Compiling progress indicator

[Nutty171]

Description of the Feature:

• When the game is compiling when you playtest, (I can only assume that's what it's doing) it has some sort of indicator for its progress.
• EDIT: It being similar to XP (just showing that it's compiling and which files it's compiling) would probably be just fine.

Code for Implementation:
Not a programmer.

Mockups:
See attached file. Even if I'm wrong about what it's doing, it should at least say what it is doing. (iirc, RMXP shows its compiling progress on the title bar.) EDIT: Changed the image to be more accurate to how I would like it and how XP does it.

Why is this feature good?

• I'm suggesting this feature because whenever I playtest, it lags a LOT, (at least on my computer, which is slow) and it gets really frustrating when it takes longer than normal.
• This feature would, of course, relieve that frustration.
• If something fails, it would be a lot easier to diagnose.

Possible issues with this feature?

• I honestly can't think of any possible issues.

 

[Jonforum]

you can see this with F8 in element
and with more detail

 

[Nutty171]

I see random letters. :/
And to my limited understanding of this, I don't see any form of progress indicator.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

So it's basically a "NOW LOADING" bar?

iirc, RMXP shows its compiling progress on the title bar.

I'm continuously testing XP and I still can't find this progress on the title bar

 

[Nutty171]

@Engr. Adiktuzmiko Basically. RMXP just handled it so well. Maybe the fact that the title screen loads and shows has something to do with it. It feels as if it's tantalizing me, "Look, see this play game button? You can't press it yet." Know what I mean? Edit: Didn't see the later half of your post, heh heh. A progress indicator maybe isn't what I really want. I'll edit the main post to make it more clearer.

EDIT: So somebody voted "no" on the poll. Of course, you have every right to say no, and I do realize that it can mean "I don't see any reason I would want this". But if that is the case, please just don't vote. I normally see "no" as "I would be unhappy if this feature was added." But nevermind about that, that's just my opinion. But if you do disagree with this and think that they should definitely NOT implement it, say why not. That's the point of this forum, to discuss the feature. And when I say "you" I mean it generally. I'm not trying to confront the person who voted no specifically or even say that he/she should remove that vote. I'm just asking people to do (what I think is) the right thing.

 

[Andar]

I haven't voted on this, but I know a bit more about the background and the problems here.
Most people don't know this, but basically every program where you got a %-progress meter is simply faking that one. It is technically impossible to show the real progress that way.

The reason for this is that the computer can't estimate the work required without completing it at least once. In finished games the "now loading" shows correct numbers because during betatesting the developers have tested how much time and access it takes for any part of the game to load, and then set the display bar to reflect that (which is why you sometimes have jumps there instead of continuous increase - the change is only after a large file has completely loaded, because you can't interrupt a load command to update the bar as an additional problem).

The only options to show a progress meter without having it tested at least once are variants of what the example above shows: counting up what has been done without any indication of the total number of lines that need to be completed before the work is done.

This goes double for game development where the computer can't know how large a game is or how many files it needs to process before being told to process. Even a guesswork here (counting files in the directory, which might be put off by "exclude unused files") would require so much additional code that the time needed for the process is significantly increased. And if people have to decide if they want to wait five minutes for the process without a %-complete message, or wait eight minutes just so that they can watch a progress meter that isn't even fully reliable, do you really think they would want to add those three minutes wait for that?
(disclaimer: the five and eight minutes are example estimate numbers, I don't have any real statistics how much this will really add as that also depends on what project is being worked on)

 

[Nutty171]

I do understand that you can't display progress on loading/compiling easily if at all. Though, the more I think about it, and the further this thread goes, I realize more and more that if it was like XP, I would be satisfied.

P.S. Since you're a mod, I'll ask you, am I allowed to vote on this poll even though I'm the thread author? Because if it's allowed, then everybody would probably just automatically mentally subtract a "Yes" from the results.

 

[Andar]

it is allowed, and it doesn't matter because a single vote have no real impact - if something is a good idea it usually gets a lot of votes.
And there are old topics transferred from the first improvement board that had the vote added later (because there was no voting on the first variant of this board, so anyone interested in improvements shoudl go through the entire forum and vote on old topics as well as on new ones.

 

[Nutty171]

Well, I voted "Yes but not important" anyway, so... Heh heh.

 

[mlogan]

Perhaps instead of an actual progress bar, a loading icon could be used instead - like the spinning circles or such. But, I'm not sure why this needs to be a program feature? Also, I thought MV did something of the sort anyway... I can't test it at the moment, but I thought there was some sort of loading thing, at least with playing in browser?

 

[Nutty171]

Not loading as in the game loading, but loading as in compiling when playtesting. As of now, it just goes to the title screen and simply freezes until it finishes.