So remember how we could not have mini games in our loading screens?!?!

[smoth]

http://www.pcgamer.com/loading-screen-j ... ffer_pcgfb

Check this shit out!

[Floris]

welll... not that we cared about patents before... or did we?

if so... any cases or examples of what patents the spring rts engine respects?

[smoth]

Spring as an engine or a community. Either one is very broad

[smoth]

In case you think this post is somehow random....

search.php?keywords=Patent+namco&terms= ... mit=Search

[gajop]

For multiplayer games I'd much rather have chat going while loading takes place, but patents expiring is always a good thing. +1

[AF]

The engine's 10 years old, if our loading screens on a machine with an SSD are long enough we can play a minigame I'd be worried

[Silentwings]

They can be made longer, if needed I'm with chat.

[hokomoko]

but parents expiring is always a good thing.

You're a sick person.

[Forboding Angel]

For multiplayer games I'd much rather have chat going while loading takes place, but parents expiring is always a good thing. +1

You're a bad, bad, man. STRANGER DANGER! STRANGER DANGER!

[gajop]

Somebody must've edited my original post!

[smoth]

They can be made longer, if needed I'm with chat.

WE CAN DO THAT!??!

[Silentwings]

Yep, just mine bitcoins in unitdefs_post :p

I don't think you can actually control the duration, though. And I think luaintro doesn't know when its about to get kicked out so it can't e.g. fade out music.

[8611z]

you can, it knows

[gajop]

you can, it knows

Can you control it really?
All I see is that there's a callin which gives you current load progress.
I guess you could make things 'fade out' in Finalize, but it would be kinda hacky.

There doesn't seem to be a "wait with leaving LuaIntro for a few more seconds" callout/callin return?

[gajop]

Additionally, I wish we could do some widget/gadget loading during the loading screen as well.
The game should really be 100% loaded once it starts, and not just the engine stuff.
PS: For chat we'd also want sockets + lua tables transferable from LuaIntro to game state.

[8611z]

...some widget/gadget loading during the loading screen...

this happens and is one way to control loading times

[gajop]

Busy waiting or what?
Can you give more concrete info/examples how one would delay loading by a few seconds/frames?

[Silentwings]

For clarity, since this suddenly became a serious discussion, my suggestion of artificially controlling loadtime by bitcoin mining a la

Code: Select all

while curTime<startTime+30 do
  Spring.Echo("Hi Hooo Hi Ho Hi Ho Hi Hoooooo")
end

is not a serious one ... hang detection spams stacktraces, unresponsive, etc etc.

Unfortunately LoadProgress can't be used reliably to control/discover how much time remains of luaintro, it only provides the current loading "stage" in text form and the durations are non-deterministic (due to hardware level caching, etc).

[smoth]

would be neat if we knew progress of stages, I always liked the TA:K loading screen that showed what it was loading at different stages.

[8611z]

Are you speculating about "hang detection spams stacktraces, unresponsive, etc etc." or did you try it? I noticed no such problems with bitcoin miner in gadget. (not in defs) It gives nice control because gadgets/widgets are loaded as one of the last steps.
Yes, LoadProgress only provides the current loading "stage" in text form but they always happen in the same known order, that is good enough to track progress or trigger things that do not need to be super-precise. (like some animation or music) It is of course bit hack but so was much else in modding. It stays very limited to one area (loading) so I find it more amusing than anything.