Re: [Celestia-developers] Problem with splash.tiff in CVS

[Chris L. <cl...@ww...>]

I think Celestia could benefit from a splash screen . . .  Even on a fast
machine with just the default data files, it takes 2-3 seconds for
Celestia to start up. With more files and/or a slower CPU, it could take
much longer. So, I decided to add a splash screen for the Windows version
using the same image as the Mac version does. On newer versions of Windows
(XP and Win2k), the image is nicely alpha blended on top of the rest of
the desktop; there's a fallback path for old versions of Windows.

I went one step further and added a progress report. The names of data
files are displayed as they're being loaded. Personally, I happen to very
much like a bit of feedback that tells me what's happening as I'm waiting
for an app to load. There's a new abstract base class called
ProgressNotifer. If you want to add progress feedback at startup for one
of the other Celestia front-ends, create a subclass of ProgressNotifier
and override the update method. Then pass an instance of the class when
you call CelestiaCore::initSimulation(). It's an optional parameter to
initSimulation(), so my change should not break existing code.

Feedback on the Windows splash screen would be great . . .  If everyone
hates it, I'll rip it out or make it optional. Pat, is the progress
feedback enough to justify the existence of the splash screen? :)

--Chris

> With a splash screen, one might consider eliminating the "Celestia" text
> in the display.
> Also I remind people of the real fun in Celestia-kde: there is a splash/
> directory and one may drop in favorite start-up images that are
> displayed at random during start-up...
>
> Two of my favorites are these
>
> http://www.shatters.net/~t00fri/images/splash2.jpg
> http://www.shatters.net/~t00fri/images/splash1.jpg
>
> Bye Fridger
>
> Pat Suwalski wrote:
>> Chris Laurel wrote:
>>> Would you be willing to check it in as a PNG instead of a TIFF? Then I
>>> could use it for the Windows splash screen.
>>
>> My everlasting question about the splash screens is: are they that
>> useful to Celestia? It starts up pretty quick, and the splash screen
>> tends to occlude the nice "Celestia" that shows up on start.
>>
>> --Pat