Hi,
my application needs a lot of initialization stuff to be done in the setup() method (like loading graphics and even downloading something on the fly from a server). All of that takes 2-3 seconds, and in the meanwhile nothing happens from user’s perspective.
This is enough to make people nervous and even double click a second time on app icon, and should of course be avoided. After playing for a while with splash screens I couldn’t find anything satisfactory, they made the code heavily platform dependent and did not solve the problem after all.
So I tried a much simpler way that (for me at least) does the trick. Since I am not an expert at all in OF I am asking for comments and may be possible drawbacks. The idea is to delay setup() after a few frames have been drawn, so that the window can appear with a message to the user. Since the message is static it does not matter if the framerate is extremely low during the initialization.
here is a little snippet:
in ofApp.h:
void first_setup();
int framesDrawn;
ofTrueTypeFont messageFont; // this is only needed if you want to show a message while loading
and in ofApp.cpp:
const int SETUP_FRAMES = 2;
void ofApp::setup()
{
ofSetVerticalSync(true);
ofSetFrameRate(60);
messageFont.load("font/F25_Executive.otf", 32, true, true);
framesDrawn = 0;
}
void ofApp::first_setup()
{
// do all heavy initialization stuff here
}
void ofApp::update()
{
if(framesDrawn <= SETUP_FRAMES) return;
// regular update() code goes here
}
void ofApp::draw()
{
ofBackground(80);
if(framesDrawn < SETUP_FRAMES)
{
string line = "Application is loading. Please wait.";
// draw a message on screen, centered on X and Y
int lineH = messageFont.getLineHeight();
int y = (ofGetHeight()-lineH)/2 + messageFont.getAscenderHeight();
int lineW = messageFont.stringWidth(line);
int x = (ofGetWidth()-lineW)/2;
messageFont.drawString(line, x, y);
framesDrawn++;
return;
}
else if(framesDrawn == SETUP_FRAMES)
{
first_setup();
framesDrawn++;
}
// here goes all draw() code
}