main screen

[hhas]

The main screen is based on Bungie’s M1 poster, rotated 90° counter-clockwise, overlaid with MARATHON logotype and logomark, and touch buttons for entering new/loaded solo campaign, settings screen, credits screens, and quit (desktop version only).

Minimum: Implement the above.

Stretch: Animate the plasma flux and gas trails so the flux pattern appears to spiral in on themselves and the gas trails appear to flow outward from the star. Achieving this effect will require experimentation. Test the quickest, simplest technique first.

Create composable “interference pattern” images containing alternating black and transparent lines, and rotate above the other/slide one over the other at an angle. When making the bitmaps, try both straight and squiggly lines in variable widths. This is best explored in AI, then rendered to PNGs for Godot’s AnimationPlayer to use. My old nan’s electric radiator used this very trick for its coal fire effect; just a couple free-spinning slotted disks above a couple of hot light bulbs that made them spin slowly like propellers. It is very quick and cheap to create.

Whether or not it yields pleasing results in our case, we can only try it first to find out. (Caution: anyone who starts writing sophisticated shaders before trialing this one cheap trick will get their knuckles rapped for time-wastage.)

Notes:

• Set button controls in white Squarish Sans text, with added outer glow for the pressed state, as in reference image. Ideally these would be set as text Labels in Godot, but can be composed in PS as PNGs with transparent backgrounds if that is not practical.

• Raw assets are in mcr/references/Marathon concept artists/M1 poster (main screen background); the HD poster image is from u/hanz333 (link). We should ask hanz333 for their original PS files as starting point.

• The old MTHD main screen (included in the above directory) is not to be used, but demonstrates how the M1 poster is repurposed. For MCR, try setting the logotype large and horizontal, mostly on the dark area but with last few characters overlapping the star on the right. This arrangement could function as both title screen and game menu: the touch buttons can animate in above and/or below the logotype.

• We also need to incorporate the Marathon’s “world within a world” logomark in this screen, whether large or small, so create multiple composition sketches/mockups which we can compare and decide what looks best for Demo.