My solution for No more loading bars nor loading text

DoubleDragons

DoubleDragons

Member
This is my solution for making that pesky "loading..." text go away for a game. I'm fine with a few seconds of black in between levels rather than this flash of "loading...".

You can trick the engine into drawing a literal "invisible" object.
  1. Keep your coordinate lines but change the final font index parameter to 0:

    Code: 
    loadingbg        1 -1000 -1000 0 -1000 -1000 0
loadingbg2       1 -1000 -1000 0 -1000 -1000 0


  2. In the OpenBOR engine, Color Index 0 is strictly reserved as the alpha transparency mask (color-keying).
  3. By setting the font type and bar parameters to 0, the engine translates the artifact's pixel color data as transparent, making the artifact completely invisible to the screen buffer.
Sharing this for anyone else like me wants to nix the loading text.
 
DoubleDragons said:
This is my solution for making that pesky "loading..." text go away for a game. I'm fine with a few seconds of black in between levels rather than this flash of "loading...".

You can trick the engine into drawing a literal "invisible" object.
  1. Keep your coordinate lines but change the final font index parameter to 0:

    Code: 
    loadingbg        1 -1000 -1000 0 -1000 -1000 0
loadingbg2       1 -1000 -1000 0 -1000 -1000 0


  2. In the OpenBOR engine, Color Index 0 is strictly reserved as the alpha transparency mask (color-keying).
  3. By setting the font type and bar parameters to 0, the engine translates the artifact's pixel color data as transparent, making the artifact completely invisible to the screen buffer.
Sharing this for anyone else like me wants to nix the loading text.
Click to expand...

I wouldn’t say “tricked” so much as doing exactly what it’s meant to do, but yes - this is a nice technique.

One word of caution though: loading speeds are relative, and they won’t always be as fast for everyone else as they are for you. The engine is pretty darn quick most of the time, but on a bogged-down system, slow drive, or cold file cache, someone might see a few seconds of nothing and assume the game crashed.

DC
 
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