Topic: Branch for public beta test :-)

Dear widelands people,

I would like to direct your attention to the following branch: https://code.launchpad.net/~qcumber-some/widelands/animations/+merge/104138

It is trying to get rid of the long time it takes loading the animations when loading a map or the editor, by distributing the loading time to the time when the animation is needed - read: on-demand loading of animations.

Since the branch has been tested by a few people and does not seem to raise doubts, I would like to hear from a broader audience (having a broader diversity of system setups). Especially it would be necessary to know if you have any problems, if you have annoyingly long stop-the-world occurencies while playing and if you can live with the tradeoff of those for a quicker startup time.

So if you want, you can test the branch. Tino has been so nice to provide a special win32 build for the Windows people at http://widelands.8-schuss.de/Widelands-bzr6373-nomusic-ondemandload-win32.exe

It would be nice if you would provide feedback at the merge discussion or in this forum thread, it would be great if you would mention your general setup (at least your operating system, and special constraints like an aggressive virus scanner, or an SSD, or a Ramdisk...) so we can get a feeling for your environment.

Have fun and many thanks

CMake is evil.

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Hi fuchur, thanks for testing

fuchur wrote: This evening I tried the windows build and it's totally different. I have old PC (Pentium 4, 2.4 GHz, 1 MB, Windows XP), and this branch takes only a few seconds to start. A regular build takes more than 1 minute! I started a game without opponents, expanded a bit and built several buildings. I don't feel any problems when the animations are loaded on demand. It's really great.

Great to hear you don't have problems with a really old machine, since widelands still strives to be playable on such machines.

The ony problem I see is that it's not enough time at startup to display the hints. And they could be interesting for new players.

This is certainly an important observation. We will need to think about this.

CMake is evil.

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I did not know that I have downloaded a new feature until I read this topic. Although my Laptop is quite new (Win7, Intel i3, 2.53GHz, 4GB Ram), loading a map always took a while (large maps sometimes two minutes), so I was positively surprised when the game started after some seconds. The game only stops for a second or so when I see a new tribe, but that is only three times.

For the hints: I do not know if you know Battle for Wesnoth, but they show the hints on the title menu. On my screen (1600x900), there is some space to the left and right side, maybe we could do something there.

"Only few people know how much one has to know in order to know how little one knows." - Werner Heisenberg

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A possibility for the hints is a 'Click to continue'-like behaviour. This way new players can read the hints but I am not sure about the older player. They could be annoyed by it.

To display hints on the main menu is nevertheless a nice idea.

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Your proposal looks quite interesting. I've always felt that the menu is a little "spacious".

The space is even plenty in a 4:3 resolution.

Although I would put the menu left and the hints right.

I could also live with alternating images/screenshots top left, with the hints bottom left, and the menu to the right...

Unfortunately I'm not fit enough in C++ to do this on my own

But if we decide that this is the way to go, we can merge the ondemand loading first and then someone modifies the menu afterwards.

Currently I hope many players download Tino's Windows builds and the branch gets pulled for testing. But after fuchur's message I'm feeling fairly certain that this will be the future

CMake is evil.

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