With Allegro 5.0:
#SelectExpand
1// mark as volatile so that the compiler knows it may unexpectedly change
2volatile bool done_loading
= false;
3ALLEGRO_BITMAP *my_bitmap
;
4
5void *my_thread
(ALLEGRO_THREAD *me,
void *data
)
6{
7 (void) data
; // aren't using this. this is the NULL parameter from below
8
9 my_bitmap
= al_load_bitmap("foo.bmp");
10 // load other bitmaps
11
12 done_loading
= true;
13
14 // when running an attached thread, the following is the return value to
15 // al_join_thread(), which we are not using here.
16 return NULL
;
17}
18
19// starts the loading thread
20al_run_detached_thread(my_thread, NULL
);
21
22// this code will execute while the above function is running
23
24while (!done_loading
)
25{
26 // show loading page, etc
27}
Normally you'd need to convert the bitmap to video after that while loop is over because the loader thread will create it as memory. However, in your case, the video card is not going to support a video bitmap of that size, so it doesn't matter. (But if you are loading smaller bitmaps, you'd need to convert them to video.)
Threading can get complex because you normally don't want two threads reading and writing the same data at the same time. However in this case, since one thread is writing a boolean that the other thread only reads, it will be safe. For more complex interaction, you need to use mutexes and condition variables.
Anyway, all that said, the real solution is not to use a bitmap that large...
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