Loading Theory
by Alpha-Kand · in General Discussion · 09/18/2012 (9:48 am) · 4 replies
Right from the start I'll mention the base of the question, how do loading screens work?
Most professional games, especially in this modern era of bigger games have loading screens. But usually they have an animation or something happening with little to no lag but a LOT of stuff to load. Do they use multi-threading or a neat trick?
And another thing. Sometimes with online flash games or whatever have a significant level loading time. Not a lot but enough that it doesn't make sense when I make something in torque that seems about the same amount of data to load and that is near instantaneous. Maybe it's just a fluke 'cuz I don't play flash games much.
Most professional games, especially in this modern era of bigger games have loading screens. But usually they have an animation or something happening with little to no lag but a LOT of stuff to load. Do they use multi-threading or a neat trick?
And another thing. Sometimes with online flash games or whatever have a significant level loading time. Not a lot but enough that it doesn't make sense when I make something in torque that seems about the same amount of data to load and that is near instantaneous. Maybe it's just a fluke 'cuz I don't play flash games much.
About the author
I have always loved video games and computer games so decided to try making my own. Spent a little more than a year on a program simply named Game Maker which really got me interested. Finally decided to get "professional" by getting Torque 2D.
#2
09/18/2012 (9:48 pm)
Cool! Now if I heard correctly Torque doesn't have threading capabilities as it stands and I have to implement them somehow? That'll take some time as I'm not that good at C++ YET... 
#3
09/18/2012 (11:53 pm)
Torque does have a multithread API - check out this resource for a very quick tutorial. Unfortunately, large parts of the engine aren't designed to be multithreaded, so if you do anything tricky with it you're likely to run into problems.
#4
Personally though, I'll probably just use it for loading screens and MAYBE a panic lifeline setup for debugging so if it crashes/hangs I don't have to shut the whole game down. That's the plan anyway.
09/19/2012 (9:05 pm)
Bah! I'm sure you have gotten multithreading to work flawlessly within a couple hours right?Personally though, I'll probably just use it for loading screens and MAYBE a panic lifeline setup for debugging so if it crashes/hangs I don't have to shut the whole game down. That's the plan anyway.
Torque 3D Owner Tim Scheiman
Ghost Ship Studios
Yes, absolutely loading screens involve multiple threads to get a nice smooth loading bar while pulling in large chunks of data.
To the second:
I think the flash games thing would have more to do with downloading than "loading". If the game is on your hard drive it can load data into memory pretty quickly...