Multithreaded Loading Screen... problems

[RonanZero]

The way my asset loading works is it queues them all up in a queue table with info about each "asset load request" then when a function is called it loads them all at once while displaying a loading screen. There are 2 problems:

1. You can't use love.graphics in threads, even to load images.
2. You can't send non-flat tables.

Besides the first one, I don't even know how I can do it. I would have to loop and send each single queued asset, then in the thread do some more stuff after I pop it all, then give back the loaded resources one at a time so they can be put into their respective asset tables, all the while rendering the animated loader in the main thread... why is it so hard? Is there a simpler and actually possible way?

[bobbyjones]

You can do what kikito's solution does and load the assets as data. Like image data and etc. Then you can send them to the main thread. On the main thread there will be a scheduler/manager that will turn the image data to an image and put it in a table for you to use.

[s-ol]

Code: Select all

while true do
  task = tasks:demand()
  local ret = {name=task.name}
  if task.type == "image" then
    ret.data = love.image.newImageData(task.image)
  else if task.type == .....
  end
  results:push(ret)
end

Code: Select all

values = {}
function love.load()
  tasks:push{type="image", image="logo.png"}
  ...
end

function love.update()
  res = results:pop()
  while res do
    values[res.name] = res.data
    res = results.pop()
  end
end

Untested and with a few parts missing, but you get the idea.

[slime]

Check out kikito's love-loader library (which is what BobbyJones mentioned).

[RonanZero]

Code: Select all

while true do
  task = tasks:demand()
  local ret = {name=task.name}
  if task.type == "image" then
    ret.data = love.image.newImageData(task.image)
  else if task.type == .....
  end
  results:push(ret)
end

Code: Select all

values = {}
function love.load()
  tasks:push{type="image", image="logo.png"}
  ...
end

function love.update()
  res = results:pop()
  while res do
    values[res.name] = res.data
    res = results.pop()
  end
end

Untested and with a few parts missing, but you get the idea.

Works for images, but what about fonts? Can't find a way to load fonts without love.graphics.