believe there was a fairly recent change in ZDoom that would allow you to potentially be able to use ANIMDEFS for an animated title screen.

Ok, got everything to work. Except, how do I get music?

kristus said:

With a bit of clever trickery, you can do that in vanilla.

This is interesting. How do you go about that? At first I anticipated that you meant making the TITLEPIC be the first frame of the animation and CREDITPIC be the second, but TITLEPIC goes right to DEMO1.

I believe DEMO1 abuse is the idea, heh.

That's cool, has anyone done it before that I could see an example of? I can't seem to think of a way to do it that wouldn't ultimately make it look like a demo.

You could edit the demo to create "less human" movement that would look more like a camera moving rather than someone playing.

So how do I get music on a TITLEMAP?

Same way you get music on any map with a non-standard name: MAPINFO.

I'm not good with MAPINFO, could you tell me how to make music go to TITLEMAP?

map TITLEMAP "Title"
{
	music = "musiclump"
}

And if for some reason you are still really against using MAPINFO (though I can't see why you would be), you could start the music in your ACS script.

40oz said:

I can't seem to think of a way to do it that wouldn't ultimately make it look like a demo.

What about scrolling or blowing the player around?

esselfortium said:

I believe DEMO1 abuse is the idea, heh.

It's one way, unfortunately, Zdoom for instance won't even try to play a vanilla demo. So it won't be compatible with that.
But you can also make the demos zero length and just use the credit screen as a second titlepic. I did that with Curse. But mostly because I wanted it to be consistent throughout the ports, and there's not really any reason to include demos in the wad anyway.

Also, in Heretic and Hexen you can use the parental advisory thing as an extra frame as well. (in curse I used it to have the subtitle print on the screen a bit after the title pic had been drawn)

printz said:

What about scrolling or blowing the player around?

That doesn't work in vanilla.
What you can do however is make a coop demo where you are using one player as a camera. You can be stationary and pan it without the view swaying, while another player act as a voodoo doll. Creating a "boom script". You'd be able to make a Strife like intro at the very least.

There is of course the issue of the status bar and the hud weapon.
The HUD weapon cvan be disposed of in two ways. 1, new sprites that make either the fist or the pistol invisible in it's idle state. (The fist would have to be switched to at map start, and it would be good for the demo to start in pitch darkness so it doesn't show)
2. just make the "silver screen" small (letterbox) enough to shroud the weapon in darkness without it overlapping the visual media.

The statusbar however is probably just gonna have to be there.

Gez said:

map TITLEMAP "Title"
{
	music = "musiclump"
}

Be a bit more curious and read the wiki.

Thanks

Enjay said:

And if for some reason you are still really against using MAPINFO (though I can't see why you would be), you could start the music in your ACS script.

Huh?