hey, been fiddling with photoshop (and my "allowance" for plugins at work ! (go flaming pear!) anyways, I made a potential loading screen sans text (can be added programming wise to allow for different languages).
Hmm... I'm usually pretty picky about pre-drawn space/planet scenes, but... melikes. Any chance of shrinking the bright white stars in the second one? They all seem to be two pixels wide, only criticism. :)
Looks like Lunarcell planets against a Glittero background. Surprised you didn't throw in a Solarcell star or two.
Looks like you manually resized the Glilttero background, and maybe the large planet as well. Creates a blur effect around the nebula and planets that I find displeasing. (or it might just be an image compression thang...)
I've never liked the extreme bump on Lunarcell planets.
I agree that Lunarcell and Glittero are fun toys. But I'm queasy about using them extensively and without a great deal of retouching--it feels like throwing someone else's work in to the game.
But the contrasts and height-maps are way to extreme.
In case these images should be background-images(like some fonts or so would be in the foreground) i'd decrease brightness too, so that the "background" doesn't merge with the "foreground".
"You don't need to travel to far-away lands, just to find worlds which are inside of yourself."
I would propose to go with something more smooth. More similiar to the planets from the planets-thread. Maybe gas-giant on the left, and a starbase on the lower-right.
All in all colourful but not oversaturated colors, smooth contrasts. So, that the whole image is very subtle but if you would look closer you could find many details like small ships leaving the station, etc.
Still, the image should not get overcrowded, so that the feeling of "deep space" gets caught.
"You don't need to travel to far-away lands, just to find worlds which are inside of yourself."
In the old moo3 boards, a poster by the name of smellymummy made a rotating 'end of turn' screen for moo3. It would switch from different pics, say from a picture from a planet, to a picture of that planet on the horizon, to a picture of a starshjip being designed, to a picture of an alien, etc...
It was pretty cool - amazing how it actually uplifted the graphics in moo3.
There are three kinds of people in this world - those who can count, and those who can't.
Yes a varition in the Graphics screens realy helps spice up a games graphics. Could we implement something similar with the ability for people to drop any combination of images into an apropriate folder and have them randomly displayed in that way.
Impaler wrote:Could we implement something similar with the ability for people to drop any combination of images into an apropriate folder and have them randomly displayed in that way.
very nice i like them, the first better then the second, it has more depth to me and the last is very good too (is that cites or clouds on the dark side of the planet in the last pic?)
Idea: when a planet starts to to get a larger population i think it would look good if u could see the larger colonies lights in the planets shadow.
! (go flaming pear!) anyways, I made a potential loading screen sans text (can be added programming wise to allow for different languages).
and the last is very good too (is that cites or clouds on the dark side of the planet in the last pic?) 
