Question

I’m trying to have a loading screen that pops up as soon as you run that executable that launches the game, whilst the game loads I want to display an image on the desktop much like how Gamemaker allows you to have a loading image.

I’ve had a brief look around and most people want an image to be shown whilst they load content which is not what I want, or perhaps it is… =P

My guess would be to set the game window borderless at the start, load the splash screen, draw it, then begin all the main loading (Specifically loading DirectInput through SlimDX takes a while). However would this support having a transparent/irregular shaped image? E.G if I wanted a borderless circle to be displayed whilst the game loads, would that be possible?

Thanks.

Answer 1

If I understand you correctly, you essentially want to have a window opened that is not full screen that also lacks the regular border and buttons that accompanies a window.

I can’t test this but this should be a good start.

Here!

I would start by creating a bare bones Game1 class that can track an image and keep track of time for a timer.
Later you could add logic that actually tracks the loading of assets in the main program.
To start I’d just test it for a fixed time like 3 seconds.