[Widelands-public] How to integrate a game-loading-status-page?

[Peter S. <sea...@gm...>]

Hi,

I need a bit of help, to integrate the following feature into widelands:

If widelands loads the editor, a single-, multiplayer- or savegame it 
seems, as if widelands is crashed, because the mouse can't be moved and 
the menu (where you've choosen to open the editor, etc) is shown until 
widelands endet it's loading. BUT the user doesn't see, that widelands 
is loading something.

My idea was, to integrate a "loading-status-page", which is opened 
directly after you choosed to open xxx.
This side should contain a fitting picture (to the thing you are 
loading) and a status-bar on the bottom, with dynamic text, what 
widelands is loading at the moment.

My idea was, to show the last printed log-message in the statusbar - 
don't care about translations of the messages, mainpoint just is, that 
the user can see, THAT something is happening.

BUT I haven't written something like this before and don't know IF it is 
possible, to create such loading-status-pages, like I want.
And IF, where (and CAN I) read out the last printed log-message?
I really would like to begin in deeper coding, but I'm still a beginner 
and would be happy about every help. :-)






Idea for the different loading pictures:
Editor:                Editor-"Splash" (you can see an example on 
http://widelands.drehatlas.de/editor-splash.png )
Single-player:      Picture for the tribe you've choosen to play  [or 
random-picture of world, the map is using (like in s2)]
Campaign:          Splash for every campaign (?)
Multiplayer:        Splash, which shows the used protocol 
(tcp/ip-internet, tcp/ip-lan, ggz)