loading game

Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/loading game

Picklesworth

(Posted 2004) [#1]

My game, apparently, is going to have a terrible load time. So does anyone have an easy method to have a loading game in blitz 3d, and a simple loading game (like pong) to donate to an unworthy cause?

jhocking

(Posted 2004) [#2]

Loading game? What does that mean?

Picklesworth

(Posted 2004) [#3]

loading game? What does that mean?

while the game is loading, you can play something else while waiting to pass the time.

jhocking

(Posted 2004) [#4]

I doubt that is possible since the loading process is taking up the CPU. And even if it is possible, are you sure you want to? I suppose it depends on your game, but I would think that could be pretty ruinous to the game experience.

Warren

(Posted 2004) [#5]

I would focus on making the game load faster rather than getting the player to play another game during... heh.

Gabriel

(Posted 2004) [#6]

It ain't gonna happen unless you can think of a game that plays acceptably at 2fps or you're loading a myriad of tiny, tiny files. Blitz's load routines are not designed to work at the same time as graphics are being updated.

If you were using another language, I'd say you could stream your data in and that would work fine, but Blitz cannot load media from banks ( HINT HINT ) so without that, you're stuck using the standard load-an-item-at-a-time method, which is too slow to mix with a game.

Danny

(Posted 2004) [#7]

And try optimising your loading as much as possible. might sound silly, but in stead of loading the same model 5 times (like I'm still doing ;)) load the model once and create copies.

There are also ways to distract the viewer whilst loading, play a movie, some music, or show some images between loading chunks of data.

Even if this technically doesn't speed things up, the viewer will experience it as being faster because of the distraction / it's less boring. Nothing more frustrating that watching a progress bar crawl from left to right... ;)

my 2 cents.
:Danny

Deldy

(Posted 2004) [#8]

The problem you have is that Blitz does not support Treading, and thats bad in many casses.

Its sad that it does not, coz it would properly make the life for many programmeres easier.

Threading is "kinda" an extra application that shared anything with the running application, so instead of having one pointer there funs your functions, you get 2.

So you can run a loop, while your load your game, and render to the screen and stuff.

Threading is vital, and I really hope blitz would be able to support it in the future.

Right now, there is no sollution to your problem

Neochrome

(Posted 2004) [#9]

Would be nice to see in BlitzMax :o)

Any news on that BTW?