Loading screen? Dont know how

Mind I asking if there's a system function that lets you do Loading screens wherein while objects are being loaded, a loading screen appears? DUH..... Most of the time, when going from one layout to another, it would be a transition. But I want it to be a loading screen, where its either just black with a bar at the bottom or something, or a picture with a percentage rising below.

So yeah, I don't see anything in the system events that could do this. Help?

layouts load so fast that there's no point to a loading screen. You can make a fake one, but that's kind of useless... You don't need loading screens in construct.

Directly at start of the layout, throw up a loading screen (layer, whatever). Then, on next tick, start loading stuff that takes time.

That is of course if you have the game manually build the layout up, rather than have everything added at editing time.

Well, I wont need loading screens in all layouts. Just some special layouts like mini games, world map, etc. in my RPG.

But I guess, making a fake one is the best way. Loading screens gives more feel to the rpg thing you know.

Really? I kinda prefer if it all is as seamless as possible. Loading delays just annoy the heck out of me.

Loading screens give the player the illusion that the game is somehow superior. Case in point PopCap, crap.

I dunno about that. Super Mario Galaxy lacks loading screens entirely. On the other hand, lots and lots of loading will make a player loathe them, case in point, the 2006 Sonic 360/PS3 game. Gamers generally prefer no loading screens at all.

I have a sort of related question. I made a loading screen to preload all of my music files to channels at the very beginning; if I load them at runtime, there is a noticeable "skip" in the action, so I wanted to eliminate that. I tried making a progress bar out of boxes that begin invisible, then turn visible as each file is loaded, so I load one file, flip a box to visible, then load the next, and so on. However, it didn't give the effect I wanted; all of the boxes stayed invisible through the entire process.

I guess it has something to do with the layout not redrawing, so is there a way to force it to redraw each time I want the progress bar to advance?

The frame is drawn on every complete cycle of the event sheet. So if i understand you correctly, you'd want to do an

IF not all sounds are loaded - Load 1 sound, add 1 progress.

That should add 1 every frame.

Why would anyone want a loading screen that doesn't load anything?

Don't. Just don't.

Have you ever had a game that took more than one second to load a layout? So are progress bars really necessary? I have to agree that no progress bars makes for a better experience when playing a game. Even a progress bar as alee described - loading a file then updating the screen - is a complete waste of time, because after each file is loaded, the application is doing a full render of the entire screen then waiting for the vertical trace on the monitor. So your application spends 90% of the loading time idle, waiting, rather than loading as quickly as possible so as to not keep the user waiting.

It's also easy to spot fake progress bars - usually there's no apparent system activity while a progress bar increments suspiciously, leading to a level with nothing particularly resource intensive on it, where other games can load similar or more complex games instantly. Seeing a fake progress bar most gamers I'm sure would facepalm and think, "jeez, this thing is useless..."