"Make a fake loading screen!" "All loading screens are FAKE!" A genuinely impressive degree of phenomenal idiocy was in motion while these two ideas came into being. Like, my everyday degree of stupid extends as far as absent-mindedly putting the sugar bowl in the fridge but this is something someone actually had to think about before committing to. Incredible.
My guess is that someone realized that when progress bar is half full, it doesn't mean you are half time loading. So it's fake in a sense of time measure. Other people misunderstood and the myth was born.
Maybe I'm lucky, but the only thing I've heard about fake loading screens was a mention of how the actual progress bar *itself* and it's position is often faked. That is, instead of it jerkily bouncing across the screen they have it lerp instead because all it *really* needs to convey is that the game is still loading, and it's not crashed. The exact percentage is irrelevant for these things. Which pretty much is true, though I don't know how true it is that it "often" is faked. But to me, this whole thing sounds like someone misunderstanding how "fake loading screens" work and just extrapolating nonsense to get views. I don't mean this video which debunks it, obviously, but rather other posts/videos making the weird claims.
@@Sylfa I've implemented some loading screens for simple apps in the past (home projects, nothing serious) so I kinda knows how it works. My opinion is that it's way easier to divide progress bar into tasks, so half full bar means half of the tasks are done, and most developers implemented it that way, but people expect it means half of the loading time have elapsed, and realized it's just not true. It's too hard to tie bar progress to actual time. Fake loading screens is a domain of apps that wants to look professional, but actually don't need the progress bar, or developer don't know how to implement them - I have seen such cases, but it was domain of minigames in times when flash was popular.
A claim to authority by being in the industry for a long time doesn't really mean anything, especially if you say something that can so easily be proven wrong.
I've been in the industry for 84 years and I can assure you that this guy may or may not have been involved in a certain accident at a certain pizzeria.
@@STIMULAT10N I've been in the industry for 11 years and can confirm that this guy may or may not have been involved the in the ruling of a totalitarian super-state.
@@Artindi you saying youre bad at understanding jokes makes me think you believe everything you say in the how to fail videos LOL sooo yeah, those people actually think padding run time is a good thing, probably not a joke
My favorite fake loading screen was an old scratch game called "how to troll an entire community" or something like that, and it was just a loading screen that went on forever and never did anything else.
yeah but we're talking about the vast majority of games, and if every game did that, then it would stop being funny, and thus start being Extremely Annoying.
With how fast modern computers can load small programs, you could probably also get away with simple minigames that give a chance to win something like extra lives.
Fun fact: Crash Bandicoot 4 has loading screen at booting up the game WHICH IS LITERALLY JUST A MP4 VIDEO. That is, you can go to the root folder of the game and just delete the loading screen, it's hilarious.
@@Artindi Yeah, Crash 4's startup is very long. You can just erase the videos of all the crap stuff that pops up when you start up the game and you can literally be within a level within 30 seconds of starting up the game.
The only reason I have added loading screen to my game, Is because when the player clicked "play" the game looked like it crashed. Now the player knows that its loading the world
This is legit the main job of a loading screen in my experience: assure the player that, no, no, progress is being made, don't reboot because you think it's crashed.
This is the job of progress meters / status updates generally. Depending on the engine/IDE used, if your program is too busy running a specific (and time-consuming) process to even refresh its own UI, the user will at some point assume the program has silently halted.... Which can be particularly dangerous when running low-level diagnostic/recovery tools (like Chkdsk).
@@Stratelier Windows actually monitors your UI refreshes and treats apps with windows that hasn't refreshed for a while/after some clicks as Not Responding
I have implemented numerous progress bars that will just percentLeft = percentLeft * 0.9 so it will slow down gradually, never reaching goal.. When everything is ready, it'll just percentLeft = 0 and no one's any wiser.
My brain isn't working right now, but I'm assuming that is an actual solution. And to be honest, there are many actual solutions to make loading screens and loading bars that are mostly accurate, it's BS that every one of them is faked.
@@Artindi No, my implementation is just on the premise that you really cannot know if something is going to take 2 or 10 seconds.. in any case the user is shown a progress bar, that indicates that something is happening (moving forward), no matter for how long it will take (never reaching the end). If I got unlimited budget, I'd make it so that everytime a progress bar is instantiated, it would log what was the operation and how long it took - and it would estimate the time from previous logs.
I mean, fake bars are used, but i hate them, they just become a animation rather than a indication that something (or more importantly, a lack of somthing) is happening. if the load logic hangs, but the bar graphic keeps chugging, it will look like something is happening rather than the fact its borked.
I believe there was a study that showed cognitive drift kicks in at about 1.5 seconds of inactivity on average, so maybe make it less than 2 seconds to avoid a feeling of boredom or disconnect in your players.
i have an optional fake loading screen in a game i once coded for some friends. it starts at 0% and then goes down to -7% before starting to go up. it also goes beyond 100% at the end. and it shows some really useful hints while loading, like the fact that if you see something below 0 percent or above 100 percent on loading screens, you should probably go see a doctor.
A Secret about Loading Screens... EVERYTHING is a loading Screen, players just don't realize it because good Game Designers won't use a specific screen to indicate it, instead they'll use transitions, animations, cutscenes, dialogues, environment, a simple transitional area, etc. Lots of ways to have a "Loading Screen" without it being a literal "screen".
and if you do need to have an actual loading screen you can still make it add to the game by including mini games or helpfull tips. make players want to watch the loading screen instead of dread them
In the Metroid Prime series, doors are loading screens. When you shoot a door, it can sometimes take a moment to open as the next room finishes loading. I'm also fairly certain the game preloads adjoining rooms in general for as seamless an experience as possible. Regional elevators are also loading scenes disguised as short cutscenes.
I have plenty of experience with fake loading screens... where I work, we had to present our project in some kind of dumb meeting, where each dev team would present their project to the others as a way to showcase what we were working on for some reason, a waste of time, obviously just an easy way to get the higher ups and management to see what is it that their company is actually doing while they are touching their ba-... I mean, being "very productive leaders"... Anyway, at the end of the day, what won the approval of the bosses was whatever had the most eye candy. It didn't matter how functional the actual project was, just how good it looked. And one my team noticed was that the other projects had extremely slow loading times. They loading screens were not faked, it's just that they did not optimize their project at all. Our project was so optimized that every single operation would be performed in an instant, including opening up the entire program (which is very heavy when it comes to graphics assets and rendering... because it's a realtime graphics program, can't give more details than that). Basically clicking any button, opening and closing, saving and loading files, etc... it all was so fast that it didn't even need a loading bar, because it was actually optimized and leveraged the capabilities of modern systems, rather than wasting all of the precious resources we've been given... The higher ups did not like our program at all. They found it bad that there was no loanding screens. They felt like none of the actions were actually taking place, that every single operation had just silently failed or something... by the next meeting, we filled the entire program with tons of fake loading screens and they couldn't be any happier. What I'm trying to say is that adding a fake loading screen is crap, it's terrible, it does not offer anything to the end user... but some people are just not intelligent and believe that the computer needs to "spend time thinking" to prove that it is doing any actual work... So, sadly, yes, you must add fake loading screens to make the stupid people happy....
Another way is to add "feedback" reactions, such as sounds and animations. Some people prefer to save a file multiple times "just to be safe" because SSDs are ludicrously fast, and some apps don't have any feedback that asserts to the user "yes, you've properly pressed the save button, and the save was successful!"
This reminds me of how foam in shampoo isn't necessary, and exists just to make it feel like it's working better. And since most people who use shampoo aren't chemists, adding unnecessary foam is a great way of selling more shampoo I agree that fake loading screens seem stupid as a computer engineer. But as a non-chemist, I do like the foam in shampoo, so I'm hesitant to insult people for liking loading screens
Has anybody mentioned Assassin's Creed's loadings yet? Just loading the (controllable) player character and the Animus background really makes it feel like it's the Animus that's loading the next memory, while also being interactive. Very clever way to even make the loadings be part of the game itself.
It's a good idea but it depends on the quality of the game itself. If there's a crash during loading it takes ages to realise and then there's no way to get to a menu and quit out easily. These are Ubisoft games after all, many a time I've been running around in the void wondering if it's actually loading or not.
@@greenhowie Yes, and it also depends on there being some component of gameplay that can be loaded fast enough to do that without increasing the loading time to something that the players won't accept. In the case of the AC loading screen, it's typically short enough that if there is any increase in loading time that results, it's tiny.
@@greenhowie in the case of valhalla, (on last gen hardware) it really does take that much time to load, that game really pushed the limits of the anvil engine, sort of like how black flag did that for its iteration of anvil on ps3/xb360
I think loading screens can provide opportunities to troll the player. If your loading screen has tips, then you can have a very important-looking warning or other tip that appears only when the game is already done loading and it cuts off before the “important” bit so you’re left wondering what it was.
@@roboj05 That’s exactly what I was thinking, but I did not quite know how to describe it succinctly. Typewriter effect, indeed. Also it would be so funny to have it be “Critical warning: For the safety of yourself and others, please do not-“ and then for any dataminers wanting to see the full message, make just be “the cat.” Something funny like that for people wanting to dig deep.
@@Speed001 It can be programmed to occur infrequently enough that players may not suspect it for a long time. If regular hints are also sometimes (if not more frequently) cut off in this manner, then it would help further. It should only ever come across as “bad luck” rather than blatant tricks by the game.
loading screen simulator 2024; it's an idle game, the longer you load the more load points you get, and you use load points to buy more loading screens there are microtransactions, but they don't affect gameplay, they're purely aesthetic as all they do is give you even more loading screens also it's an MMO! you can all watch the same loading screen together! PVP is seeing who can load fastest.
Cool idea for loading screens: Interactable loading screens Loading screens can be a good 4th wall break. Make something play behind the loading screen (like the actual main game while the screen is present)
A common way ive seen big games load things without bringing up a loading screen at all are hallways. Like you go through a section of the game, go through a door, run through a hallway at normal pace, and when you go through the other door, boom, section loaded
@@Artindiactually that spinning circle needs to stop from time to time for a short time. A circle that spins for too long without an interruption is another sign that something is wrong. XD
I had no idea that fake loading screens was even a possibility BUT the WORST loading screen is literally the sims 4 (it’s just the spinning logo and “tips”) BUT the BEST one is the sims 3, there’s a click and find objects game (that can be toggled off, if the player wants) that gives you points, once you get into the game and if you find all the objects in that loading screen photo, there’s a new one to do. That is cool!
Poképark 2 loading screens could be completely fake and 10x larger than they need to be but I wouldn’t care cause I get to see the main characters actually interacting with each other, with more loading screens added the more characters you get
@@Artindi not just don’t mind, I crave it! The main characters in Poképark 2 are too busy saving the park to have any normal interaction (as is usual for main characters) so this is such a good way to add a bit of depth to them without needing to make any extra pace-breaking cutscenes. More games should have this kind of loading screen. I’d appreciate it a lot more than boring tips
One actual reason to add a fake loading screen would be if it fit the artstyle (80s,90s,sci-fi,retro,) just be sure to find SOME kind of function you can tie the progress of it to.
as someone who's been in the industry for seventy-four years, it's generally considered best practice to include a fake two-hour loading screen right before the title screen of your game to ensure that those pesky consumers don't exercise their right to refund your game
The fact that you showed the 7 days to die screen while you were talking about poor optimization and bad developers had me dying. I used to love that game back in the early alphas. Easily sunk 2000 hours into the online PVP, back when the PC version was around the version that the Xbox is currently stuck on. They have been on a crusade to remove anything fun that game used to have, and neuter the hell out of it... Oh yeah, honorable mention to porting it to consoles, and then just abandoning the console versions...
I had the loading screens up in the order that I recorded them, (mostly alphabetical from my Steam library.) So 7D2D was one of the first ones in the original edit. But as I was watching it back, I realized I needed to move 7D2D exactly for the reason you mentioned, so I swapped it with The Forest's loading screen. Because yes. 7D2D being doing dumbs,
One of the reasons to add a completely fake loading screen is to make a transition between 2 completely different ways of interacting with the game not feel weird(e.g. menu before starting a run and the actual game). Though it should be a small cutscene, but if you don't feel like it, a loading screen might do
I agree with this video all the reasons are a definite NO on fake loading screens in games, however I think there is only one good reason for a fake loading screen and that is when for thematic reasons you want the game to look like its running on an ancient OS and your playing off nostalgia for windows 95 or XP, but even then it better have a cool aesthetic and it better not actually take long
like when you playing a game that the time setting is from 1999 or something and you interact with a computer inside the game? alot of indie games make you interact with computer in a old setting.
This reminded me about something. Way back in the day, when games came on tapes, you'd sometimes have a small simple game load first, that then ran during the rest of the load time. Giving you something to do while the C64/Atari/Commodore was loading for sometimes up to 30 minutes or even an hour. Perhaps someone making the claims that padding game-play with loading screens should consider just having 30 min load times, I'm sure they'd make a killing… Career suicide is still a killing, right?
no. i hate fake loading screens with a burning passion. any game that doesn't use them (or minimizes it because modern tech is fast as fuck in most cases) makes me go "holy shit, these devs know how to optimize!" i bought an NVMe SSD and i'm gonna use all 50 gajillion megafucks of loading speed it has!!
I've been using computers for nearly 40 years at this point and a lot of the people that are arguing about this have no idea what they're talking about. Loading screens these days are mostly about not having the game look stupid while the player waits for the level to start. If you didn't have a loading screen, the alternative is to either leave the previous screen in place while you draw in a buffer for a quick swap, or show the loading which will pretty much always look stupid. The other thing that a loading screen does is show you that the game hasn't frozen. That's not as much of a concern now with multi-tasking computers where if the game does freeze, it will usually CTD or the OS will throw up a dialogue indicating that the application is stuck. When I first started playing, the loading screens weren't as much of a thing because disk space and transfer speeds were more of a concern. If there was a loading screen, it would be a lot simpler. For example, just a static image with a growing bar, or that spinning baton thing that you still see on CLI interfaces. Personally, I think a loading screen that has some component that constantly movies tied in with some component that indicates a basic task that's in progress is the best way to go. And, even then, the progress time really only is necessary if you can break it down like that and there's a lot going on. It can also be nice to have a simple loading screen that just pops up a prompt to indicate that you can press a button to start the level, so that even on a shorter load time you can immediately dump the player into the action if you so choose.
Just adding a minor reason why you might have a loading screen. Some games load directly into the previously saved place in the game and then prompt for some keyboard input, which if it's in a fight or anything time based, then that really sucks for the person if- upon seeing the loading screen, they go to the toilet or get some food or something. That said, it's not really for "fake loading screens" so much as a keyboard prompt to get into the game, if it's been loading for a little while. Also another interesting thing about loading screens is.. "just put a minigame in the loading screen". The answer there is that Namco Bandai is a patent troll... see "patent US 5718632 A". Fortunately that patent expired, unfortunately it gave us years of boredom and actively made everyone's life a little worse.
Yeah, I can't tell you how many times I've tabbed out of the game loading screen only to check back in a little later and find my plane's already crashed because it didn't start paused. What's worse, is that sometimes the game loads in 5 seconds, sometimes 50 seconds, no way of knowing.
1:49 if you load into a survival map in l4d2 and press escape during the loading screen, you can see the entire map already loaded, waiting for the loading screen to be over. The first half of the loading screen actually loads assets and is a real loading screen. Part of the second half is waiting for sync with other clients (which does not need to take place in single player...). The last bit left of the loading screen is completely fake, and it's there purely because the devs simply couldn't figure out how to properly sync it with the actual loading, so they added a fake margin of error as a "just in case" kind of deal... So yeah, not all loading screens are fake, but some of the "real" ones are actually just partially real.
im a l4d2 modder/player, if you are the local host, meaning you are the server, that waiting don't happen (unless theres other players conected), that waiting is also used for other reasons, so everyeone have the same to pickup items and stuff, and the game acctualy wait a slow computer to load in some instances, get someone with a low end pc from 2008, and start a campaing with them, you will see that at the FIRST MAP, all other computers will wait that player, so the player see the introduction of the map/cinematic together the game acctualy wait the other players, but all the other safe room door will not wait the other players it only waits in the first map, however if you are not the "Host" theres always a small amount of time the server make you wait, so lets say, change map transition begin, player 1,2,3 are loading, player 4 finished loading, the server still make the player 4 wait a little bit but not forever, however after the player 4 enters the game, player 1,2,3 will not have any artificial waiting they will join as soon as everything is loaded. and again if you playing in single player or are the local host (not dedicated servers solo) theres no artificial waiting this waiting only happens when you are connected to a server, or if you are local host but are not alone, if you are local host and alone no artificial waiting is added, and again the waiting have a purpose it try to make everyone enters the game at the same time so for example you playing scavenge and the other survivor don't have more time to grab that only meele weapon.
i have no idea, but i sorta want to make fake loading screens to display miscellaneous tips or fun facts that would otherwise disturb the flow if interpolated in-game (like in some rhythm games
I disagree with that last one. Games like Super Mario Bros. Essentially have loading screens and it actually gives you a break from all the chaos. Without them, it's a little offputting to immediately start running right
On the returns point (not sure if this is brought up on the other video) I think for most people if they beat a game in under 2 hours and they enjoyed it… they’ll want to keep it downloaded to be able to do it again sometime. Video games arent a one and done medium you can absolutely get more out of something on repeat plays, be it honing skills or just noticing/appreciating stuff like music and story beats.
I think the only fake loading screen I know off is warioware inc's, which is there to contextualise the fact that the menu itself is an in-fiction video game. Probably. Maybe.
i was looking for this comment! when he even mentioned the fake loading comment i thought abt warioware for the gba which loaded every new “program” onto the “desktop”. its called theming and warioware is the fuckin master of it
Dude that DRG clip was me for the longest time until my friend finally built his first pc instead of playing on an absolute fossil HP Omen from 2002 or something good video
I legit thought this was going to be about those fake loading screens on some NES bootlegs that are purely just there because the bootleggers couldn't be bothered to remove the code for company splash screens, so they just cover the texture
I like it when game make interactive loading screens. I am thinking about fire emblem were you can run back and forth. It does nothing it just and enjoyable way to keep the players focused on the game.
I think what it means when people say most loading screens are fake is that their loading screen isn't calling the actual progress of the scene loading. The screen itself is instead being shown only after the scene has started running, and is just there to show you something cool while you run a camera around the world to cache some things in the already loaded scene. It makes gameplay a bit smoother in the first parts of the level, and is still adding performance benefits, but I agree you don't need a loading screen if you're not at *least* doing *that*.
More general game engines will lazily load. This greatly improves loading time and initial memory usage, but the game will load assets as it goes on, and a minimal amount of processing time is required per asset. However, it doesn't need to do that. Factorio, for example, has a completely real loading screen. Every single asset and resource is loaded into memory before the title screen, because Wube's proprietary engine optimizes heavily for speed instead of loading time, and that's kind of the whole point of the engine. I use lower level graphics libraries and don't use many assets, so loading time is basically instant. I do like Valve's approach to loading screens, it doesn't break immersion as much as a full overlay, and it's simple, which is perfect.
A tip aswell is have a small little animation or at least something moving on screen. That way if something freezes the game, the player is aware and isn’t staring at a loading screen that froze, could be as simple as the … bouncing or “typing out” or just a wheel that spins
i made a game recently and i noticed when testing that assets were flickering weirdly for like 2 frames when restarting and i thought that the loading screen i added could be considered fake, but no it does cover up loading in i suppose and the only thing fake about it is how long it lasts (it being randomised because the jitter is consisted on most other devices and im pretty sure both are tied to framerate)
"Don't make fake loading screens." - Adds multiple fake ones to his own video... Let's face it: As a developer since 1990 I can tell we have so much power at hand there shouldn't be a loading screen since 2001. But in 2001 games showed how bad code can be and sell none the less just with good graphics. So graphics are, like shown unintentional in this video, THE reason for loading screens. The second reason is imported crap the "developer" himself could not explain line after line and/or imported crap which has more data within than a human being wants ever to reed out loud if not a gun is pointed to his head. So if your code is fine (which mean you can explain every line and every character) you will not have something to load in a way which needs a loading screen. Or even multiple ones. BUT the people are used to see them since 1979 or so. So the crowd which doesn't know anything about coding, game development and such expects them to be there. If there aren't any at all your game is not seen as perfectly running. It is expected to offer nothing good. So your AA game transforms into at best an A game but more likely an B or C game just because of the expetation. Its like making your adventure game a pure text adventure. It could have the best story and gameplay of all time. But without graphics and sound only real nerds, retro fans and purists will be attracted. Don't get me wrong: They bring the passion. But they will not bring the money. So you should listen into your inner feelings: Should this game make money for me or do I make it out of passion? Should it be seen as state of the art by as many people as possible or as a timeless masterpiece by only a hand full of people? For the first ones: Add loading screens even if fake or just for 0.6 seconds. If you are one of these rare second ones: Yes you don't technical need them, so avoid anything which needs to load longer than 0.13 seconds. But to most "developers" from 2010 or later: You're most likely not having any choice. Depending where you started you presumably can't code from scratch in just a text editor. You think you need engines, assets, frameworks, libraries, templates, GUIs, SDKs, IDEs, large databases and so on. The more your work depends on all of these the more crap you need to load. So for you there is no way around them at all most of the time. You would try to make an XXO game at it would be hard for you to fit it on an 1,44 MB floppy. Of course with an computer opponent, 2 player multiplayer, graphics, tutorial and sound. And I know I'm a dinosaur coming from a time we had 30 games which could give you fun for hours on a 170 KB 5.25″ floppy. So what I'm saying is for you as hard to believe than it was for me when the first games came out which needed more than 100 GB disk space. Just to give you a comparison: 1,44 MB means you need to write an essay which is longer than 100 paper pages in letter/A4 size. All games ever available to the original NES, SNES or GameBoy where not bigger than 1 MB (NES), 4 MB (SNES) or 8 MB (GB). A CD was 850 MB at best. So yes all Playstation 1 games where not larger than this. But you can see a trend: The more a system offers the more crap is put onto it. Today only the Nintendo Switch is going against the more is always better trend/mindset. But even there are loading screens because of graphics and bad coding habits. So this video is correct in terms of how development is done today most of the time by most companies. But you are not doing wrong if your game doesn't need to load for longer than an blink of an eye so you are also not doing wrong if adding fake loading screens to entertain people and match expectations. There can be little animations, tips they will not really read otherwise or even mini games while the bar does it's thing. And no: There is no need for me to display my resume. Believe me or let it be. Go out there and dig yourself. There is enough research available without the need of money. Make a quick research which "powerful machines" where necessary to get to the moon and back. Than compare it with a graphics calculator of today or a 386er Laptop. Watch out for the first super computers and todays smartphones. You don't need to believe me. Hack I even don't want you to do so. Learn. Improve. And write code as if a psychopath is coming after you if he doesn't understand what your code does or when your game doesn't run properly on his 10 year old laptop/tablet when he wants to play it again in even 10 more years from now on. This would be great. At least that's my point of view. How about you? ^^
I love the pacing in Mirror's Edge, because the elevators you go in function as in level loading screens but also as breathers between the fast-paced action sequences, and I think that's genius, because it's discrete. (Same with the segments where you have to crawl through tight spaces.
This video isn't very nuanced, and I understand that a 4 minute youtube video would perform worse if it got too specific, but I wish there was a line like "I'm sure there's some very specific cases fake loading screens can be good" somewhere A few comments have mentioned trolling the player, or having a natural place to give the player hints (if there isn't much opportunity in-game). Just showing some cool artwork or animations would be fine if you think they would add to the experience. A very meta game could even break the rules of a loading screen they've introduced, for an interesting puzzle/moment of horror or something. The most applicable point is that loading screens are very cheap and easy to make. If you get the last minute feedback of "your game doesn't explain some niche mechanics", sticking the explanation in loading screen tips would be far easier than reworking a level or part of the tutorial to explain it. Don't get me wrong, it's not better to do that, it's just much easier, and in some cases would work fine
My game has one loading screen *so far* (I practically just started). I first subdivide it into one chunk for each category. Then for each category of things to load I do a quick count and subdivide that chunk even further. If one category has a lot more stuff to load than another, that chunk will go slower than the other, but at least it does not lie.
I can tell that I will need a loading screen. Space combat/exploration game with free flight - when the player goes online, the surrounding area is loaded, and the objects manifested, which are stars and nebulae. That takes around 2-8 seconds. Without loading screen everything would visibly pop up from nowhere. So I will need to add a loading screen to hide it.
I wish loading screens had a terminal esc interface that actually showed what the game is doing, like the same kind of stuff you'd see in the terminal when installing linux. And the longer tasks should be split up into discrete numbered sections so it doesn't go through 100 lines in a second for the easy stuff but then get stuck on a single line for 30 seconds because the longest task is only considered a single line. This way, you know the game is actually doing something even though you don't know how long it's going to take. But if it gets to a certain line and just stays there for several minutes, then you know it probably hanged.
Well, I say "yes", depending on what we mean by "fake". "Fake" as in it literally serves no purpose, or is artificially longer for reasons you said? Nah. "Fake" as in your game is technically loaded and ready to go, but you just want a smoother transition between levels/from menu-to-level, or to maybe hide a bit of texture blurriness as higher-quality assets are streamed-in? Sure.
Loading screens should only be used if the game needs to load for a few seconds otherwise slap a freeze frame of the current gameplay and a loading bar on screen then you'll be fine.
The games I play hang up for a long time regularly and still don't finish loading assets on the regular. There are also games I play where someone made a mod that removes the loading screen, since the assets are what take forever while the mechanics and physics load immediately.
I remember playing MH World on PC under spec, and the one setting with the biggest impact on loading times between areas ... was the cap on texture sizes. The default setting is (I believe) 2048, but if you drop it to just 1024 it cut the loading time by _about half._
My thought would be to use a fake loading screen to let the PLAYER "load in" and get ready for the action. Give them _just_ enough time to collect their bearings, and don't keep them waiting any longer than that. It shouldnt take more than 3 seconds, and shouldnt be needed when moving into a "slower" gameplay section like a hubworld Maybe less a loading screen, and more like the Sonic Adventure 2 Level Cards: something used to give the player a chance to go from "watching a cutscene" mode to "game time" mode
I've been in the industry for -1 years, and I can pretty surely recommend you to put minigames in your loading screens just like dragon ball Budokai Tenkaichi trilogy. It just feels nicer to do something instead of just looking around your room while the game is loading
this is one of the greatest videos ive ever seen, no it wont help me with making games since im not an indie game developer in the first place but every one of the points in this video is good
there is a good point to have a loading screen: to show quick tips and reminders. Sure you will have a tutorial and everything explained in some menu but the feeling of quick tips is different and imo usefull. Plus I personnally hate when there are tips but the loading screen fade out whithout my consent, I was reading ! (or maybe not but just taking a break or looking at cool artwork).
So uhh, your sarcasm is great. Uhh, i deffinedly know you are talking about fake stuff, becase that is what you allways do. /uj great video, and amazing to see you expanding to other elements of game making, than failing at it 2:22
I put in something like a loading screen, but it wasn't really a loading screen fake or otherwise, but an intermission screen which last 2 seconds plus however long the player chooses before clicking on the continue button. It was there to provide score (kills) information and some useful bits of lore, as well as to make the jump between levels less jarring that having the level just disappear and instantly be replaced by something completely different (trust me, without it is is a bit jarring).
I can think of one and only one good reason to add a loading screen. You see, I'm working on a DMC parody game for my friend, and DMC V on PS4 has way too many loading screens and horribly long load times, so I've thought about potentially adding fake loading screens (which say that they're fake) in order to poke fun at the original game. Though, I'd probably disable them after the first few levels or something
"ALL loading screens are in fact FAKE!" BS. Sonic the Hedgehog CD has to load its stuff from CD (obviously). it doesn't have a loading screen explicitly, most of the time the loading screen IS a black screen. but when you're switching timezones it *does* apparently have a loading screen, that being the little animation that plays. (I've heard that was meant as a loading screen, and that the original vision was to not have it and just instantly switch to the desired timezone, but due to Sega CD hardware limitations, this was impossible.)
I could see using one for artistic reasons, depending on what you're trying to do (I did that in a shelved fangame for a minigame you could play on the protag's computer, and it only lasts 2 or 3 seconds), but using it for much else beyond that is pointless at best and malicious at worst (Specifically the "Pad out the run time to prevent refunds" excuse).
From a software dev perspective, I've seen someone having to add in a fake loading screen. The app didn't need it, but the users were confused because they didn't feel like hitting the buttons was actually doing anything without it. It's definitely... a solution. Can't argue that it got the result it wanted though.
I never thought of people creating fake loading screens, but it does make sense. Thanks to advancements in both hardware and programing tricks, loading screens are not needed anymore. However, loading screens used to be beneficial by giving tips to the player. Some were also interactive, like the one in Bayonetta. It was basicaly a training room with a list of combos, and players also had the option to stay in there until they were ready for the next level. Also, Gaming Architect once did a video about the importance of getting players out of the gameplay loop to kinda reset their brains. That's why fishing and other dumb quests exist. Loading screens would definitely help with that. So, I could see a fake loading screen being beneficial when done correctly. It breaks the loop, give advice, and maybe even a chance to practice some skills before the next mission.
It's interesting to know that many progress bars show fake progress. They start out fast and slow down logarithmically as the time passes so that they never quite get to the end until that final jump when it's actually done. This may not be common with games, but is quite common for installers and many Microsoft products.
Classic Resident Evil games had loading screens with door animations whenever you go from one room to the other. And it worked perfectly well building anticipation. Code: Veronica went even further and added cpecific slooooow door animations with a heartbeat sound whenever the player is supposed to be especially nervous about what's on the other side of the door. Now, in PC ports we were able to skip the door animations because the room-to-room transition was actually instant, but it really detracts from the immersion. I say... sometimes you MUST add fake loading screens or similar artificial transitions to make the game feel better (creepier if we are talking horror), even if it annoys a few players (speedrunners specifically). But only when it's part of the immersion.
"Make a fake loading screen!"
"All loading screens are FAKE!"
A genuinely impressive degree of phenomenal idiocy was in motion while these two ideas came into being. Like, my everyday degree of stupid extends as far as absent-mindedly putting the sugar bowl in the fridge but this is something someone actually had to think about before committing to. Incredible.
This is well said. :)
bread made of loaf
My guess is that someone realized that when progress bar is half full, it doesn't mean you are half time loading. So it's fake in a sense of time measure. Other people misunderstood and the myth was born.
Maybe I'm lucky, but the only thing I've heard about fake loading screens was a mention of how the actual progress bar *itself* and it's position is often faked. That is, instead of it jerkily bouncing across the screen they have it lerp instead because all it *really* needs to convey is that the game is still loading, and it's not crashed. The exact percentage is irrelevant for these things.
Which pretty much is true, though I don't know how true it is that it "often" is faked. But to me, this whole thing sounds like someone misunderstanding how "fake loading screens" work and just extrapolating nonsense to get views.
I don't mean this video which debunks it, obviously, but rather other posts/videos making the weird claims.
@@Sylfa I've implemented some loading screens for simple apps in the past (home projects, nothing serious) so I kinda knows how it works.
My opinion is that it's way easier to divide progress bar into tasks, so half full bar means half of the tasks are done, and most developers implemented it that way, but people expect it means half of the loading time have elapsed, and realized it's just not true.
It's too hard to tie bar progress to actual time. Fake loading screens is a domain of apps that wants to look professional, but actually don't need the progress bar, or developer don't know how to implement them - I have seen such cases, but it was domain of minigames in times when flash was popular.
Why stop at fake loading screens? Just fake the entire game, slap a battle pass on it and you have the latest AAA masterpiece.
I mean, yeah, good point....
Battle Pass Simulator
But how would you earn b pass points if theres no game?
@@mrkefirek9Being in the game.
No way mobile game moment
"Ive been in the industry for 15 years" MFs when they have to actually make a game on their own instead of burning out their 200 employees:
A claim to authority by being in the industry for a long time doesn't really mean anything, especially if you say something that can so easily be proven wrong.
"I've been in the industry for 15 years!" Yeah, the erotic film industry.
@@Interference22he gonna have a hard time adjusting to other genre.
@@zian01000 diabolical pun
@@zian01000 Hey it still sells. Just look at our sponsor: RAID SHADOW LEGENDS
I've been in the industry for 87 years and I can tell you that every loading screen is in fact a screen in a video game.
He is so wise!
I've been in the industry for 84 years and I can assure you that this guy may or may not have been involved in a certain accident at a certain pizzeria.
@@STIMULAT10N I've been in the industry for 11 years and can confirm that this guy may or may not have been involved the in the ruling of a totalitarian super-state.
Sonny, back in my day before we invented (cough discovered) numbers...
WAS THAT THE LOADING SCREEN OF 87..!?
I only buy games to look at their pretty loading screens
Have to sit through that pesky, boring gameplay to get to the loading screens right?
That would make funny flavor text during a loading screen
Admittedly, I’m a real sucker for awesome video game main menus.
I hate loading screens, though.
You must be the person who inspired Namco to make that patent!
@@BinglesP what patent
The fact that "pad run time" was an actual suggested reason is stupid
I know, maybe they were joking, but it really didn't seem like it... or maybe I'm just bad at understand jokes. who knows?
bros think they Euphoric Brothers
@@Artindi you saying youre bad at understanding jokes makes me think you believe everything you say in the how to fail videos LOL sooo yeah, those people actually think padding run time is a good thing, probably not a joke
You know some devs would do that disgusting strat
Should you add a loading screen to pad run time ?
NO because that's scummy !
My favorite fake loading screen was an old scratch game called "how to troll an entire community" or something like that, and it was just a loading screen that went on forever and never did anything else.
If Superliminal taught me anything, it's that you SHOULD add a fake loading screen to your game IF you know how to make it funny.
fair, if it actually adds to the game, then yeah, probably should. :)
yeah but we're talking about the vast majority of games, and if every game did that, then it would stop being funny, and thus start being Extremely Annoying.
@@niicespiice I completely agree.
Thankfully real humor is a rare commodity in games.
With how fast modern computers can load small programs, you could probably also get away with simple minigames that give a chance to win something like extra lives.
@@SmallSpoonBrigade Yup, especially now that the patent for that idea has expired.
Fun fact: Crash Bandicoot 4 has loading screen at booting up the game WHICH IS LITERALLY JUST A MP4 VIDEO. That is, you can go to the root folder of the game and just delete the loading screen, it's hilarious.
ha, now that sounds pretty fake.
Cyberpunk basically does the same thing, you still have to load though so after deleting you have to wait on a black screen
@@Artindi Yeah, Crash 4's startup is very long. You can just erase the videos of all the crap stuff that pops up when you start up the game and you can literally be within a level within 30 seconds of starting up the game.
thats ridiculos
The only reason I have added loading screen to my game, Is because when the player clicked "play" the game looked like it crashed. Now the player knows that its loading the world
A very valid reason to have a loading screen! :D
This is legit the main job of a loading screen in my experience: assure the player that, no, no, progress is being made, don't reboot because you think it's crashed.
This is the job of progress meters / status updates generally. Depending on the engine/IDE used, if your program is too busy running a specific (and time-consuming) process to even refresh its own UI, the user will at some point assume the program has silently halted....
Which can be particularly dangerous when running low-level diagnostic/recovery tools (like Chkdsk).
This is why progress bar were invented in first place - to show user that computer is doing something and not just crashed and freeze
@@Stratelier Windows actually monitors your UI refreshes and treats apps with windows that hasn't refreshed for a while/after some clicks as Not Responding
I have implemented numerous progress bars that will just
percentLeft = percentLeft * 0.9
so it will slow down gradually, never reaching goal..
When everything is ready, it'll just
percentLeft = 0
and no one's any wiser.
My brain isn't working right now, but I'm assuming that is an actual solution. And to be honest, there are many actual solutions to make loading screens and loading bars that are mostly accurate, it's BS that every one of them is faked.
You did a bit of trolling
@@Artindi No, my implementation is just on the premise that you really cannot know if something is going to take 2 or 10 seconds.. in any case the user is shown a progress bar, that indicates that something is happening (moving forward), no matter for how long it will take (never reaching the end). If I got unlimited budget, I'd make it so that everytime a progress bar is instantiated, it would log what was the operation and how long it took - and it would estimate the time from previous logs.
lol
I mean, fake bars are used, but i hate them, they just become a animation rather than a indication that something (or more importantly, a lack of somthing) is happening.
if the load logic hangs, but the bar graphic keeps chugging, it will look like something is happening rather than the fact its borked.
if you're making a game that goes with a retro style just make the fake loading screen be a black screen that lasts for 2 seconds
It works, sometimes a small transition is all you need. :)
especially if the assets are really small
Noted.
I believe there was a study that showed cognitive drift kicks in at about 1.5 seconds of inactivity on average, so maybe make it less than 2 seconds to avoid a feeling of boredom or disconnect in your players.
@@llareia Noted.
i have an optional fake loading screen in a game i once coded for some friends. it starts at 0% and then goes down to -7% before starting to go up. it also goes beyond 100% at the end. and it shows some really useful hints while loading, like the fact that if you see something below 0 percent or above 100 percent on loading screens, you should probably go see a doctor.
ha ha. that's pretty good. :)
I recorded loading screens for hours. It was so much fun.
No really. It was.
So. Much. Fun.
fun... fun... fun... fun... fun...
It must have been hard to not use the infamous Sonic 06 loading screen.
But hey, if it's fun, then why not add fake loading screens after all? They're fun!
Well I'm glad to hear you had fun :)
A Secret about Loading Screens... EVERYTHING is a loading Screen, players just don't realize it because good Game Designers won't use a specific screen to indicate it, instead they'll use transitions, animations, cutscenes, dialogues, environment, a simple transitional area, etc.
Lots of ways to have a "Loading Screen" without it being a literal "screen".
Yup, the best kind of loading screen, is the one you don't know is there. :)
and if you do need to have an actual loading screen you can still make it add to the game by including mini games or helpfull tips. make players want to watch the loading screen instead of dread them
In the Metroid Prime series, doors are loading screens. When you shoot a door, it can sometimes take a moment to open as the next room finishes loading. I'm also fairly certain the game preloads adjoining rooms in general for as seamless an experience as possible.
Regional elevators are also loading scenes disguised as short cutscenes.
Cue 5 hour fallout 4 elevator
Helldivers 2 does this really well
I've been in the industry for 2000 years and I can say from experience that every game is indeed fake.
That is absolutely real
except for the real ones, like chess.
I have plenty of experience with fake loading screens... where I work, we had to present our project in some kind of dumb meeting, where each dev team would present their project to the others as a way to showcase what we were working on for some reason, a waste of time, obviously just an easy way to get the higher ups and management to see what is it that their company is actually doing while they are touching their ba-... I mean, being "very productive leaders"...
Anyway, at the end of the day, what won the approval of the bosses was whatever had the most eye candy. It didn't matter how functional the actual project was, just how good it looked. And one my team noticed was that the other projects had extremely slow loading times. They loading screens were not faked, it's just that they did not optimize their project at all. Our project was so optimized that every single operation would be performed in an instant, including opening up the entire program (which is very heavy when it comes to graphics assets and rendering... because it's a realtime graphics program, can't give more details than that). Basically clicking any button, opening and closing, saving and loading files, etc... it all was so fast that it didn't even need a loading bar, because it was actually optimized and leveraged the capabilities of modern systems, rather than wasting all of the precious resources we've been given...
The higher ups did not like our program at all. They found it bad that there was no loanding screens. They felt like none of the actions were actually taking place, that every single operation had just silently failed or something... by the next meeting, we filled the entire program with tons of fake loading screens and they couldn't be any happier.
What I'm trying to say is that adding a fake loading screen is crap, it's terrible, it does not offer anything to the end user... but some people are just not intelligent and believe that the computer needs to "spend time thinking" to prove that it is doing any actual work...
So, sadly, yes, you must add fake loading screens to make the stupid people happy....
Another way is to add "feedback" reactions, such as sounds and animations. Some people prefer to save a file multiple times "just to be safe" because SSDs are ludicrously fast, and some apps don't have any feedback that asserts to the user "yes, you've properly pressed the save button, and the save was successful!"
This reminds me of how foam in shampoo isn't necessary, and exists just to make it feel like it's working better. And since most people who use shampoo aren't chemists, adding unnecessary foam is a great way of selling more shampoo
I agree that fake loading screens seem stupid as a computer engineer. But as a non-chemist, I do like the foam in shampoo, so I'm hesitant to insult people for liking loading screens
Has anybody mentioned Assassin's Creed's loadings yet? Just loading the (controllable) player character and the Animus background really makes it feel like it's the Animus that's loading the next memory, while also being interactive. Very clever way to even make the loadings be part of the game itself.
Oh yeah, You're right! I forgot about that, it's a very cool way to do it. :)
It's like the running dinosaur. So much more fun than just staring at a screen with a load bar.
It's a good idea but it depends on the quality of the game itself. If there's a crash during loading it takes ages to realise and then there's no way to get to a menu and quit out easily. These are Ubisoft games after all, many a time I've been running around in the void wondering if it's actually loading or not.
@@greenhowie Yes, and it also depends on there being some component of gameplay that can be loaded fast enough to do that without increasing the loading time to something that the players won't accept. In the case of the AC loading screen, it's typically short enough that if there is any increase in loading time that results, it's tiny.
@@greenhowie in the case of valhalla, (on last gen hardware) it really does take that much time to load, that game really pushed the limits of the anvil engine, sort of like how black flag did that for its iteration of anvil on ps3/xb360
I think loading screens can provide opportunities to troll the player. If your loading screen has tips, then you can have a very important-looking warning or other tip that appears only when the game is already done loading and it cuts off before the “important” bit so you’re left wondering what it was.
I would get so infuriated at this
And put a typewriter effect on the text so that you see the sentence get to something like "WARNING: DO NOT THE" before getting cut off.
@@roboj05 That’s exactly what I was thinking, but I did not quite know how to describe it succinctly. Typewriter effect, indeed.
Also it would be so funny to have it be “Critical warning: For the safety of yourself and others, please do not-“
and then for any dataminers wanting to see the full message, make just be “the cat.” Something funny like that for people wanting to dig deep.
Though such effects can only be expected to work once. Losing value after being learned.
@@Speed001 It can be programmed to occur infrequently enough that players may not suspect it for a long time. If regular hints are also sometimes (if not more frequently) cut off in this manner, then it would help further. It should only ever come across as “bad luck” rather than blatant tricks by the game.
loading screen simulator 2024; it's an idle game, the longer you load the more load points you get, and you use load points to buy more loading screens
there are microtransactions, but they don't affect gameplay, they're purely aesthetic as all they do is give you even more loading screens
also it's an MMO! you can all watch the same loading screen together!
PVP is seeing who can load fastest.
Cool idea for loading screens:
Interactable loading screens
Loading screens can be a good 4th wall break.
Make something play behind the loading screen (like the actual main game while the screen is present)
A loading screen that fits the feel of the game is give you something more interesting than a bar is always fun! :D
i still have no idea why loading screen minigames aren’t ever used. the patent expired AGES ago!
>implement some snippets of [lore®] to further add to the game in a mechanic that otherwise wouldn't
Like what darkest dungeon does :)
A common way ive seen big games load things without bringing up a loading screen at all are hallways. Like you go through a section of the game, go through a door, run through a hallway at normal pace, and when you go through the other door, boom, section loaded
@@masonasaro2118There was a patent?
i like loading screens to see when my appfreezes (with my laptop all the time)
When that spinning circle stops spinning 💀
@@Artindiactually that spinning circle needs to stop from time to time for a short time. A circle that spins for too long without an interruption is another sign that something is wrong. XD
I had no idea that fake loading screens was even a possibility BUT the WORST loading screen is literally the sims 4 (it’s just the spinning logo and “tips”) BUT the BEST one is the sims 3, there’s a click and find objects game (that can be toggled off, if the player wants) that gives you points, once you get into the game and if you find all the objects in that loading screen photo, there’s a new one to do. That is cool!
Poképark 2 loading screens could be completely fake and 10x larger than they need to be but I wouldn’t care cause I get to see the main characters actually interacting with each other, with more loading screens added the more characters you get
A good loading screen is one the player doesn't mind looking at. :)
@@Artindi not just don’t mind, I crave it! The main characters in Poképark 2 are too busy saving the park to have any normal interaction (as is usual for main characters) so this is such a good way to add a bit of depth to them without needing to make any extra pace-breaking cutscenes. More games should have this kind of loading screen. I’d appreciate it a lot more than boring tips
I can't believe you needed to make this video. Who the hell thinks a fake loading screen (unless it's a joke or reference) is a good idea?
fake it till you make it
Ha. good one. :)
One actual reason to add a fake loading screen would be if it fit the artstyle (80s,90s,sci-fi,retro,) just be sure to find SOME kind of function you can tie the progress of it to.
The best ones are from Superliminal, where each one does a different 3D perspective trick
I need to play that game.... ugh.
@Artindi I played it recently and while it wasn't as good as I hoped it'd be, it's still worth a playthrough to experience.
as someone who's been in the industry for seventy-four years, it's generally considered best practice to include a fake two-hour loading screen right before the title screen of your game to ensure that those pesky consumers don't exercise their right to refund your game
Isn't that what the tutorial is for?
74 ? rookie numbers!
the only thing a fake loading screen would make is have people be more patient and be frustrated at that
The fact that you showed the 7 days to die screen while you were talking about poor optimization and bad developers had me dying.
I used to love that game back in the early alphas. Easily sunk 2000 hours into the online PVP, back when the PC version was around the version that the Xbox is currently stuck on.
They have been on a crusade to remove anything fun that game used to have, and neuter the hell out of it... Oh yeah, honorable mention to porting it to consoles, and then just abandoning the console versions...
I had the loading screens up in the order that I recorded them, (mostly alphabetical from my Steam library.) So 7D2D was one of the first ones in the original edit. But as I was watching it back, I realized I needed to move 7D2D exactly for the reason you mentioned, so I swapped it with The Forest's loading screen. Because yes. 7D2D being doing dumbs,
One of the reasons to add a completely fake loading screen is to make a transition between 2 completely different ways of interacting with the game not feel weird(e.g. menu before starting a run and the actual game). Though it should be a small cutscene, but if you don't feel like it, a loading screen might do
I agree with this video all the reasons are a definite NO on fake loading screens in games, however I think there is only one good reason for a fake loading screen and that is when for thematic reasons you want the game to look like its running on an ancient OS and your playing off nostalgia for windows 95 or XP, but even then it better have a cool aesthetic and it better not actually take long
like when you playing a game that the time setting is from 1999 or something and you interact with a computer inside the game? alot of indie games make you interact with computer in a old setting.
@@gabrielandy9272 exactly I think those are the ONLY cases for loading screens, those I find quite cool but they still should be fast
careful luigi, this is a load bearing screen
Dude... if I was playing a game and I found out the loading screens are fake, no matter how pretty they were, I'd be so pissed...
Haha, all these loading screens in pre-existing games look so-
_Rimworld Initializing_
*_Instant 200+ modlist flashback_*
ha ha, the modded games took so much longer to record. :)
this game me ptsd
@@makeandbreakgames1791 "game me"
This reminded me about something. Way back in the day, when games came on tapes, you'd sometimes have a small simple game load first, that then ran during the rest of the load time. Giving you something to do while the C64/Atari/Commodore was loading for sometimes up to 30 minutes or even an hour.
Perhaps someone making the claims that padding game-play with loading screens should consider just having 30 min load times, I'm sure they'd make a killing…
Career suicide is still a killing, right?
no.
i hate fake loading screens with a burning passion.
any game that doesn't use them (or minimizes it because modern tech is fast as fuck in most cases) makes me go "holy shit, these devs know how to optimize!"
i bought an NVMe SSD and i'm gonna use all 50 gajillion megafucks of loading speed it has!!
The fact this is even a question makes the whole industry look awful
3:39 HEY FAKE LOADING SCREEN
I've been using computers for nearly 40 years at this point and a lot of the people that are arguing about this have no idea what they're talking about. Loading screens these days are mostly about not having the game look stupid while the player waits for the level to start. If you didn't have a loading screen, the alternative is to either leave the previous screen in place while you draw in a buffer for a quick swap, or show the loading which will pretty much always look stupid.
The other thing that a loading screen does is show you that the game hasn't frozen. That's not as much of a concern now with multi-tasking computers where if the game does freeze, it will usually CTD or the OS will throw up a dialogue indicating that the application is stuck. When I first started playing, the loading screens weren't as much of a thing because disk space and transfer speeds were more of a concern. If there was a loading screen, it would be a lot simpler. For example, just a static image with a growing bar, or that spinning baton thing that you still see on CLI interfaces.
Personally, I think a loading screen that has some component that constantly movies tied in with some component that indicates a basic task that's in progress is the best way to go. And, even then, the progress time really only is necessary if you can break it down like that and there's a lot going on.
It can also be nice to have a simple loading screen that just pops up a prompt to indicate that you can press a button to start the level, so that even on a shorter load time you can immediately dump the player into the action if you so choose.
Make the loading screen have an optional minigame like Splatoon 1
3:33 RAINWORLD TOO I LOVE BOTH THESE GAME SM!!!!!!!!
Just adding a minor reason why you might have a loading screen. Some games load directly into the previously saved place in the game and then prompt for some keyboard input, which if it's in a fight or anything time based, then that really sucks for the person if- upon seeing the loading screen, they go to the toilet or get some food or something. That said, it's not really for "fake loading screens" so much as a keyboard prompt to get into the game, if it's been loading for a little while.
Also another interesting thing about loading screens is.. "just put a minigame in the loading screen". The answer there is that Namco Bandai is a patent troll... see "patent US 5718632 A". Fortunately that patent expired, unfortunately it gave us years of boredom and actively made everyone's life a little worse.
Yeah, I can't tell you how many times I've tabbed out of the game loading screen only to check back in a little later and find my plane's already crashed because it didn't start paused. What's worse, is that sometimes the game loads in 5 seconds, sometimes 50 seconds, no way of knowing.
Was watching this video with choppy internet and it started buffering at 2:20 I thought it was a bit 😅
Love your videos 😙🫴❤️
1:49 if you load into a survival map in l4d2 and press escape during the loading screen, you can see the entire map already loaded, waiting for the loading screen to be over. The first half of the loading screen actually loads assets and is a real loading screen. Part of the second half is waiting for sync with other clients (which does not need to take place in single player...). The last bit left of the loading screen is completely fake, and it's there purely because the devs simply couldn't figure out how to properly sync it with the actual loading, so they added a fake margin of error as a "just in case" kind of deal...
So yeah, not all loading screens are fake, but some of the "real" ones are actually just partially real.
im a l4d2 modder/player, if you are the local host, meaning you are the server, that waiting don't happen (unless theres other players conected), that waiting is also used for other reasons, so everyeone have the same to pickup items and stuff, and the game acctualy wait a slow computer to load in some instances, get someone with a low end pc from 2008, and start a campaing with them, you will see that at the FIRST MAP, all other computers will wait that player, so the player see the introduction of the map/cinematic together the game acctualy wait the other players, but all the other safe room door will not wait the other players it only waits in the first map, however if you are not the "Host" theres always a small amount of time the server make you wait, so lets say, change map transition begin, player 1,2,3 are loading, player 4 finished loading, the server still make the player 4 wait a little bit but not forever, however after the player 4 enters the game, player 1,2,3 will not have any artificial waiting they will join as soon as everything is loaded.
and again if you playing in single player or are the local host (not dedicated servers solo) theres no artificial waiting this waiting only happens when you are connected to a server, or if you are local host but are not alone, if you are local host and alone no artificial waiting is added,
and again the waiting have a purpose it try to make everyone enters the game at the same time so for example you playing scavenge and the other survivor don't have more time to grab that only meele weapon.
i have no idea, but i sorta want to make fake loading screens to display miscellaneous tips or fun facts that would otherwise disturb the flow if interpolated in-game (like in some rhythm games
nice outro gotta give him that :) love the content keep it going
Artindi is so used to being sarcastic that even in a non-sarcastic video there's still dark humor, I absolutely love it
Nuh uh.
;)
I disagree with that last one. Games like Super Mario Bros. Essentially have loading screens and it actually gives you a break from all the chaos. Without them, it's a little offputting to immediately start running right
I want every loading screen to have a playable tetris in the corner
On the returns point (not sure if this is brought up on the other video) I think for most people if they beat a game in under 2 hours and they enjoyed it… they’ll want to keep it downloaded to be able to do it again sometime. Video games arent a one and done medium you can absolutely get more out of something on repeat plays, be it honing skills or just noticing/appreciating stuff like music and story beats.
This reminds me of the pvz loading screen when you start the game it looks fake af
I can't remember the pvs loading screen, but I believe you. ;)
I think the only fake loading screen I know off is warioware inc's, which is there to contextualise the fact that the menu itself is an in-fiction video game. Probably. Maybe.
i was looking for this comment! when he even mentioned the fake loading comment i thought abt warioware for the gba which loaded every new “program” onto the “desktop”. its called theming and warioware is the fuckin master of it
Dude that DRG clip was me for the longest time until my friend finally built his first pc instead of playing on an absolute fossil HP Omen from 2002 or something
good video
People love loading screens. Just ask the Sims 4 community!
Totally slapping gnarly dude. Totally appreciate the radicalness of this zooly vid. Yeah, those loading bars are all just tubular.
My pant's got baggy and my baseball hat turned sideways just reading your comment. :)
@@Artindi Groovy, my dude! You're my hero, mister triangle man.
The only fake loading screens that get a pass are the joke screens like what they did in subliminal
I legit thought this was going to be about those fake loading screens on some NES bootlegs that are purely just there because the bootleggers couldn't be bothered to remove the code for company splash screens, so they just cover the texture
no way new artindi vid
nice
yes way, believe you lying eyes! 0.0
okey
I like it when game make interactive loading screens. I am thinking about fire emblem were you can run back and forth. It does nothing it just and enjoyable way to keep the players focused on the game.
I think what it means when people say most loading screens are fake is that their loading screen isn't calling the actual progress of the scene loading.
The screen itself is instead being shown only after the scene has started running, and is just there to show you something cool while you run a camera around the world to cache some things in the already loaded scene.
It makes gameplay a bit smoother in the first parts of the level, and is still adding performance benefits, but I agree you don't need a loading screen if you're not at *least* doing *that*.
I add really short fake loading screens so the frame doesn't lag for a few seconds when it transitions to the game
I think that counts as a real loading screen then. :)
@@Artindi oh okay then
I played a mobile game that had a joke loading screen that had a "Skip Loading" button
More general game engines will lazily load. This greatly improves loading time and initial memory usage, but the game will load assets as it goes on, and a minimal amount of processing time is required per asset. However, it doesn't need to do that. Factorio, for example, has a completely real loading screen. Every single asset and resource is loaded into memory before the title screen, because Wube's proprietary engine optimizes heavily for speed instead of loading time, and that's kind of the whole point of the engine. I use lower level graphics libraries and don't use many assets, so loading time is basically instant. I do like Valve's approach to loading screens, it doesn't break immersion as much as a full overlay, and it's simple, which is perfect.
*Saw Deep Rock*
Rock and stone!
Good video!
I didn't even know this was a contentious topic with so many odd opinions (making it add to game time? What?)
A tip aswell is have a small little animation or at least something moving on screen. That way if something freezes the game, the player is aware and isn’t staring at a loading screen that froze, could be as simple as the … bouncing or “typing out” or just a wheel that spins
i made a game recently and i noticed when testing that assets were flickering weirdly for like 2 frames when restarting and i thought that the loading screen i added could be considered fake, but no it does cover up loading in i suppose and the only thing fake about it is how long it lasts (it being randomised because the jitter is consisted on most other devices and im pretty sure both are tied to framerate)
"Don't make fake loading screens." - Adds multiple fake ones to his own video...
Let's face it: As a developer since 1990 I can tell we have so much power at hand there shouldn't be a loading screen since 2001. But in 2001 games showed how bad code can be and sell none the less just with good graphics. So graphics are, like shown unintentional in this video, THE reason for loading screens. The second reason is imported crap the "developer" himself could not explain line after line and/or imported crap which has more data within than a human being wants ever to reed out loud if not a gun is pointed to his head.
So if your code is fine (which mean you can explain every line and every character) you will not have something to load in a way which needs a loading screen. Or even multiple ones. BUT the people are used to see them since 1979 or so. So the crowd which doesn't know anything about coding, game development and such expects them to be there. If there aren't any at all your game is not seen as perfectly running. It is expected to offer nothing good.
So your AA game transforms into at best an A game but more likely an B or C game just because of the expetation. Its like making your adventure game a pure text adventure. It could have the best story and gameplay of all time. But without graphics and sound only real nerds, retro fans and purists will be attracted. Don't get me wrong: They bring the passion. But they will not bring the money.
So you should listen into your inner feelings: Should this game make money for me or do I make it out of passion? Should it be seen as state of the art by as many people as possible or as a timeless masterpiece by only a hand full of people? For the first ones: Add loading screens even if fake or just for 0.6 seconds. If you are one of these rare second ones: Yes you don't technical need them, so avoid anything which needs to load longer than 0.13 seconds.
But to most "developers" from 2010 or later: You're most likely not having any choice. Depending where you started you presumably can't code from scratch in just a text editor. You think you need engines, assets, frameworks, libraries, templates, GUIs, SDKs, IDEs, large databases and so on. The more your work depends on all of these the more crap you need to load. So for you there is no way around them at all most of the time.
You would try to make an XXO game at it would be hard for you to fit it on an 1,44 MB floppy. Of course with an computer opponent, 2 player multiplayer, graphics, tutorial and sound. And I know I'm a dinosaur coming from a time we had 30 games which could give you fun for hours on a 170 KB 5.25″ floppy. So what I'm saying is for you as hard to believe than it was for me when the first games came out which needed more than 100 GB disk space.
Just to give you a comparison: 1,44 MB means you need to write an essay which is longer than 100 paper pages in letter/A4 size. All games ever available to the original NES, SNES or GameBoy where not bigger than 1 MB (NES), 4 MB (SNES) or 8 MB (GB). A CD was 850 MB at best. So yes all Playstation 1 games where not larger than this. But you can see a trend: The more a system offers the more crap is put onto it. Today only the Nintendo Switch is going against the more is always better trend/mindset. But even there are loading screens because of graphics and bad coding habits.
So this video is correct in terms of how development is done today most of the time by most companies. But you are not doing wrong if your game doesn't need to load for longer than an blink of an eye so you are also not doing wrong if adding fake loading screens to entertain people and match expectations. There can be little animations, tips they will not really read otherwise or even mini games while the bar does it's thing.
And no: There is no need for me to display my resume. Believe me or let it be. Go out there and dig yourself. There is enough research available without the need of money. Make a quick research which "powerful machines" where necessary to get to the moon and back. Than compare it with a graphics calculator of today or a 386er Laptop. Watch out for the first super computers and todays smartphones. You don't need to believe me. Hack I even don't want you to do so. Learn. Improve. And write code as if a psychopath is coming after you if he doesn't understand what your code does or when your game doesn't run properly on his 10 year old laptop/tablet when he wants to play it again in even 10 more years from now on. This would be great.
At least that's my point of view.
How about you? ^^
I love the pacing in Mirror's Edge, because the elevators you go in function as in level loading screens but also as breathers between the fast-paced action sequences, and I think that's genius, because it's discrete. (Same with the segments where you have to crawl through tight spaces.
Crap, based off this video I need a loading screen for the entire runtime of my game.
This video isn't very nuanced, and I understand that a 4 minute youtube video would perform worse if it got too specific, but I wish there was a line like "I'm sure there's some very specific cases fake loading screens can be good" somewhere
A few comments have mentioned trolling the player, or having a natural place to give the player hints (if there isn't much opportunity in-game). Just showing some cool artwork or animations would be fine if you think they would add to the experience. A very meta game could even break the rules of a loading screen they've introduced, for an interesting puzzle/moment of horror or something.
The most applicable point is that loading screens are very cheap and easy to make. If you get the last minute feedback of "your game doesn't explain some niche mechanics", sticking the explanation in loading screen tips would be far easier than reworking a level or part of the tutorial to explain it. Don't get me wrong, it's not better to do that, it's just much easier, and in some cases would work fine
When I go to make a game I'll make the loading screens last only as long as needed. No more, maybe less.
What kind of industry have these guys worked in to think that loading screens aren't real?
He's the guy who sits behind the screen and drags the progress bar around
My game has one loading screen *so far* (I practically just started). I first subdivide it into one chunk for each category. Then for each category of things to load I do a quick count and subdivide that chunk even further. If one category has a lot more stuff to load than another, that chunk will go slower than the other, but at least it does not lie.
Yay! A real loading screen! Nice. :)
I can tell that I will need a loading screen. Space combat/exploration game with free flight - when the player goes online, the surrounding area is loaded, and the objects manifested, which are stars and nebulae. That takes around 2-8 seconds. Without loading screen everything would visibly pop up from nowhere. So I will need to add a loading screen to hide it.
I wish loading screens had a terminal esc interface that actually showed what the game is doing, like the same kind of stuff you'd see in the terminal when installing linux. And the longer tasks should be split up into discrete numbered sections so it doesn't go through 100 lines in a second for the easy stuff but then get stuck on a single line for 30 seconds because the longest task is only considered a single line.
This way, you know the game is actually doing something even though you don't know how long it's going to take. But if it gets to a certain line and just stays there for several minutes, then you know it probably hanged.
Well, I say "yes", depending on what we mean by "fake".
"Fake" as in it literally serves no purpose, or is artificially longer for reasons you said? Nah.
"Fake" as in your game is technically loaded and ready to go, but you just want a smoother transition between levels/from menu-to-level, or to maybe hide a bit of texture blurriness as higher-quality assets are streamed-in? Sure.
Loading screens should only be used if the game needs to load for a few seconds otherwise slap a freeze frame of the current gameplay and a loading bar on screen then you'll be fine.
the only times you should add extra loads is if you're making an adult game and your target audience is into that
The games I play hang up for a long time regularly and still don't finish loading assets on the regular. There are also games I play where someone made a mod that removes the loading screen, since the assets are what take forever while the mechanics and physics load immediately.
I remember playing MH World on PC under spec, and the one setting with the biggest impact on loading times between areas ... was the cap on texture sizes. The default setting is (I believe) 2048, but if you drop it to just 1024 it cut the loading time by _about half._
My thought would be to use a fake loading screen to let the PLAYER "load in" and get ready for the action. Give them _just_ enough time to collect their bearings, and don't keep them waiting any longer than that. It shouldnt take more than 3 seconds, and shouldnt be needed when moving into a "slower" gameplay section like a hubworld
Maybe less a loading screen, and more like the Sonic Adventure 2 Level Cards: something used to give the player a chance to go from "watching a cutscene" mode to "game time" mode
I wish I could see this earlier but the loading screen to wake up was taking too long.
It's probably a fake loading screen, to make you feel like life is going to be more fun than it actually is. ;)
That last loading screen gave me time to subscribe :)
I've been in the industry for -1 years, and I can pretty surely recommend you to put minigames in your loading screens just like dragon ball Budokai Tenkaichi trilogy. It just feels nicer to do something instead of just looking around your room while the game is loading
When I developed games, I never added a loading screen unless the game absolutely needed it.
I think it'd be cool to put in a fake loading screen to have the solution of a puzzle in one of the "Tips"
this is one of the greatest videos ive ever seen, no it wont help me with making games since im not an indie game developer in the first place but every one of the points in this video is good
Nice! :D
there is a good point to have a loading screen: to show quick tips and reminders. Sure you will have a tutorial and everything explained in some menu but the feeling of quick tips is different and imo usefull. Plus I personnally hate when there are tips but the loading screen fade out whithout my consent, I was reading ! (or maybe not but just taking a break or looking at cool artwork).
So uhh, your sarcasm is great. Uhh, i deffinedly know you are talking about fake stuff, becase that is what you allways do.
/uj great video, and amazing to see you expanding to other elements of game making, than failing at it 2:22
I put in something like a loading screen, but it wasn't really a loading screen fake or otherwise, but an intermission screen which last 2 seconds plus however long the player chooses before clicking on the continue button. It was there to provide score (kills) information and some useful bits of lore, as well as to make the jump between levels less jarring that having the level just disappear and instantly be replaced by something completely different (trust me, without it is is a bit jarring).
I can think of one and only one good reason to add a loading screen. You see, I'm working on a DMC parody game for my friend, and DMC V on PS4 has way too many loading screens and horribly long load times, so I've thought about potentially adding fake loading screens (which say that they're fake) in order to poke fun at the original game. Though, I'd probably disable them after the first few levels or something
"ALL loading screens are in fact FAKE!"
BS. Sonic the Hedgehog CD has to load its stuff from CD (obviously). it doesn't have a loading screen explicitly, most of the time the loading screen IS a black screen. but when you're switching timezones it *does* apparently have a loading screen, that being the little animation that plays. (I've heard that was meant as a loading screen, and that the original vision was to not have it and just instantly switch to the desired timezone, but due to Sega CD hardware limitations, this was impossible.)
I could see using one for artistic reasons, depending on what you're trying to do (I did that in a shelved fangame for a minigame you could play on the protag's computer, and it only lasts 2 or 3 seconds), but using it for much else beyond that is pointless at best and malicious at worst (Specifically the "Pad out the run time to prevent refunds" excuse).
From a software dev perspective, I've seen someone having to add in a fake loading screen. The app didn't need it, but the users were confused because they didn't feel like hitting the buttons was actually doing anything without it. It's definitely... a solution. Can't argue that it got the result it wanted though.
I never thought of people creating fake loading screens, but it does make sense. Thanks to advancements in both hardware and programing tricks, loading screens are not needed anymore. However, loading screens used to be beneficial by giving tips to the player. Some were also interactive, like the one in Bayonetta. It was basicaly a training room with a list of combos, and players also had the option to stay in there until they were ready for the next level. Also, Gaming Architect once did a video about the importance of getting players out of the gameplay loop to kinda reset their brains. That's why fishing and other dumb quests exist. Loading screens would definitely help with that.
So, I could see a fake loading screen being beneficial when done correctly. It breaks the loop, give advice, and maybe even a chance to practice some skills before the next mission.
It's interesting to know that many progress bars show fake progress. They start out fast and slow down logarithmically as the time passes so that they never quite get to the end until that final jump when it's actually done. This may not be common with games, but is quite common for installers and many Microsoft products.
The last loading is gold.
Classic Resident Evil games had loading screens with door animations whenever you go from one room to the other. And it worked perfectly well building anticipation. Code: Veronica went even further and added cpecific slooooow door animations with a heartbeat sound whenever the player is supposed to be especially nervous about what's on the other side of the door. Now, in PC ports we were able to skip the door animations because the room-to-room transition was actually instant, but it really detracts from the immersion. I say... sometimes you MUST add fake loading screens or similar artificial transitions to make the game feel better (creepier if we are talking horror), even if it annoys a few players (speedrunners specifically). But only when it's part of the immersion.