Adding Loading Screen

[Collegia Titanica]

Usage:
For any HQ texture or performance intensive maps, turning on the Precache GL Textures takes the Loadness and adds it before the map begins.

Somehow adding a loading screen with a filling bar as the map is loading.This is up to the mod creators to decide whether it's needed in their big/heavy/campaign maps

If such a feature is added to Gzdoom, modders could put a custom made loading screen with their own bar creations.Giving the player something to look at for those 10-20 seconds, you know, like most games do.
Loading screen AS the map (textures) are loading, not before.

Just an idea.

[Matt]

What maps take 10-20 seconds to load?

[_mental_]

This can happen on low end PC with 4x upscaling and texture precaching turned on.

[Collegia Titanica]

Extreme cases, not general purpose.

Usage:Creating a realistic looking doom map

Loading a map with many materials (2k textures) on a slower machine, mine is fast but other PC's might take longer to load, if you somehow force the Precache textures via cvar in the pk3 which contains the map , it would take anywhere from 5-20 seconds for example, during which things are kind of frozen, so this suggestion was to Mask that, like other games do.

Inspiration: I just loaded Hoover's textures with precache, so that all of them load at start to avoid the freezing every time you enter a sector

https://gfycat.com/ZanyDigitalBarnowl

[AFADoomer]

Even a load time of a few seconds (which I get very often with texture precaching turned on) could benefit from having a professional, polished load screen in front of it instead of the blank black screen we get now.

[Matt]

Come to think of it, is this the same as the just-under-a-second-long black screen I get every time I load a new version of GZDoom the first time?

[Nash]

Come to think of it, is this the same as the just-under-a-second-long black screen I get every time I load a new version of GZDoom the first time?

I notice this happening on my machine every time the main pixel shader (main.fp) is updated - been regularly testing WIP new features by dpJudas and can confirm this behavior. :D

[Graf Zahl]

The main shader is never "updated". What are you talking about?

[dpJudas]

He's talking about the various changes I've done to main.fp over time (spotlight, shadowmaps, materials). Each time that has happened Nvidia recompiles the shader and caches the result. With the number of subshaders we got it is actually noticeable when it happens - for a short moment we know how it is to own Intel hardware where there's no caching at all (they get this delay on every boot).

[Graf Zahl]

They still do that? I never noticed it on my system, actually.
I thought that was a long forgotten relic of GL 2.x times.

[AFADoomer]

Wait, is that why my game window looks like this:

...for at least 3-4 seconds on initial engine load, even with just an IWAD loading?

[Graf Zahl]

Yes, that may be. Shader compilation can take a while, so if there's nothing cached it will result in some form of delay. BTW, the GZDoom shader cache file on my HD is 22 MB! Just to give an idea why this takes longer.
That's not what had me puzzled. That's about saying that NVidia still recompiles shaders when the variables change. That strikes me as odd.

[dpJudas]

That's not what had me puzzled. That's about saying that NVidia still recompiles shaders when the variables change. That strikes me as odd.

Not sure what you mean with "when the variables change". What I meant is that each time the shader code itself changes (i.e. between releases where we added something, or the misc dev builds Nash been using) then that causes Nvidia to compile the new shader. Whenever the shader doesn't change it grabs it from a shader cache the driver maintains.

Intel doesn't do this. They have no shader cache, so each time GZDoom boots they have have to wait for every shader to be compiled always. We could probably fix it for Intel by using glProgramBinary, but Intel really really should have the resources to create something like a simple shader cache..

[Graf Zahl]

Ah, yes, that was a misunderstanding. I was thinking about that shit they did with their GL 2 hardware that couldn't handle uniform changes well.

[RockstarRaccoon]

So, on the original topic, I know a few ongoing projects that would really benefit from this. Namely the newer Hexen stuff, Membrane, and Blade of Agony, with their high usage of advanced graphical features and their huge maps. Those can take a whole 10 to 20 seconds for me. Same with Hedon if Zan ever wants to make it look better.

As he said, even just allowing the creator to put up an image that says "Loading" at the beginning of the map-loading process would be hugely helpful for letting the player know the game hasn't crashed. If it's not too much trouble, making it eventually work like the hexen loading screen, with a progress bar, would be a nice touch too... (Though, I don't think tat request for PNG support was ever added to that...)