Loading screens...

[Chief]

Since LUA runs in one "lane" I've been stumbling over some problems with drawing a loading screen at the same time that the game is loading new resources. Anyone have any ideas to get around this? Maybe threading?

[Tesselode]

How about putting something in the update callback like this:

Code: Select all

if screen then
screen="load"
--load resources
else
screen="loading_screen"
end

And then in the draw callback have something like:

Code: Select all

if screen="loading_screen" then
--draw loading message
end

That way the game should get a chance to draw a loading message before it starts loading.

[Chief]

Hmmyes, i catch your drift. Might just wanna stop the loading a little bit to make a breathing space for the draw function to run. Imma' try that!

[vrld]

Use coroutines, which are basically lightweight threads.

loader pseudocode:

Code: Select all

loader = coroutine.create(function()
    for type, source in pairs(resources_to_load) do
        load_resource(type, source)
        coroutine.yield()
    end
end)

love.update:

Code: Select all

coroutine.resume(loader)
if coroutine.status(loader) == "dead" then
    -- loading finished
end

[Chief]

I went for the coroutines, and it worked perfectly!

Until i noticed something strange! The bodies and shapes (physics) doesn't seem to be working properly (gives error) when colliding with props made outside of the coroutine.

The error is basically that it returns "attempt to call a number value" in the physics world update...

Gotta look into this more, if no one else got a theory on how to fix this of course

[bmelts]

Full-fledged love.thread is coming in 0.7.0.

[Luiji]

Funnu thing, I was just going to ask about this.

Full-fledged love.thread is coming in 0.7.0.

I can't wait!

[Chief]

Full-fledged love.thread is coming in 0.7.0.

And when is that if I may ask?

[nevon]

Full-fledged love.thread is coming in 0.7.0.

And when is that if I may ask?

Around the same time as the audio issues are solved.

[bartbes]

With the difference that love.thread already exists.