Full-screen gifts: castles, fireworks and love scenes

A full-screen gift takes over the room for several seconds: for the sender it is the most visible thing they can do, and for everyone else it is an interruption they did not choose. The best showpiece gifts earn that interruption with a clear story and a satisfying finish, and they are prepared in advance so they never stutter at the moment that matters.

The Animated Gifts collection holds 99 gift animations (95 SVGA and 4 PAG), and the numbers below come from those files.

What makes a showpiece gift

A small gift is an icon with some sparkle. A showpiece is a short scene with a beginning, a middle and an end:

• Build: something arrives or grows, such as a castle appearing, a ship sailing in or a lamp beginning to glow.

• Peak: the moment worth paying for, such as fireworks, a shower of cash or a ring revealed.

• Release: the scene clears cleanly so the room comes back.

If a gift has no peak, it feels like a long loading screen. If it has no release, it cuts off and the room jolts back. Watch any candidate gift once and ask where those three moments are.

Designing for tall phone screens

Most of the featured showpieces in the collection are drawn 750 pixels wide and roughly 1334 or 1624 pixels tall, with a few on smaller canvases:

A 750x1334 canvas is a 9:16 frame; 750x1624 is taller, closer to the shape of today's full-screen phones. Neither matches every device, so your player has to choose:

• Fill the screen and crop the edges, which suits scenes with plenty of sky or background around the subject.

• Fit inside the screen and accept empty bands, which suits gifts whose subject reaches the edges of the canvas.

Either way, the important action has to live in the central safe area. The top of the screen carries the status bar and room header; the bottom carries the chat input and the gift button. A ring revealed behind the comment box is a wasted gift. Smaller canvases such as Grand Ocean Liner at 540x960 and Golden Handbag Prize at 400x711 are scaled up on large phones, so preview them on your largest target device before committing.

Length and the room's patience

Across these showpieces, lengths run from 4 seconds (Golden Handbag Prize) to 15.6 seconds (Couple Pocket Watch), and Lantern Hanfu Lady and Dreamy Star Bottle both run for 15 seconds. Longer is not automatically more valuable. A few rules keep rooms usable:

• Play full-screen gifts one at a time from a queue, and show the sender's name with each.

• Let viewers tap to dismiss a gift on their own screen without cancelling it for anyone else.

• When the queue grows long, play the full scene for the most valuable gifts and show a broadcast banner for the rest.

Weight decides whether it stutters

Files in the collection range from 2.5 KB to 19.20 MB, with a median of 735 KB. The top end is real: King Fireworks Blast is 19.20 MB, while Cloud Castle Dream is 477 KB. As with any SVGA, size depends mostly on how many bitmap images the scene carries, not just on its canvas or length.

A heavy gift that starts downloading when someone taps send will arrive late on a slow connection, and the sender will assume the gift failed. Instead:

• Download gift animations ahead of time, starting with those on the first page of the gift panel.

• Cache by file and version, and check a file is complete before marking it ready.

• If a file is not ready when a gift arrives, show the banner first and play the scene once it is.

Sound

Only 42 of the store's 2,265 files carry sound, and several are showpiece gifts, including King Fireworks Blast, Cash Rain Tycoon and Ice Queen Stag. In a video room, sound adds weight to the peak. In a voice room it competes with whoever is speaking, so duck the gift's audio while a mic is live and give users a way to turn gift sounds off.

Building gift tiers

Price and spectacle should rise together. One simple way to plan a gift panel is by theme, then by tier inside each theme:

Within each theme, keep cheaper gifts short and in place, and save full-screen scenes for the top. Love scenes such as Chapel Proposal Scene and Heart Balloon Wedding suit couple rooms and anniversaries:

Luxury pieces belong at the very top of the panel. Cash Rain Tycoon, Radiant Gold Goblet and Grand Ocean Liner are all showpieces built for full-screen play:

The Luxury & Wealth Gifts pack gathers gold, cash rain and collector pieces in one set. For celebrations, Birthday & Party Gifts brings cakes, fireworks and carnival rides together.

Next step

Shortlist three showpieces of very different weights and open each in the free SVGA & PAG viewer to check the file size, frame rate and how the scene sits on your room background. Then test the heaviest one on a slow connection with your real preload logic: if it plays on time there, the rest will.