animated splash screen with win api stuff

Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/animated splash screen with win api stuff

nadia(Posted 2005) [#1]
I've been playing around with win api stuff and came up with this animated splash screen. Don't know how usefull this is for 'real' games. Unfortunately it crashes when run in full screen mode :(
Anyway, play around with it and com up with improvements, ideas

You have to compile this code before running the testing code below.



Here is the testing code




Lane(Posted 2005) [#2]
I got nutten!!


fall_x(Posted 2005) [#3]
Could you post a screenshot? No offence, but I don't want to try compiling this if I don't know wether I'm interested or not :)


nadia(Posted 2005) [#4]
Nope, no screenies…
They wouldn’t help much anyway. You have to run this stuff to see what it does or forever wonder in agony, what marvelously ingenious code you might have missed out on ;-)

Ok, here is a bit of a description what it does:
The first bit is a simple little splash screen, which runs an animation. On loading it applies win regions to itself to cut off the window title bar and optionally rounds off the windows corners. It also sets itself as topmost to stay on top of every other open window.

The second code bit is for testing. It simulates the game app. First it attempts to load the above app (compiled into an exe). Then it goes through some routines, which in a real game would be contents loading stuff. Finally, ones finished with the ‘loading stuff’ it will kill the animated splash screen, which was running in the foreground…

Note:
This stuff only runs in window mode!
Make sure you declare all the API call declarations in the right user libs!

..let me know if you get it to run.


Paolo(Posted 2005) [#5]
Both runs ok here,
although sometimes, the small window in front flickers to black color, and that doesn't look so good ...
So, if I understand it well, the second code loads the first compiled code and show it in front while the stuff is being
loaded in the back, isn't it? (oops, yes, that's what it does, I have just read your second post :)

Also, remember there's a blitz sys dll (or something) that let you create windows without frames and more ... just a thought...

Paolo.


jfk EO-11110(Posted 2005) [#6]
I still wonder if it's possible to use a fake-fullscreen resolution that is using the entire screen for a window without frame. This way we could use multithreading things like this in Games that are looking like fullscreen (but actually are not). Thanks for sharing.


nadia(Posted 2005) [#7]
Jfk- nice idea, faking full screen with a frameless full screen window. One would have to use api calls to check out the current monitor settings and store them. Then one could fire the ChangeDisplaySettings function to reset the display res. Then before closing the app one can reset the screen res back to the initial setting (unless blitz crashes which would leave the user to reset the display manually).

If I've got a bit of time I'll try it out...