[SUGGESTION] Make game knowledge/info more obvious - i.e. tips

I keep seeing the same tips at the loading screens, and whenever I have to download something before joining a server the screen is black.

Couldn't this blackness be used to add another tip/load-screen? Perhaps one that switches to a new tip every 20 seconds or so?

Add some more tips too perhaps. (Maybe new players will finally realize that you can actually guide and detonate rockets with the Rocketlauncher....)

If nobody minds, I could make a huge and useful tip-list, perhaps I could make the necessary (loading)screens too for them.

I support the idea of showing more gameplay tips but as far as I am concerned my loading time does only take up to a few seconds, which is obviously good but on ther other hand not suitable for giving any tips due to the limited time.

It would be great if we could have the tips separated from loading screens so they are actually real text tips displayed over the loading image. Then we could use the user defined binds in those tips (for example "keep <LAlt> pressed to keep jumping and to gain more speed" if the player has configured <LAlt> for jump). I believe UT3 did it this way, and I think it's a helpful feature.

I support the idea of showing more gameplay tips but as far as I am concerned my loading time does only take up to a few seconds, which is obviously good but on ther other hand not suitable for giving any tips due to the limited time.

New players have to download a lot, most of the time this takes quite a while since most players don't have superfast internet connections, putting something meaningful instead of a black screen will probably be very useful.

It would be great if we could have the tips separated from loading screens so they are actually real text tips displayed over the loading image. Then we could use the user defined binds in those tips (for example "keep <LAlt> pressed to keep jumping and to gain more speed" if the player has configured <LAlt> for jump). I believe UT3 did it this way, and I think it's a helpful feature.

Many games do it exactly like this, would be really nice if it could be implemented

Didn't an older version (0.6 I believe) have this? I at least remember those pictures of player models shown during loading screens, I miss those...

EDIT: I just downloaded 0.6, and it does have tips (albeit ones that are part of the image and only tell you the default keys) on the loading screens, but only where the Xonotic logo is currently shown, not during the black downloading screens. We should bring those back in a text form that matches the user's binds and is present on both the loading and downloading screens.

The reason the tips were static and baked into the images is because this loading section is not accessible to the game code. It's not the menu that controls this screen, but rather the engine itself, and we don't have means to customize this beyond the image being displayed. This would require an engine modification, but this gets complicated as it's not exclusively Xonotic's engine, but also other games'.

Of course nothing's impossible, but this issue in particular is a bit tricky and therefore I'm guessing it is considered low-priority.

TimePath has a functioning gamecode-based loading screen branch somewhere on Git. It will probably be in the next release.

TimePath has a functioning gamecode-based loading screen branch somewhere on Git. It will probably be in the next release.

Hey, nifty. And the engine patch is tiny. Welp, I had the impression it was much more involved than that. Thank you TimePath