Suggestion: Engine Startup

[RickJ]

Why does the engine insist on always displaying a black screen first before displaying anything else? Startup a game in window mode.  An empty windows is displayed for a short period of time.  The time depends on the room transition selected.  If the selection is instant there is an annoying flicker. 

This behavior is not only really annoying but it also makes seamless transitions to/from mini games virtually impossible.  If also looks really unprofessional and gives the impression to users (i.e. game player, our customers) that something is not right with AGS games. 

Can anything be done about this situation? 

Thanks for listening
Rick

[Gilbert]

I've never checked, but does the preload.pcx splash screen work?
Try searching for this in the forums or the manual if needed. I'm not at home atm and it's hard for me to search for anything with a phone.

[Joseph DiPerla]

I noticed that too RickJ. I think it has something to do with how Allegro initializes the display driver. I could be wrong however.

[Crimson Wizard]

To be honest I never paid attention to something like that. But if it is a problem, that could be changed. I see no big problem in that. There may be an option between showing custom game's splash screen, default AGS engine splash screen or maybe some generic output showing loading progress.

I noticed that too RickJ. I think it has something to do with how Allegro initializes the display driver. I could be wrong however.

There could be also lot of things going, like loading and initializing data.

EDIT: Now, I run random AGS game in window and could clearly see what you mean .

[RickJ]

@Iceboty:  Thanks for the tip.  I tried it and it has made some improvement for my current application.  However, the window containing a black still briefly displayed before the preload graphic.

@Joseph: I could perhaps buy that for full screen display, when the graphic adapter's resolution is changed but not running in window mode. 

@Crimson:  I think there are two situations to address, initially starting a game from an OS context and starting a game from the context of another game.  In the first situation a splash screen would be an adequate solution but in the later situation you would want a seamless transition from one game to another.  The later situation would occur, for example, when a mini-game is started or exited and intervening black and/or splash screen would be unacceptable.

Splash Screen - The preload.pcx thing could/should be upgraded to a formal splash screen mechanism similar to what you describe.  I would add to your suggestion the ability to specify a minimum display time and the ability to use PNG images. 

Mini-Game - The second situation arises when starting a mini-game and returning back to the original using RunAGSGame().  I created a MiniGame module a while back to do this but because of the way ags does start-up and restore-game the code the code was quite convoluted.  Perhaps the RunAGSGame() mechanism could be enhanced to have a "CallAGSGame()" version which would save the current game state to a file and then restore it on return.

In both cases above the black screen thing needs to be eliminated first, IMHO.