Lots of blank-black screens when Wesnoth starts up.

[Eleazar]

Launching Wesnoth can take a while.
There's lots of blank, black nothing at the start.

Would it be possible to load the music and the front-page graphic much sooner in the start-up processes? The wait wouldn't seem so long with rousing battle music.

Or at the very least, some sort of graphic (like the "W" icon) in the middle of the screen to indicate that it is actually starting up.

[Tux2B]

I had a similar idea that had been discussed in http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9965.

IIRC, someone had made a feature request.

Having a black is mostly annoying because (at least on windows) it gives a newcomer the impression of having his computer crashing because you can't even move the mouse. A splashscreen might help.

[Dave]

I think it's a good idea.

The main problem is that at the moment, the specification of the title screen (image to be displayed as the title screen and so forth) is specified in the data files, and so the data files have to be loaded first. Loading the data files is the main thing that takes all the time on startup. The data files comprise one big WML document, so only loading part of the data files isn't an option with the current architecture.

We could come up with some alternatives though....display the logo as suggested, or perhaps make a seperate small WML document which just contains the title screen info, and load and display that first.

David

[toms]

I would like to see a special intro music wich is short and starts with the game start, but continues when the game is loaded,and after it´s over, tha game shifts to the menu music.

I´m for this idea, basically.

[Eleazar]

added a simple feature request.

[Disto]

or perhaps make a seperate small WML document which just contains the title screen info, and load and display that first.

David

That to me doesn't seem hard, you've already got the WML so all you need to do is specify another file to load....