Kikito's love-loader for 0.9.x

[Tanner]

I recently ported love-loader to work with the new thread changes in 0.9.x. I use this library all the time to avoid IO lags in frames from loading assets and it was killing me not to have it working in 0.9.x.

The changes have already been merged into the master branch of the repository and the public API hasn't changed at all so you should be able to just replace the old version if you were already using this in 0.8.x. If you have any suggestions for additional features I'd love to for you to open a github issue for it.

Once again, the URL: https://github.com/kikito/love-loader

[kikito]

I am not sure that calling it "kikito's love-loader" is accurate any more, since you did all the heavy lifting on this version .

Thanks again, and welcome to the forums

[richardperkins]

This is pretty great stuff! Thanks. I was working on something similar, but there is no need to reinvent the wheel

[Tanner]

To even further simplify its use: here is some code that will recursively preload all the images in the "images" directory.

Code: Select all

local loader = require 'lib/love-loader'
local preloaded_images = {}
local preloaded_fonts = {}

-- puts loaded images into the preloaded_images hash with they key being the file name
local filetypes = {png = true, gif = true, jpg = true}
local function load_images(container, directory)
  for index, file_name in ipairs(love.filesystem.getDirectoryItems(directory)) do
    -- build the full, relative path of the file
    local full_name = directory .. '/' .. file_name
    if love.filesystem.isDirectory(full_name) then
      -- recurse
      local subcontainer = {}
      container[file_name] = subcontainer
      load_images(subcontainer, full_name)
    else
      -- match the filetype and then queue the image for loading
      local file_name, filetype = full_name:match("^.*/(.+)%.(%a+)$")
      if filetypes[filetype] then
        local key = file_name .. "." .. filetype
        loader.newImage(container, key, full_name)
      end
    end
  end
end
load_images(preloaded_images, "images")

[SiENcE]

I may found a problem when finishCallback is called twice.

problem is also discussed here.
http://love2d.org/forums/viewtopic.php? ... 4&start=30

Machine:
Windows 7, 64bit, Core i7-3770

Most times I get:

Code: Select all

first tween finished
second tween finished
second tween finished

But this is wrong. "second tween finished" should only called once. It seems, that when there is load on the cpu, everything is correct. But when there is no load, the finishCallback is called twice.

Sample attached.

[kikito]

Hi Science,

I have executed your examples many times (around 10 or so) and could not replicate this - I always get only 1 "second tween finished".

However, I've studied the code and I imagined a case where there could indeed be a multi-threading related issue - I made a change that should fix it (theoretically, as I said before my machine never fails with your code). Instead of using a variable, the "endThread" function actually waits for the thread to finish before continuing, using an extra channel.

Could you please try this and tell me if this solves your issue? If so, I will deploy the change to love-loader.

Regards!

[SiENcE]

Nope does not work. Screenshot attached.

I made a small fix and send you a pull request on github. It's only a hack but this works.

[Zilarrezko]

What does this do?

[kikito]

I made a small fix and send you a pull request on github. It's only a hack but this works.

Yes, I saw it. I am not going to merge it just yet. I need to understand why it happens so I can fix the real problem, not mask it. This is difficult for me since I can't reproduce the issue.

But in the meantime, use it if it fixes your issue.

What does this do?

It allows loading stuff on a secondary thread without blocking. This means that the man thread can display a fluid "loading animation", while loading takes place, for example. Unfortunately Science has found a bug and I am trying to find the issue. But it only seems to happen on his machine, so it's difficult.

More info on its thread: http://love2d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7721

[Zilarrezko]

alright, cool.