For several months, Survivors of Late Earth has had a very bare bones title screen, featuring a solid color background, a very basic logo, and a few navigation buttons. Nothing else. For several months, that was fine as I was much more focused on getting vital in-game systems added to the game.
Oftentimes, however, an aspect of the game will just abruptly jump out at me, demanding attention, and that’s what happened with the title screen.
As you can see, nothing special going on there in the original version of the title screen. I put the bare minimum amount of work into it, knowing in the back of my head that eventually, I would go back and work on it, making it something more interesting.
In past iterations of the game, I used commissioned art to make a static background like this:
I had thought about doing something like that for this iteration, but a stubborn idea wedged its way into my head. If Late Earth is no longer a solid, cohesive planet but rather a belt of fragments and debris or something of the like (kind of like an asteroid belt), wouldn’t it be cool to see some of those fragments floating on through the void?
A little something I learned: unlike what Hollywood and popular culture has taught us, meteors and asteroids don’t tend to just placidly float along. That’s not how they work at all!
Sometimes, reality needs to take a seat, though. Most people don’t realize that cosmic objects don’t operate that way, so they’re not going to care whether my fragments are floating or not. For my part, I wanted to see floating fragments. So, that became one more random option to add in.
I changed the color of the background to the ‘void’ color I’ve already established in the game. I also drew 32 crappy world fragments. You’ll see further on down the post that they are indeed epitome of ‘placeholder’ art. At any rate, they would do for now. At this point, it was a proof of concept to see if it would operate and look the way I was envisioning.
So, I determined a number of random options for any fragment instance that would come gliding across the screen:
- Which fragment (of 32 possible fragments) would it be?
- At what coordinates would a fragment start its journey across the screen? (Don’t want them all starting in the same spot!)
- How fast would a fragment go?
- Would it float along placidly or streak by speedily?
- Would a fragment rotate?
Fragment rotation didn’t work quite like what I imagined and it was so comical looking that it totally broke immersion. That had to go. (It did give me a good laugh, though.)
With a lot of testing, I settled on 9 instances of fragments. This made for a more natural and often sprawling spread of fragments.
Now whether I keep this as the title screen remains to be seen. I hope that I do, but I never want to lock onto an idea so firmly that I don’t consider better options if they present themselves.
The fragments, as pointed out by a friend, really do lend themselves to the mythology of the game as they point towards what remains of the Earth. Lots and lots of fragments. Thankfully, for the player’s sake, there’s plenty enough massive fragments remaining to where they can travel to those fragments and do a variety of interesting things.
So, with that said, I do think that there’s a good chance that this iteration of the title screen will stay. Right now, it just makes sense. If you’ve got an opinion, feel free to share!