[Glorfindal]

I have a question, how do you make the computer put a image on the screen, wait a second and then replace the image with another image. This code could be used to make a loading animation for my game. I'm using the library Allegro by the way.

#include <allegro.h>
BITMAP *Load_bar;
int main(){ 
	allegro_init();
	install_keyboard();
	set_color_depth(16);
	set_gfx_mode( GFX_AUTODETECT_WINDOWED, 800, 600, 0, 0);
	Load_bar = load_bitmap( "Line.bmp", NULL);
	acquire_screen();
	draw_sprite( screen, Load_bar, 250, 7);
	release_screen();
	readkey();
	return 0;
}   
END_OF_MAIN();

 Line.bmp (214bytes)
Number of downloads: 117

[matthew180]

Usually you want your progress indicators to reflect that something is "really" still happening, and to also be as linear as possible (ever been frustrated by a progress bar that sits at 1% for 5 minutes, then jumps to 99%, then done?)

Typically for file loading your progress could be done in a couple of ways depending on how you are actually loading the data. If you are directly controlling the loading of the file, i.e. using read() or fread() into data structs or image buffers, then I would suggest dividing your progress bar by the total number of bytes to be loaded by the size of the chunks of the file you are reading with each read() call.

If you are using asynchronous reads, then your progress loop would check the status of any completed reads and update the progress for each file that finished.

If you are reading a huge number of files, you might update your progress after each file read.

A progress bar should be more than an animation, it should let you (and the user) know that the application is still processing data and has not locked up. If your progress bar is just some animation that is disassociated from the actual loading process going on, then when something goes wrong with the real file reading, your progress bar will just sit there and continue to run and you (and the user) will never know something is really going wrong.

Matthew

[Hyper]

"your progress bar will just sit there and continue to run and you will never know something is really going wrong."

Hi Windows 95!

This post has been edited by Hyper: 24 January 2009 - 09:03 PM

[NuclearPeon]

I think a good rule of thumb to follow is always have a status bar or some sort of minimal text output along with a progress bar.

[Hyper]

Whose thumb?

[Glorfindal]

Yeah this is kind of what I'm curious about, how do you make animations, Of course I would add text with it, like at the beginning it might say Loading Libraries... and the say Loading Images... or something like that. But how do I make animation without having it display a gif image?

[Glorfindal]

Come on anyone know how to make an animation in Allegro?

[Hyper]

Think about what you're asking. What is an "animation?"
It's a series of pictures being displayed side by side, of course. How do you think *.gif images work?

[Glorfindal]

Yes, though how do I make Allegro change the previous images?

[Hyper]

How did you make it load the first image?
Simply make another image and load that consecutively afterwards.

[matthew180]

The animation part can be done one of two ways:

Pre-made images:

1. Create a series of images that make up your animation.
2. Load all the images (Allegro might have a sprite system that assists with this.)
3. Draw the first image.
4. Wait a certain amount of time (depends on your animation.)
5. Draw the next image at the same x,y location as the previous image, i.e. replace it on the screen.
6. When you get to the last image, start over with the first image.

The images that make up your animation need to be such that the last one seamlessly transitions to the first, otherwise at the end of the sequence you will get a jerky sort of unnatural motion (it will look bad.)

Also, in step 4, it would be best to mix real-time along with monitoring that something is actually happening with the data (see my first post.) If you use time alone to update the animation then, as I said before, it will continue to play and not provide any feedback as to what is really going on.

If you know the size of the data and can make a 0% to 100% *linear* progress bar, then do that. Otherwise, use a spinner type of indicator which tells you that something is happening, but you don't know when it will be done. If the data stops flowing, the progress bar / spinner should stop working too.


Second method - programmatically generate images. This is almost the same as the pre-made animation except that you generate the images of the animation at runtime. You do this by allocating an image buffer and using drawing commands (line, pixels, shapes, etc.) to draw on "onto" the image buffer instead of the screen buffer. When the image is done, you draw (blit) it to the screen just like an image you loaded.

Usually the sequence you are generating would be controlled by an algorithm or something, like animating a sine wave or some mathematical formula. Although, if you were making a 0% to 100% progress bar, you could use this to draw the progress. However, you can also use an image and clipping to draw the progress bar as well.

Matthew

[Hyper]

Thanks Einstein, now he won't think and learn.
I was trying to stimulate his only brain-cell dude.

[Glorfindal]

I recently thought that I needed the images to replace each other. Now the question is how do I set a timer?

[Hyper]

They do "replace" each other. If you want a better understanding or idea, try to "animate" stuff on paper.

How do you set a timer? One method (on Windows, using the Win32 API) is to use the "Sleep" call.

Example of usage: Sleep(1000); will cause the program to pause for 1 second (1000ms)

[Glorfindal]

OK, that helps, but what Library do I need to do that?