These enabled developers to reduce load times from two minutes to only a few seconds, meaning the loading screens appear for only an instant. Then, starting with The Ninth Generation of Console Video Games, Solid State Drives came as standard on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. This doesn't work as well as it used to as players quickly caught on to why they're there, but they're functional nonetheless. Many games constantly stream new content during play so that players can explore large levels with no loading screens interrupting play, albeit at the cost of a massive loading screen on startup. Of course, improvements in technology have also helped reduce and even eliminate loading times, and therefore loading screens. Games that include procedural generated levels may add humorous names to computational actions during generation such as "Corrupting the World" or "Creating an Over-arching Sense of Dread". Some only lean into this, such as being able to manipulate things on screen. Namco technically had a patent on this until 2015, discouraging most publishers from doing this, even though due to examples appearing far before the patent on the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum, Namco likely would have had trouble defending it in court. In a few cases, loading times are so long that the loading screen includes some form of Mini-Game to keep the player entertained while they wait.Similarly, some screens also provide plot summaries of recent events in case you've stopped playing for a while and have forgotten what's going on or what you need to do next. Some loading screens go beyond just a simple image or animation and have additional background information on the game world, such as biographical information on characters, a map of the level being loaded in, weapon specifications or tips for gameplay.Loading screens for traveling from one area to another particularly like doing this, with a looping "travel animation" capped off with an "arrival animation" once the next area is loaded. A looping animation of something to disguise the fact that it's a loading screen.Some kind of in-game justification for the loading screen, like an RTS that has a loading screen purporting to be your command center connecting to the battle network.Or maybe it's just a static screen with just the words "LOADING." on it. The most basic of loading screens provide a meter showing progress, or a looping animation like a spinning disc.This resulted in the creation of loading screens to let the player know the level is being, well, loaded. This began in earnest with the original PlayStation thanks to the data having to be copied from the disc, which was much slower than the preceding cartridge-based systems. It might be as simple as the word "Loading" on the black screen or might include colourful animation or progress bars to show that, "no really, the game is working on something right now."Īs games have grown larger, more complex and more detailed, loading times have increased in many games. In order to prevent this, the loading screen was born. Just throwing up a black screen during the process might cause players to think the game isn't working. In Video Games, loading new data such as the next level takes time.
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