Archived decision board from HIGH WATER (2026). Picked: Look C, Numeral, made more fluid: a wave surface, a meniscus, bubbles and a surge on each progress step. ← back to the archive

Loading: the floor warms up

Board · Readout · 2026-09-30 · pick one

Jonas: "id much rather have loading then stutter, but lets put up a highquality loading screen." Slipway's warm-up draws every material once and sweeps the camera across the whole floor, so WebGL compiles each shader before play. That takes about 15 s cold and about 2 s on a cached visit. Today it runs hidden behind the briefing.

The screen covers it with real progress. It fades in only if the warm-up is still running after about 0.4 s, so a cached visit never flashes it. It draws on the native-resolution UI layer while the world warms behind it, and the music holds. All three looks use Plumb's section plate of the floor (assets/ui/cutaway/fNN.png). Every line of copy is placeholder; Jonas writes the final words.

These are real frames from LoadingScreen (tools/ui/loading_board.tscn) at 1280×720, for F73 and F75 at 30 % and 72 %.

Built: C, with the water made liquid

Jonas picked C and asked: "maybe we can make the numerals more fluidy, or the loading?" The flood in the numeral is now a shader on the numeral's mask (liquid_numeral.gdshader, one material, uniforms only per frame).

Copy is still placeholder. The 0.4 s rule holds: a quick load never shows the screen.

CLIP · 12 FPSThe F73 warm-up's real step pattern (one screen of the sweep at a time), then the finish and the brim.
A STEPJust after a progress step, the water surges and leans.
90 %The meniscus, the wobbling edge, and bubbles rising to the surface.
BRIMMINGFull: it swells past the glyph with a foam rim before the fade.

Also: liquid_0 (early), liquid_1, liquid_4.

A · Waterline

A · F73 · 30 %The plate big and centred, the water rising through it as the progress bar. The surface carries a running glint and the WATERLINE tag (水位).
A · F75 · 72 %The brief's idea, literal. It's clear, but the plate is a thin strip at this width, so the rising water has little height to travel.

B · Section scan

B · F73 · 30 %The floor as a cyan ghost, with a Contract Optics scan head revealing it lit, left to right. This is honest about what's happening: the warm-up really does sweep the floor from its left end.
B · F75 · 72 %A ruler under the plate and the percentage at the head. It's the most "optics", but it's the one look without the water motif.

C · Numeral

C · F73 · 72 % (Readout's pick)The floor number huge in the title serif, flooding from the bottom as the bar, like the title cards and 第七十层. The contract, name and hook sit beside it, and the plate runs as a strip at 1:1 of its band.
C · F75 · 30 %It reads from across the room, the water fills a shape you already know, and it costs almost nothing to draw: two strings, a clip and a strip.
Readout's pick: C. It is the strongest image of the three: the water rising in the number gives the progress a meaning (the floor going under), and it is the High Water title language. A is the close second if Jonas wants the plate to be the hero. Switching is one line (look).

How it will be wired

Other frames in loading/: a_f73_72, a_f75_30, b_f73_72, b_f75_30, c_f73_30, c_f75_72.