"Travel Screens" and "Mission Briefings" might be a choice too.

Some games have plenty of virtual travel, where the time between areas is covered by you watching those travels. Resident evil had you walking through doors, up stairs, and down ladders. Many games have your spaceship/airplane swooshing around for a min before drifting towards your destination planet.

Some games have plenty of briefing information you could give in-route. You can display important mission information on a screen or two. At the possible cost of increased loading times, you could add in a long voiceover of the mission briefing to fill the gap. Consider Modern Warfare 2 for instance.

Bayonetta had too much loading time all around, but I really did like the fact that their loading screen was a combo practice level.

What you said about the rendered character models.

How about having a kind of loading screen that integrates the character models.

For example it could start off as a wireframe view then ( starting from the bottom of the model) turn into the grey colour model, then (starting from the bottom again) turn into the rendered model. Meanwhile it could be rotating so you see some artwork and a loading screen.

I really wanted to see a loading screen with some kind of playable,eye-candy maze.
When you complete it you get a reward - would it be a unlocked 'concept art' or some in-game money.
In the end of your game you can show a achievement score for how-many-times-the-user-completed-the-maze thing.
The maze design and mechanic can come from analyzing old games like pacman, mario, checkers and other classics.
Everybody loves'em =D

GaiaOnline's Puzzle minigame either does or used to have a loading screen where your mouse cursor looked like a fan and there were some balloons you could blow around the screen. xEyes, bouncing sheep, and assorted types of pet (goldfish, cat or dog...) make good desktop toys/widgets, and would probably also make good loading screen toys. You could also probably emulate an 8-bit game, like a few months ago when google put a working pacman game into their page.

I second Bayonetta's system. It's a great tool for figuring out new stuff, and it puts you there with the equipment you've chosen for the next level, so not only does it let you get acclimated to your selection, it doesn't requiring any loading that doesn't also contribute to loading the level.

Also as another note that is more on the software design side.


Think about what your game is doing at any given time. Consider Battlefield Bad Company, on my system it takes between 12 and 13 seconds to load to the main menu screen if I skip the videos, but it takes closer to 30 seconds if I watch the videos.

They're not loading the game while I watch a boring little video that takes nearly no processing power!

And to top it off, even if I save my password info I still have to go and wait while I login! The moment I click the short cut it should not only begin loading to the main menu, but it should also give me the option to have it log me in and select my character.

(Not to mention that one should NEVER be given a loading screen to quit! If I want to exit the game in the middle of playing, I should have the ability to quit straight to windows!)



But you can go even farther than that with some smart asset design. How many seconds does the average player spend in the main menu looking for what they want to do? How much of that time can be used to load assets that have a 90%+ chance of being used no matter what option the player chooses?

Smart choices in how you do your loading can greatly reduce the time the player spends waiting for a game.


And never have any kind of video be unskippable (And include the option to go back and see skipped videos if you skipped it by accident.) Often times I rather watch a little glowing "Load" icon than sit through an annoying video I don't like. Many EA games I no longer play because I have to sit through the EA and NVidia logos. They're only like 4 seconds long in total, but they bug me and I can't skip them, therefore I just don't load the game.

Also, for any skipable video, especially intro videos, Any key I hit should allow me to skip it. I don't want to hunt around for it, esc, enter, etc. My fist hitting the keyboard at random should do the trick. (Dirt 2 is the game that annoyed me the most on this. Apparently Enter is the magic key. Logical I'm sure, you know, the key that less than 1% of games make use of on PC.)

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Original post by Daaark Something that just popped in my head: In God Of War, Devil May Cry, Fable, and other similar games, you get experience orbs that fall out of defeated enemies. What if you could do something similar on the loading screens that would earn you some orbs? Like maybe Simon Says with the face buttons? :) Just anything quick that can be done in ~5 seconds. Maybe in a game like DMC you could do Tarot Card video poker. You just quickly pick which cards to keep and which to redraw, and if you get a good hand, you get more orbs.

that's a genius idea! Might work better as a game start-up loading screen, like maybe a game where you contol a space ship or character (2D obviously) moving up the screen dodging obstacles, the player is awarded XP for making as much distance as possible, the obstacles are randomly placed. maybe even have upgrades in the main game that improve your character in the loading minigame.

Quote:

Original post by sunandshadow GaiaOnline's Puzzle minigame either does or used to have a loading screen where your mouse cursor looked like a fan and there were some balloons you could blow around the screen. xEyes, bouncing sheep, and assorted types of pet (goldfish, cat or dog...) make good desktop toys/widgets, and would probably also make good loading screen toys. You could also probably emulate an 8-bit game, like a few months ago when google put a working pacman game into their page.

Have you played Youtube's mini game? When you start a video (just some video) hit pause and then hold left arrow key =P

That's what i'm talking about \m/

I really liked the minigame in

">Okami's loading screens, a PS2 game.
It's a small but addictive rythm game : five small pawns are successively displayed, and if you pressed the button at the exact time a pawn appeared it displays a big pawn instead. If you manage to get 5 big pawns, you are rewarded with a dragon fang. Dragon fangs are used to buy some bonus items in a special shop, and there are faster ways to get dragon fangs in-game.
The reward is small and not unique so the minigame isn't mandatory at all (which would have been tedious) but is still rewarding.
Moreover this minigame is short (10 seconds) and keeps the feeling of the game, so the player doesn't feel drifted away from the game. However, it would probably feel boring with your 45 seconds loading.

Also, GesterX, showing random stat facts is an interesting idea, thanks. :)

If there has to be a loading screen, I really like loading screen minigames. Bayonetta's loading screen is nice since there are a lot of combos in the game and it gives you some time to try them out without wasting time.

But minigames are fun too. A maze, a sliding puzzle, or a reflex test are all pretty simple games that would be good for a loading screen.