animated loading screen - is it possible? If so, would you contribute?

A few people were discussing loading screens in another thread, and it got me thinking.

At the moment, there seems to be no way to have an animated loading screen when switching between frames (or is it merely that loading usually takes place within a fastloop, and nothing else can be done while in a fastloop?). Everyone's been conditioned (by games, OSes, and the internet) to expect an animation during loading time. Almost everything will generally have a spinning circle, moving bar, stepping dots, or some other animation to show that the computer hasn't frozen but is merely processing something. Fusion doesn't let us do this, so long loading times can feel like the game is suffering a problem.

This is a question for those of you who are more tech savvy: Do you think it'd be possible to build an extension that lets you do this? The best case scenario would allow full-screen activity, accurate loading percentage bars, and the rotation of multiple images/text on a timer (eg. display a new tip every x seconds). But frankly, even a barebones version that simply lets you display a 50x50px animated circle in the corner would be a great improvement. Would it be possible to create an extension that somehow plays an animation (an external animated GIF?) over the top of Fusion's black screen?

This is a question for everyone else: If I found a programmer who was willing to make this extension for a fee, would you be interested enough to contribute financially? I suspect (rightly or wrongly) that although this would require knowhow, it wouldn't necessarily require a lot of time. So, hiring a programmer to do this might be relatively affordable if a few people chipped in.

What does everyone think?

I'm not 100% sure,but I believe this is a loading screen to ultimate walrus's website.Odds are he made it in fusion.
http://ultimatewalrus.com

Ultimate walrus is a wizard. I think he programs in all sorts of languages.

It might be possible and I would consider supporting it. My assumption is based on the fact that the html runtime has a loading bar already ( which might explain Ultimate Walrus' website). But it is unclear if the other runtimes load data the same way. I would be really interested if the iOS exporter could add this feature but Windows runtime would be a nice start.

I guess this would be interesting for Android too, cause here I experience most loading times for new frames actually. I'd support something like this too! ;)

I havent tried this but if you must have a loading screen wouldnt it be possible to have a layer with some animation graphic (so it's not purely black) and when you're going through the pre-game events, in every other event have an action that adds a value to the counter and in the last event make it 100 and hide the layer and enable all other gameplay groups.

I havent tried it, but that's what im thinking if i had a game that had to load an array, level and set different things up.

That would work (and would be a good idea) if you were loading a huge array from within one frame. But it doesn't work when Fusion is loading a new frame (everything pauses - code, animations, etc.).

I elaborated on this point in the other thread, so I'll copy+paste here:

Quote:

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The problem is that nothing can be animated while fusion is loading another frame. It appears to work like this :

1.you tell frame A to jump to frame B
2. Code in frame A ceases to operate while frame B loads
3. Frame B has a lot of stuff in it so it takes a long time to load
4.once frame B is loaded, code in frame B starts to take effect.

You can put as many fancy loading bars into your code as you like, but they won't do anything when fusion is in #3 (which is where all the waiting takes place) , because it's stopped executing code from Frame A and hasn't yet started executing code from frame B. All you get is a frozen version of frame A in its most recent state.

At least that's been my experience

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oh ok you meant between frame changes, i was thinking more of one frame game where everything happens on the same frame. I admittly havent made any huge multi frame game, but in my experience and workflow the biggest wait is when it loads the array, so i usally have an empty frame in the beginning that takes that "hit" with a 2-3 seconds freeze. I've never had any issue with anything when changing frames. Exactly what happens in your project that makes u need to have a frame change loading bar?

My gameplay is all in one frame, but I switch frame to go to and from the level select screen and results screen. I might end up doing those using subapps. But even so, there'll still be the issue of going to and from the main menu screen

Seems at this time animated loading is not possible.. Hopefully with fusion 3 this is addressed. I added tips to my loading screen for my android game so the player does not feel bored while waiting. I have not had any complaints about loading so far.

I made my loading screen an empty frame with an active picture that changes randomly with tips. It immediately jumps to the next frame and acts as a "loading frame" as that image is displayed until the next frame finishes loading. Forgot to clarify that. Since the loading frame has few events objects and no sounds it loads almost instantly.

You are talking about loading times of in-frame graphics (actives, backdrops etc. placed in frame editor and loaded when launching the frame)
or loading times of your level-loading system (i.e. a fastloop pasting graphics)

in the second situation,
you could simply split the loop and perform a progress-bar operation inbetween

i.e. say you have to fire a loop loading (pasting) 1000 tiled elements
and you have a "10 steps" progress loading bar

1) you can draw the loading screen with progress bar at start of frame
2) then fire the loop pasting 0-100 tile after some frame cycle
3) stop the loop, take note of loopindex, add one step in the progress bar
4) fire the loop from saved loopindex, stop after 100 iterations, go back to 3) until loopindex=999

I am talking about the time it takes to simply switch from my title screen to my level loading frame. I load my levels using an array. The loading is almost instant for the array. Now I have a lot of sound effects and images in my frame which makes the frame load slow even if the array is empty. For me the loading is not a problem. If I remove sounds it loads much quicker. (around a half second) With the sounds it takes 3-5 seconds depending on device. Here is a video of my game to give you an idea of what I mean.

https://youtu.be/DJTw6PQ8m9c

sorry NicksoftTheGreat,
I was referring to the OP question (Volnaiskra), my bad, I didn't make it clear in my reply

I was guessing his situation to be a bit different from yours,
when most of the bulk comes from loading graphics / sounds there may be little to do
while my answer could apply for big level loading systems when drawing loads of tiles from an array

Very cool game btw :)
(and definitely no loading issues there!)

Thanks schrodinger, I think I will do something like that. However, the main loading I had in mind was that between frames.

But it just occurred to me that there might be a clever way to combine Nicksoft's method (which I currently also use) with your suggestion.

Perhaps the between-frame loading screen can be made to look like it has an empty loading bar on it. Then, when the frame loads it immediately starts with an identical loading screen,with the bar a bit more full. Then, as it loads the level via fastloop, it fills up the rest of the bar. So, even though it's loading two separate things (loading a frame and then a huge fastloop), the whole thing can look like a single animated loading screen (albeit with some freeze in the early part of the loading bar)

It probably wouldn't be perfect (there may be some flicker or black screen between frames), but it's worth a try.

Yea, the pause when a frame is loaded for the first time is unfortunate. But if we could have a loading bar for that, I would be onboard to back it financially. The sad part is that it only happens the first time the frame loads. After that, there is no real load to speak of. I think the html5 load bar is actually the entire project being loaded into RAM, so it is still different than the pause that happens on frame load. Correct me if I am wrong here...

I hadn't noticed that. So does that mean that once a frame gets loaded into ram, it stays there even if the game goes to another frame?

I've done a little testing and it seems that schrodinger's suggestion wouldnt work in my game for some reason.

When my gameplay frame starts, it loads an array, then executes a huge fastloop that sets up and places over 3000 objects.

Yet absolutely nothing from that frame will display until everything is loaded. I placed a demo active in the frame. Whether I put it in the frame editor, or create it at start of frame in the very first event, or create it within the huge fastloop,or in its own earlier fastloop, it won't display until everything else is ready and the game is fully loaded and ready to play. Until that moment, the frozen last-state of the previous frame is visible.

I also don't see any difference between loading the frame the first time or subsequent times.

Checking the option in the frame properties to force all objects to load in call didn't make a difference.

It's weird that everyone's games seem to have different behaviour with this stuff

I think start of frame conditions will be included in that initial frame being drawn. You could try making all your load bar loops happen a frame or two after start of frame to allow a frame to draw. Also, the quicker load on subsequent frame loads was on mobile runtimes for me. I have never made a game on Windows that ever paused on loading a frame.

Placing (and replicating) the loading animation inbetween frames (end of frame 0 --> start of frame 1) looks like a cool idea!

(we maybe need to find some other way to call "stage-frames" to avoid confusion with "frame-cycles" XD)

Most games/apps don't show "realistic" loading times anyway, they freeze / start / speed up...
so I guess hanging a little while displaying first image, and than progressing with the bar during actual level loading would be fine for most users.

For the problem you are experiencing I would suggest the same mobichan said:

Quote:

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You could try making all your load bar loops happen a frame or two after start of frame to allow a frame to draw.

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that's why I was saying to fire the loop after some frame cycles

i.e.

start of frame
>> place empty (or half-full if taken from previous frame) progress bar animation

then you better wait some frame cycles
(i.e. using a value >> always add 1 to wait_value)

wait_value = 5
+ loading_index < 10
>> fire the loading loop 1/10 of total needed times
>> add 1 to loading_index
>> go next frame in the progress bar animation
>> set wait_value to 0

and so on

not tested, but should hopefully work

Sounds promising. I'll have to try that. Though I probably have like a hundred start of frame events that I'd have to change :o

Ah, that will be a pain,

I've abused "start of frame" events as well, but then found that using "run this event once"
(and placing events in the correct order of course)
allows for a more flexible control of event flow,
i.e. later on you can put those events in a group and postpone the execution if needed

or you can "counterize" your engine workings
i.e.
counter = 1 >> load level
counter = 2 >> create enemies
etc.

this is particularly useful when your game is complex and has various strictly-defined phases


while when using "start of frame" you are bounded to run those events "all together" and "just in that particular special moment"... XD

You can also use a group with a bunch of stacked Always events, with the last one closing the group for neatness for all your "startup" stuff! (my personal method :P)

About the topic at hand though: I was so curious so I made an attempt to use Schrodinger's method, by breaking up a 10 layer nested loop similar to the kind you would use to load tiles from a level editor array. Excuse how unintelligable and lazy everything is - i'm running on little sleep right now - but it should be a decent example: EDIT (forgot some stuff, new file) Attachment 20951

I made sure to scale and angle the loaded tiles and run a foreach loop on them randomly to fake hangups you might find in a traditional game. Run the second frame "all at once" and watch how long it hangs. Then run "spaced" and check out the difference.

Depending on how convoluted your current system is (very in my and most likely schrodinger's cases XD) you'll need to work on your method a bit to be happy with how you "space" your loading out. My system isn't meant to be modified and implemented, more just a simple mockup for proof it works. I could easily see something like this causing headaches if I needed an animated loading screen in any of my projects!

(I just realized I own a toaster so this might not hang nearly as bad on your end X) . Might need to further burden the loops! An easy way would be to copy the lines in the "burden" section a few times)

Awesome, thanks for making it an example Casleziro,
I'd definitely do something like that if/when needed in my convoluted projects XD!

Btw, had another idea, maybe a bit simpler and possibly a little bit more flexible,
just made a quick test and seems to work... you can actually use a sub-application for your loading bar,
it seems that (although a bit slowed in some of my very quick and definitely not thorough testing) the runtime of the sub-app doesn't get halted while the main app is looping
so you could i.e. display an infinite loading "circle" in the sub-app (those hateful things that keep spinning without telling you how much you'll have to wait XD)
and destroy the sub-app when done loading,
or even do fancy things like sending your "progress status" to the sub-app through shared values and make smooth animated progress bars
(like bars growing to destination instead of hard-steps, without having to wait the frame cycles you would need to play that animation in the main app)

Thanks for the example casleziro!

Schrodinger, that sounds awesome. I'm going to have to try that. Sounds like "problem solved"!

Uh - cancel that, sorry guys, looks like I was wrong!

In previous testing I mistakenly plugged the sub-app in one of those very convoluted projects,
and I forgot I was already "splitting" loops (for other reasons)
...the sub-app actually played only when I was stopping the loop in the main app :(!!

Tried plugging a sub-app in casleziro example ("all at once" frame) and in fact the sub-app halted there too until looping was done.

Sorry for the mess :(:(


******* EDIT *****

just to add some other mess,
you can actually do something like that, but in a very unclean way:

1) build "loading animation" as a stand alone application (maybe with same background color, or very small window area, no header/ thick frame etc., just to blend it with the background and make it look like part of your main app)
2) in main app, execute external program "loading animation" when needed
3) in main app, pass loading status to external file (es. ini) so that "loading animation" knows how to update / when to close

disadvantages: (beside most obvious awkwardness..) not very solid unless you do some hacks
(like adding a window control object with "set window topmost" in order to not lose focus)
maybe also AV softwares don't like you calling external softwares from your app, not sure if this could cause some issues

advantages: can do "cross-frame" loading XD

Kind of off topic, but I use solid colors to mask loadings. My game will fade to a solid color, I pull the level switch, and then alpha all the objects in. It's nice and smooth and really hides some of the rough edges.