Intro Loading Screen for Android

Solar2D Daily Builds and Public Releases
#1

Hi,

This is a feature that is subtle, but also important. Basically, there needs to be a loading screen as the app loads up everything.

Right now, I’m working on an app that takes from 5 to 15 seconds to load. During that time, it’s a complete black screen.

It would be great if we could have a loading image that pops up while the app loads…much like the loading image for iPhone.

Having a loading image show up immediately when the app is launched would help the players understand that the app is launching properly. Right now, when a player sees a black screen for 5 to 15 seconds, some of them may get confused.

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#2

5 to 15 seconds is a long time. Why aren’t you able to display an image as the very first line of code, and then timer.performWithDelay(50, loadResources) to load everything? the timer allows the main function to exit so the image is displayed to the screen.

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#3

Even with a timer, it can still take 5 seconds to load things. There seems to be some basic loading of items that is needed regardless of the timer.

The best thing would be a simple screen that shows up first and then Corona does the loading it needs to do for the app. [import]uid: 12700 topic_id: 7828 reply_id: 27835[/import]

#4

Thats quite strange. What device is this on? If you make a simple project that just loads an image, how long does it take? I have a feeling you’re trying to load very large images? [import]uid: 8872 topic_id: 7828 reply_id: 27837[/import]

#5

Hi,

This is on Android running 1.6…I have done a simple project that just loads an image. It’s not as bad…but still, it’s a few seconds.

Yes, I am loading a larger image. There seems to be a long black screen when the app has a fair amount of resources.

If you look at some other non-corona games, they have instant loading screens. Having something like that would be great. [import]uid: 12700 topic_id: 7828 reply_id: 28052[/import]

#6

Sorry if this seems a daft reply (first post and all that).
But why not just rename main.lua to something else and then code up a new main.lua that just loads up a single image and then chains to the next (old main.lua) file - a bit like the way the director.lua stuff works.

If the problem still exists then I’d suspect it’s down to the actual internal app engine precompiling your lua scripts and there’s probably nothing much you can do about it.

Besides bug the team to add support for “default.png” :slight_smile:

Slightly off topic - have to say I’m loving the SDK (both on Mac and Windows) although I have noticed a tendency for the lua code to get a little messy (although that’s probably 20 years of strict C/C++ coding making me a little picky) - but good job all round!

Jon…
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