love-loader: load resources in a separate thread, easily

[bartbes]

I had to make two changes to make it work, love-loader.lua:124 still used thread:send, and in main I replaced your quit with:

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  if key == 'escape' then 
	  local f = love.event.quit or love.event.push
	  f("q")
  end

EDIT: Btw, love.event.quit doesn't take any arguments, but also ignores surplus ones, which is why this works. If you wonder why push("q") doesn't work any more, it's because events now have long names, so it's push("quit") instead.

[kikito]

<Awesome feedback>

Thanks! I've updated love-loader to 1.1.0. This new version is able to load imageData and soundData, and is forward-compatible with LÖVE 0.8.x.

I'm updating the demo on the OP.

[kikito]

Update: v1.1.2 fixes an error on windows. I still have to update the demo on this OP with the latest version. Will do so this evening.

[Roland_Yonaba]

Nice. Guess BattleCry was updated with this new version too. Going to check.

[kexisse]

This library looks awesome. I'm thinking of using it in my project.

I create a bunch of Entities instances with images, and then set their properties based on the image size/width etc.

Currently:

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function Entity:initialize()
  -- load image
  -- set properties
end

With love-loader there resource isn't ready straight away, so I'm thinking about adding a single callback option to the newImage method.
So the code would look like this:

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function Entity:initialize()
  loader.newImage(... function()
    -- set properties
  end)
end

It's possible that draw() will get called before the image finishes loading. I'm thinking about checking self.image before drawing every time, and if it's not there, I'll draw a placeholder image. I'll be instantiating objects off-screen so hopefully the player should never see the placeholder image.

I think I know how to do this, I was just wondering if others think this is a good idea.

[kikito]

¡Hi there!

I have already told you this (¡In person! (¡In Kyoto! How cool is that?)) but in case it helps others: I think love-loader is better-suited for implementing "an animation while loading resources". I don't think it will work for doing "dynamic loading", node.js-style, whithout heavy modifications. Nevertheless, you could use love-loader as a way to understand how threads work, and then do your own thing.

Regards!

[kikito]

This Library has been ported to LÖVE 0.9.0 by the great Tanner Rogalsky. He did a great job, and left the external interface of the lib unchanged.

I am hereby releasing version 2.0.0.

I have update the OP with a demo compatible with LÖVE 0.9.0.

[AlexYeCu]

Thanks for a useful library! A question: how to restart love-loader correctly?
For example:
Step 1: We are loading graphical elements and music for main menu.
Step 2: We are chainging currentState var, and one more to tell what state should be next, then making

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currentState.start(media, finishCallback)

by «START GAME» button pressing to load resources for a level. Bar and log show us that all resources are loaded, but next state won`t start. Guess, we need to somehow reset finish/allLoaded callback. So, how to do that?

SOLVED:

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currentState.start(media, loadingFinished)

Just checked everything carefully.

[murks]

Nice lib, I almost tried to write something like it yesterday, but eventually loaded the music as "stream" (and didn't play it using Tesound). Our game still has some loading delays but it's not as bad as with the music.
I'm sure it will come in handy for the next project though.

[georgeprosser]

This is fantastic, thanks for making this and sharing it with everyone.

Just implemented a loading screen into my audio-heavy game and it immediately feels much more professional.