Loading Screen

[ViciouZ]

- The game stopped working at "Match begins in 11  seconds" (Debug message: Integer division by zero | sv_main.c | ge->RunFrame(); - but the windows event manager shows me gamex86.dll as the reason)

That makes sense, ge->RunFrame() is the engine calling the game DLL's code.

I have just committed the first attempt at a map loading screen feature; code is in the CVS, and here is the required menu file. This should be translation friendly. Also attached a screenie showing the download bar in the menu instead of the console.

Current problems:

• Mapshots won't show up until they've been downloaded. Same problem as the start new game menu really.
• Doesn't show the worldspawn message anywhere, only the map name. Any suggestions for what to do with this?
• Only replaces the "loading" plaque in game - doesn't currently display on usage of "map" or "connect" commands.

Also probably just doubled the number of bugs in paintball2. trolololo

[Foxhound]

what is that^? my game never loads like that....

[Rick]

Viciouz just made it, it's attached to his post.

@V, Is there any way to download the mapshot before the map and display it whilst downloading the map? I have no idea about coding.

[ViciouZ]

Viciouz just made it, it's attached to his post.

@V, Is there any way to download the mapshot before the map and display it whilst downloading the map? I have no idea about coding.

There is, but it relies on the server actually having the mapshot file (hahahahaha like that will happen) or the client getting it somewhere else, i.e. http, but jits doesn't like using that due to firewall issues I think.

[jitspoe]

Split this into its own thread.

It should be possible to get the message, as it's displayed in the console before the map downloads.  I think it's in the configstrings.  The mapshots would basically require requesting the image before the bsp file (and displaying a generic image if the mapshot is not available).

[ViciouZ]

The message problem was more to do with placement/formatting, given that they were all designed to be shown in the console and so use multiple lines/funtext.

As for the image, sure, yeah. I'll get on that when I next have some free time.

[Zorchenhimer]

NOW LOADING: abandon

In all serious though, looks awesome.  And as for the mapshots, I don't suppose we could slightly modify the .bsp format to contain a thumbnail at the beginning of the file and display it while the rest loads, could we?  Naturally that would require thumbnails to be embedded in the map file (failover to a local image file?), which would be a pain for all the maps there are unless some scripting magic happened.

[SuperMAn]

Looks good.  What do you think about adding a tips section like other games have?   It could just pull a single line from a text file every few seconds while loading.   Possible?  What do you guys think?

[Rockyar_96]

great idea

[ViciouZ]

Looks good.  What do you think about adding a tips section like other games have?   It could just pull a single line from a text file every few seconds while loading.   Possible?  What do you guys think?

Yeah, that was part of the idea I had when I started working on it. I guess the tips could go where the downloading stuff is, when it's not downloading... space is the only real issue

[SuperMAn]

Not possible to add another section at the bottom?

[ViciouZ]

That currently takes up the whole screen at 640x480 - if there was another section on the bottom, it wouldn't be visible.

[Zorchenhimer]

It probably wouldn't hurt to raise the resolution requirement to 1024x768.  I mean, even my phone has a higher resolution than 640x480.

[jitspoe]

The logo could be removed to free up space.  Also, the mapshot could be shrunk/offset and the name of the map could be put on the right.  Another possibility is to add an effect or something on the mapshot and actually have the whole shot be the background for the loading screen (like quake3 does).  Maybe just a smaller area of the screen with the title and such on it, and the download progress/tips/etc. would be below that.

I'm still working on getting the full map name displayed, so don't change anything just yet.

[Zorchenhimer]

I'm still working on getting the full map name displayed, so don't change anything just yet.

Like instead of "Loading abandon.bsp..." it would be "Loading map: Abandon All Hope..." or whatever is in the worldspawn?

[jitspoe]

Yeah... just messing with the layout to get it to look right in most cases, since it can have multiple lines.  Many maps are set up like:

Map Name

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